There have been several fairly major projects under way since the last report, some of them finished, some still work in progress. The one finished project is the conversion of the starboard quarter berth area into a utility room with storage for all the food and most of the utensils.
The other major project of mine has been laying a new floor after the damage caused by replacing the fuel tanks. This job is still ongoing but starting to look as if it will turn out quite well.
The new floor is oak veneer over tongue and groove pine planks and is quite difficult to get cut out neatly given that there are no right angle corners or straight lines on a boat. Nothing that filler can't hide though.
The last project and probably the biggest and hardest one has fallen fairly and squarely into Doreen's lap and that is the recovering of all the squabs throughout the boat. It would be a big enough challenge doing it in a house where there's plenty of room let alone trying to do it on the saloon table! Having said that, the parts that have been finished are looking really good and when the whole boat has been done it will look fantastic.
The photo at right is obviously the forward cabin and those of you that have seen the boat or remembered from previous photos will note that I have rebuilt the port side bunk. Before, it was about 300mm higher and extended over the 'thwartships (crossways) squab. Now there is a large storage area under the bunk and all (well, most) of my tools are stored there.
The saloon squabs are still WIP but are starting to shape up nicely.
And the final project was the delivery trip I did last week bringing our neighbour's new boat up here from Picton. Our friends Nigel and Fred (Winifred) recently sold their yacht Holo Malano (see Easter blog and trip to Great Barrier) and bought a 58 foot motor launch which was based in Picton. The Tutukaka Thinking Mans Drinking Club (Dad's Army) was appointed to bring the new boat back to Tutukaka and duly set off by road for Wellington at 3.15am Tuesday week ago. The trip down was reasonably uneventful and we arrived at the Ferry Terminal at about 4pm (co-incidently, about the same time as the normal nightly meetings start) and so set up temporary clubrooms under the overpass and prepared for the Cook Strait crossing due to leave at 6.25pm. The crossing got away on time and was reasonably smooth and comfortable and we finally got to the boat at 9.30pm.

Wednesday we went into Blenheim and bought food and liquid refreshments for the trip before going back to the boat for an afternoon nap. The weather was fine but very cold and noticeably colder than up north.
Dave, Bev and Kelly visited us in the evening for a few quiet drinks before we all (minus Kelly) headed into town for dinner at the local curry house. As it turned out Kelly and her boyfriend live in a flat not more than a hundred meters from where the boat was moored.
Sorry about the photo Dave, it looks like you may have drunk something that didn't agree with you but unfortunately it was the only one I took.
Thursday, the weather forecast wasn't great so we delayed our departure a day and went for a short shakedown cruise along Queen Charlotte Sound before another afternoon nap.
Friday, the forecast wasn't too bad so we set off at 8.30am for the 690 nm trip to Tutukaka.
Rather than bore everyone with the full details of the trip I'll stick to a brief summary.
Departed Picton Friday 8.30am - arrived Napier Saturday 9.45am. Refuelled at Napier (1100 litres)
Departed Napier Sunday 9.00am - arrived and anchored Tolaga Bay 10.00pm
Departed Tolaga Bay Monday 3.30am - arrived and anchored Cape Runaway 7.00pm
Departed Cape Runaway Tuesday 4.30am - arrived Whitianga 4.30pm. Refuelled at Whitianga (1100 litres) and anchored overnight at Great Mercury Island about 20 miles from Whitianga.
Departed Great Mercury Wednesday 4.30am - arrived Tutukaka 4.00pm.
The weather throughout the trip ranged from crap (5m swells between Napier and East Cape) to perfect (flat calm across the Bay of Plenty). For the interest of anyone who cares, we used about 2700 litres of diesel and averaged about 9.5 knots over the whole journey. Oh, and in case anyone does actually care, we stopped for a fish on the Ranfurly Banks (about 12 nm off East Cape) and I caught two Kingfish.

And that brings us up to the present time, snugly in our berth at Tutukaka wondering what to do next. The squabs and the flooring projects need to be finished before we go summer cruising as does the painting of the back of the boat and the relocating of the boarding platform. We also would like to fit in a trip to Oz but at the moment it's raining and it all seems too hard so I might just take my book up to forward cabin and have a nap.