Aotearoa the land of the long white cloud, the original colonial name for NZ which appears on everything, from drinks to passports.

At daybreak the winds were light and we brought out the spinnaker. Who would have thought a voyage south to NZ would get a kite ride

The spinnaker makes for a quiet and fast run down wind, the things are very powerful and get difficult to manage as the winds increase. As the wind increases we monitor them closely and douse (take it down) well before it gets unwieldy. we only ran it for an hour or two before swapping back to working sails.

All good, made huge breakfast burritos and just let the boat work its way towards our destination.

Unfortunately the long white cloud might be hard to see as it will be dark as we arrive, we are timing our arrival for the Whangarei Heads at day break, high tide is 8ish and we should still ride the current up the river to the marina with the quarantine dock. Them is the plans as they stand, well I also didn’t want to negotiate the marina docks in the dark like we did the first time we arrived.

Almost there but one more sleep till the board shorts have been replaced by jeans, t-shirts by long sleeves, flip-flops by jandals (NZ for flip-flops).