Departing Havelock - Day 8 (18th March)

Sunday 18th was another beautiful day with little or no wind.  We had a slow start as usual with our favourite fruit and muesli for breakfast.  For me, the day started with a cold shower, my fault too!  Shore power was so dodgy in Havelock I had to turn off any high load items in order to prevent the circuit breaker from popping and I forgot to turn it back on last night.  Next thing was the shower tower decided to fall off - the mount had cracked internally.  Jo and I were beginning to wonder about the old mariners superstition that you don’t bring any bananas on board boats as it brings bad luck.  Robin had gone shopping for fruit yesterday, including bananas and we joked about him needing to eat them all or get rid of them.  We were wondering what was going to happen next?  Robin fixed the shower tower while Jo and I did the last minute shop prior to our departure later today.  We packed our things away and prepared the boat for our departure.  We decided we couldn’t leave without one last coffee so we wondered up to the township for a coffee at the organic coffee shop - very popular with locals and visitors; It seemed that all the motor-cycle enthusiasts loved to stop here too, Triumph, Norton, Duccati, Suzuki and Harley Davidson - all grunters.  My favourite was the old 850 Norton Commando, it was original and mint.  This particular group of riders would meet in Havelock then do a tour through the sounds for a Sunday ride.  I imagine the roads would be great for bikes.

We returned to the marina and cranked up the engines and prepared to cast off the lines.  Jo was given some Natural insect repellant that our marina neighbour insisted we were going to need.  She also advised us to be careful using our bow thruster when departing as eels often slide into the thruster between the blade and then soon as you touch the button you can break off the blades.  Strange but true, apparently.  We headed out and waved goodbye to our new friends, it was high tide so we were certain there was plenty of water to navigate the narrow and shallow channel. There were lots of stumps, branches and general debris from previous storms floating about so we were spotting and dodging all the way out,.

It was beautiful cruising out at 10-12 knots to our destination Te Mahia Bay which would take us 1 1/4 hrs from Havelock.  We dropped anchor and were preparing to take the brompton bikes across to Queen Charlotte Sound when Jo started shouting “water” “water” from below.  Both Robin and I shot down to see that there was water everywhere in the master cabin.  I went into the ensuite to discover the toilet was overflowing, not effluent but salt water as the fill level lever had jammed open.  Both Jo and I said one word “Bananas”!!!!.  Thankfully much of the water had gone down into the bilge so it was easy to pump out but the new carpet was soaked.  Robin and I spent the next 3 hours with wet-vac and carpet cleaning machine getting the carpet dried out.  Jo was getting bored and was keen to type up my blog for me but we still had little our no reception so I took the boat out into the middle of Kenepuru Sound and dropped the anchor where reception was good and left Jo to sort out the blog from my notes.

On completion of the clean up there was only one thing left to do, so I went down to the galley, grabbed Robins bunch of bananas and brought them upstairs, handed on to Jo, one for me and I made Robin eat the remaining bananas.  There will be no more bananas coming on board this trip!!  We had a good laugh about our drama and headed back into beautiful Te Mahia Bay for the night.