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11/7/2006 10:30:00 PM
Tonga to NZ - Day 7 of 7
Our last passage for this cruising adventure

Day 7 of 7 - The ocean isn't blue anymore ... time

The ocean has turned from the by now expected blue to a somewhat ugly green ... it is time to leave New Zealand.

Yeah, you heard right, the ocean has turned from the by now expected blue to a somewhat ugly green ... it is time to leave New Zealand.

Oh that's right, almost forgot to mention this with all the confusion on the water color, we DID arrive in Opua, New Zealand, and were docked at the quarantine dock at exactly 18:10. Why do I know this to the minute, you might wonder. Custom closes at 18:00 so we have to spend the night here on the quarantine dock, which is a floating dock NOT connected to land ... like an island, a rock throw away from land and stores and friends. Hopefully tomorrow morning we get checked in and can move into the marina where we will start the unpacking of the boat.

The last day of our passage has been a very pleasant one, with some motoring on very calm seas, and then ended today with some nice sailing in a gentle breeze, nothing more than 20 knots ... well it is 10pm now and things are quite different. We have had gusts come thru the protected area here with 35 knots so I don't want to know what it is like out on the open ocean ... we have another cruiser scheduled to arrive tomorrow morning and I might have to censor their story from friends and family ... ;-) ... keep your fingers crossed for them please, I will for sure.

As you can imagine the last day of our passage has also been an emotional one, the last sunset on the open ocean, an almost full moon over an almost mirror smooth ocean, a great sunrise with spectacular cloud formations and a nice sail to bring Lawur home, you might remember she was built originally in NZ.

We are excited to be here, we can hardly comprehend how far we have gotten from 4 years ago when the idea was born and many people thought I was crazy ... well they are right, but at least I proved to them but more importantly to ourselves it is possible for a family to have a great year together, traveling to exotic places, sailing far oceans being born in a land-locked country ... well, it seems there is room for another retrospective at a later point in time ... gotta keep something to come back to ... ;-).

Thanks for your continued support and for coming along on the last sail on Lawur for a while.

Happy living,

Robert, Niki, Sebastian, Benjamin, Frank and Matey

TheSchmids Family Sailing on Lawur --------------------------------------------------------------------------- !!! PLEASE DON'T INCLUDE ORIGINAL WHEN REPLYING TO REDUCE DOWNLOAD TIME !!!

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