Day 1 Opua-Bundaberg

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After 9 days at home it's off to the next adventure on "Moonlao". 

I flew up to Opua on Tuesday morning to jump onto my next delivery which is a new Dickie Boats Pacific 62 which I am taking to Bundaberg in Aus with my crew mate David.

David's journey from Auckland to Kerikeri airport was a bit of an adventure in it's own right.  He was told his 16:00 flight was cancelled and told he could get on the next available flight in 2 days time!!  Or take the offer of a couch replacement which he did so instead of a quick 40min flight he had a 5hr drive and arrived around 22:00.

In the meantime I was zipping around in the hire car getting the provisions for the trip. 

Wednesday saw more provisioning and and filling out the multitude of paperwork required by the NZ Customs for clearing out of NZ then another mountain of paperwork for clearing into Australia.  I also booked our appointment with Customs to go through that process for noon on Thursday.

Early Thursday and after breakfast we fired up the engines and left the dock for a sea trial before departing to make sure everything was working, even new boats can have  issues as I well know! 

About an hour later we were docking back in the berth at Opua and sorting final prep for departure.

Customs at noon, all the paperwork was in order, back to the boat and cast off.

Immediately after departing we had an issue with the autopilot.  It would hold a heading course but would not follow the route I put into the nav system.  After a few hours and many calls back and forth with Jason the boat build and Will the electronics guy we managed to get it sorted.

Out the bay we go, turn left and head north towards the top of NZ on a very calm and sunning afternoon with a small swell from behind. 

The night and into the early hours was a little more lively but so far all is running smoothly.  Just keeping an eye on the forecast as it seems to change by the day.  

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