Mana Marina (near Wellington)
Saturday 4 April 2020
It was a simply gorgeous day today. Or at least it might have been.
Under normal circumstances, boats would be coming and going. Families would be playing on the beach beyond the breakwater and there’d be the noise of fun and activity.
But of course, like everywhere else, frivolity is on hold, at least for the foreseeable future.
Linda and I still “Messenger” each other and today I was taught the “Hamburger” game. Which is really quite silly, but rather addictive. If you haven’t yet played the Hamburger game on your smart phone, then find someone under the age of 10 … or an adult who’s been locked up in their home for too long scrolling through free Apps, and ask them for an introduction.
Linda also conducted today’s video-chat wearing whiskers and ears – another phone App – as you can see from the photo … of course I’m too mature for things like that. So we’ll see what tomorrow will bring. Apparently there is a new smart-device game and face-mask-feature, to do a different one each day till the end of the lock-down – and beyond.
In the early afternoon, I received a “Howdy” call from Keith, who was passing by the marina with Christine, on their bikes. It gave me an excuse to get off the boat and walk the full length of A-Row, where we sat – at a distance of about 5 paces from each other – to simply chat in the warm sunshine. If nothing else, this “isolation” time in New Zealand has been a good chance to catch up with family; which me might be doing more of, online, in the next week or so. On Zoom, apparently! It’s definitely the new thang.
I also caught up with John Land briefly yesterday. He sent me a WhatsApp message suggesting that we got out of Bluff just in time. As you can see from the newspaper headline, a recent wedding down there resulted in 55 of the 70 or so guests contracting the COVID-19 virus, despite active measures to maintain cleanliness, including hand sanitizing etc.
While I’ve been making good use of my time here, I’ve also been assessing different options for possibly returning home earlier. Which includes maybe leaving the boat here and flying home. No option is totally without risk or “issues”, however, I see that Qantas and Virgin are putting on extra flights to return “stranded” Aussies from four global locations … one of which is Auckland.
As I say, no option is perfect, but I’ll certainly check it out and compare it with the current “sit it out” option, while continuing to look for a crew to assist me sail home; however unlikely this might be in the short term
Oh, I see that daylight savings ends tonight … which means we get an extra hour to sleep in. There was a time, not that long ago, I would have been really excited by that. Since the lock down … an extra “free” hour has lost it’s meaning somewhat.
Smooth seas, fair breeze and It Might Have Been a Gorgeous Day
Rob Latimer
NZ2020 