Cast Off - Dulcinea

We were awoken today by my phone ringing and Simon asking all sorts of questions about a job I had left him on while away. So I guess it was time to get up and begin the works. We started with some easy things to get us into the day, cleaned all the sand out of the dinghy and stowed that, tightened all fittings on the solar panel arch so we don't loose it over the side, and various other small things we managed to fill the morning in with. Next was a more major task and we headed out of the marina to calibrate the autopilot in Wellington harbour, then anchor in the harbor into the wind and put up the genoa which was a hell of an ordeal because I accidentally took all the windings off the furler drum so it took us a lot longer than it should have to get it all wound up. Next task was to fill with diesel but a large fishing boat took the spot just before us so we headed to the entrance of the marina and did circles until he was done, then found the engine was overheating so made a quick stop back into our slip and filled her with water (must have leaked out after sitting so long), we then pottered over to the fuel dock and added 200L of diesel, re-berthed and went to the office to sort out the bill. Next stop was Pak n' Save for our food shop, we ended up leaving with bugger all but I guess we only had a couple of days to buy for. Back to the boat again and stow all the food, get everything ready and waste some time before picking Emma up from the airport. Now all I can say was this whole thing was an ordeal, we had arranged for pickup at 9:30pm by the shuttle to take all 3 of us from the airport back to the boat (and drop off the rental car at the same time), and because we put Emmas flight number into the booking of the shuttle he got shitty having to wait for and extra 15-20mins for us to refuel the car, drop it off and have it inspected (all because Emmas flight was early) when in fact all of the above was completed at 9:30 on the dot so screw the shitty driver! he was a stinky twat and was a real discredit to the shuttle company but thats enough of my rant. We headed right back to the boat, paid the a-hole and loaded Emma onto the boat, next stop was a good shower before we left. We ended up getting out of the marina around the 11pm mark and started steaming toward the heads in light winds.