040104 - Departure day from Tauranga
1045 - I slept rather poorly last night. Could be the three glasses of wine I had at the restaurant in Mt. Maunganui last night. I was celebrating (or mourning) my last evening in New Zealand.
At 0700 this morning I was up and on top. A beautiful morning. Our departure was scheduled for 0800. At 0730, I went down to breakfast and Lyle, Ruth and John were all there. Seems like everyone spent a lot of time ashore yesterday walking around in either Mt. Maunganui or Tauranga.
At 0800 or just a few minutes after, the ship moved off from the pier with the help of the "Sir Robert" tug. It surprised me how quickly the ship's speed came up. I guess it is important so that they can get enough motion in play that the rudder is effective.
I
took my folding chair up on top of the bridge and watched everything.
Lyle, Ruth and John all came up as well. It was just as interesting
as when we arrived. We passed y Mt. Maunganui again. That is
one beautiful park (or Domain as the New Zealanders call them).
Then, we rounded out into the open sea and a few minutes later, the Pilot's Boat
came a long side while we were fully in motion and took the pilot off.
They nose the pilot boat up against the side of the ship and the pilot climbs
down a ladder dropped over the side until he can step over onto the smaller
boat. Once he was over, the pilot boat pulled away back towards
Tauranga and we were truly on our way.
1100 - Today, for me, is odds and ends day. I will catch up on several days from this last week when things were too busy to write down what happened. It is also laundry day. There's a washer and dryer for the officers which I am allowed to use. I think it will take me three loads to process all my stuff.
By tomorrow, I hope to be caught up and I will dive deeply into working on the GENA program. Specifically, I'm going to be adding functionality which will allow me to input new data into the iPAQ and then transfer it back into my Access Database on my desktop. This will be a great help as we record where our stock is in the Spring.