Happy New Year

I hope you all had a as wonderful Christmas and New Years Eve as we did. 

We have been celebrating with friends on both evenings, enjoying good food and friendship that built up out in the Pacific. Inbetween these days we were able to visit our friends from Saliander (who then came for New Years) in Auckland, where they not only offered us a place to stay (at their lovely friend's home…) but also showed us around the area for sightseeing (ticky-tour, as Kiwis call this). We had a great time. 

 Puhoi Valley famous Pub

 Desperate for food

 View over bay

 Sailors at waterfalls

 On January 4th we sailed out into the Bay on State of Mind (6 of us on the boat) to watch the Tall Ship's and Classics Race (and of  course to take pictures). It was a gorgeous day, it could not have been better: blue skies, sunshine and a great wind. 

We received a surprise christmas package from our last guest, Tina, which made us very happy. Included amongst other wonderful things was some Natron and a recipe to make our home "Brez'n", which I had to try immediately. It worked quite well! Thank you soo much, Tina!

Every other day we have been just busy with the maintenance and upgrade of Alita. Marcus is working on eliminating point by point on his list while my duty was sewing of new cushions + buying of new dishes (upgrade of the cockpit seating area)

and going up into the mast twice. At first I spent about 2,5hrs up there to dismount the old HF-Antenna and install a new one (now we can den send AIS-signals) and the second time I just had to hammer the carrier of the Genua sail down (so I enjoyed the view for only about 5 min). 

My last excitement took place on the 7th. We put Alita out of the water onto a hard stand in the boatyard. Marcus let me drive, Rod played Bow Thruster with his Dinghy by pushing the bow of Alita around where needed. We had quite some wind from a stupid direction and current pushing me, so Rod was a big help. I still had some adrenalin show up in a difficult situation….But all went good, Alita was taken out and is now resting in the yard while she gets all polished up, will receive her new Dodger and Hard Top, the upholserty in the saloon will be redone, a storage with workspace installed, new fridge and freezer installed and lots more….

The new Dodger in progress

 and the hard top with Rod working on it. He is doing a great job!!

I am in Auckland now on my way to LA and feel sad to have left my two loved ones behind and to not be able to help doing more work on Alita. But, I need to do some work before I continue on the trip. I will return as soon as possible, latest in July. 

I will keep you updated on the progress on Alita. 

All the best to you, Michaela