February 2016

Hello everyone,

Chicken New Zealand style, old cruising pals and one of the most beautiful bays in the world.

Today, after sailing for ten years on the Pacific, Banana Split docks again in Tauranga's large marina. On our previous stop, New Zealand friend sailors, inviting us to their boat had given us an appointment to "iff tin '" ... it took a while to understand what they were talking about : in Kiwiland, the letter "f " spells out "iff" and the number "ten" is pronounced "tin" and they were simply expecting us at berth 10 on arm F of the marina ; in fact, it"s usual here, for instance, a bed is a "bid", left is "lift" end is "ind"; and on tbe other hand, "in" is pronounced "en": residents of Dunedin call their city Duniden; and the most picturesque is when you take a plane from Auckland Airport, and when the loudspeakers invite you to do your "chicken" !

Our month of January alternated sunny days, illuminated by the red pohutukawa and the characteristic green hills of the islands in the Bay of Islands, of Whangaroa or Great Barrier Island, and rainy days; seeking shelter from a small forecast gale we chose a quiet bay, and we were impressed by a small blue house built at the water's edge; wondering wether by chance it could be for sale, we searched the internet ... and in fact it was .. so I contacted the agency, but they explained it was the small "beach house "of a large property with another house on a hill, all of it at a hollywoodian price ; and that the domain had ben owned to Sylvester Stallone!

In the Bay of Islands as in the large fjord of Whangaroa, Francette could no longer be restrained : the atavistic memory of her childhood holidays in Brittany overwhelmed her, and she managed to find in every corner of the Bay wild oyster beds, where she harvested; the hard part was finding a shallot, but what a treat!

The other day, while we were leaving Whangarei, I got an email from a friend navigator whose boat comes as ours from the French shipyard Meta. What a coincidence, although I believedhe was in South America, he had just left Auckland and his route passed a few miles away from the anchorage we were heading for on Geat Barrier Island; So we got together in vast Port Fitzroy and he told me, that having divorced twelve years ago, he had to sell the 20 m thick aluminum boat he had built himself at Tarare" yard to divide its value with his wife ... Then he had built a smaller boat, always made of Strongall alloy , and now he has just sold it to buy .. the boat 20 meters he had had to sell twelve years earlier. You get to follow... What tenacity, anyway; His name is Georges Meffre, and he published several books about of his journey ; he sails mostly in the Arctic and Antarctic regions.

And speaking of old cruising pals, among those that I have known for nearly forty years, Maurice, on Petit Frère (Little Brother) sent me his new year greetings from the Sea of Cortez, inMexico, and Maurice and Evelyne (ex Taravana) have this year moored their boatr Feng Shui somewher between Malaysia and Thailand, and have spenth months backpacking across a country for which we too felt love at first sight, Laos.