Holed up in Russell

Day 4 of sitting stormbound in the Bay of Islands. The wind generator is pumping out amps so we've watched 6 Horatio Hornblower episodes and spent plenty of time cleaning, tidying and reading. We are anchored off the Russell Boating Club in a bay full of local moored boats. It's been blowing like crazy and we have quite a pattern showing on our GPS as we tack around with our 75 feet of chain out in 15 feet of water. The wind has come from many directions while we've been here making a large crescent
pattern on our anchor alarm track. The bay is well protected and it's been reasonably comfortable with just a small chop. We have gotten off the boat every day for a walk and are enjoying seeing Russell when there are so few people about. We have been assured that this torrential rain is not common for a New Zealand summer. We even heard that last summer there was a record 10 days of rain in a month. That record will certainly be broken this month, probably after tomorrow as it's the 10th.
The gale is forecast to start to subside tomorrow (Monday) and the wind should be blowing a workable 15-20 knots on Tuesday for our hop down the coast 50 miles to Whangarei. We'll go up the river on the tide Wednesday morning, tie up to the dock, rent a car or get on a bus and dash to Auckland to pick up Lisa on Thursday. The kiwis are looking forward to relief from this storm as all the "land-slips" from the winter are still being worked on by road crews and this rain is certainly making their
work more difficult.
Today as we went for our daily walk we were rescued by Rick, a friend we met in Pago Pago aboard Mufasa. We are actually anchored next to his boat, Phantom, here in the bay. He saw us walking into town and picked us up and took us to his house for the afternoon. Peter learned the finer points of an x-box car game while Ginger worked on a puzzle with Robin, Rick's wife, at the kitchen table. After a couple of hours out of the wind and rain it was time to get back to the boat to make sure all was
well.