Opua: wind
Opua: wind
I arrived a week ago. Fortunately the weather was settled for the first few days, because it isn’t this week. Not likely to get ashore today. The first low, which came from the north, has passed, but strong wind on the trailing side, blowing about 30 knots now at 10:00 a.m. If it moderates this afternoon, I’ll row in, but no necessity. I don’t leave much water in the two tanks when I am gone, one of which I have just replaced; and don’t like to drink what has been sitting for several months; so my drinking supply was low, but I filled a jerry can yesterday and am good for several days. The next low is moving up from the south.
When I can I will move to the boat yard dock or the marina sea wall for a while. The next things the boat needs are land-based: routine diesel servicing; rigger; brief liftout to clean prop; batteries, which I could row out but would be easier to get aboard from a dock.
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Watched a Humphrey Bogart movie I had not previously seen: DARK PASSAGE. Interesting for several reasons: the camera angle is from Bogart’s character’s point of view. You see what he is seeing as he, a wrongly convicted wife-murderer, escapes from San Quentin and tries to find the true murderer in San Francisco; the remarkable beauty of the young Lauren Bacall; the low skyline of the city and the emptiness of the hills of Marin County in 1947, when the film was made; and Agnes Morehead miscast as a femme fatale. Her acting was fine, but she never had the looks for the part. All in all a good movie. Not sure why it isn’t better known.
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The New Zealand Navy ship above is tied to the Opua Wharf. While the photo was taken from my mooring, it was with a telephoto lens and not really that close.
The ship has been decommissioned and will be sunk next month in a cove near Cape Brett, at the east entrance to the Bay of Islands, to become a dive site.
The RAINBOW WARRIOR, originally sunk by the French in Auckland, was raised and then re-sunk in the Cavalli Islands, twenty miles north of here, also as a fish sanctuary and dive site.
For me New Zealand’s water, which is frequented by penguins, is too cold for swimming.
Tuesday, August 28, 2007