We arrived in Auckland from Honolulu late last evening and had arranged to stay at a hotel right inside the airport. We will meet our tour group at the airport at 7am tomorrow so this turned out to be a great decision to stay right here!
This morning we took a 40minute bus ride to downtown Auckland. We will be back to Auckland twice more so we decided today to just walk around, get our bearings and check out the harbor area and the Maritime Museum. It was a glorious, sunny cloud filled days in the low 70's. This was the site of the NZ America's Cup competition about 20 years ago. ....And at 2pm there would be a sailing of a 12m America's Cup yacht from earlier times. We hesitated because it was quite expensive but then decided, when would we again have this opportunity. It turned out to be am amazing opportunity. There were about 25 of us on the boat and we sailed way out into the harbor on a broad reach and tacked back. Al actually got to be a grinder and to be at the helm. We healed a lot, rails down and shipped quite a bit of water. Remember these boats have neither life lines or high gunnels. Wind was about 25knots and the main was reefed. Since most of the other passengers had not sailed before I was amazed at how much we healed, of course we had on life jackets and they said no one had ever gone over board! When we sailed under the Harbor Bridge we even saw several people bungy jumping. It was a very exciting and wonderful experience and an amazing way to start our first day in NZ.


Auckland in background.


Al at the Helm





Hard to tell but we are really healing and I'm holding on for dear life!





Can you imagine bungy jumping off this bridge?


What a fun day!

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