The joy of steps. These are four words I’ve never previously considered joining together in a sentence. I said “hi’ to a woman as I walked into town in Lyttelton. She had just descended a set of concrete steps by the port. Beaming she said, “Hi, these steps are just brilliant, they’re lovely to walk down. In fact I’m going to go up and come down again”.

And off she went to repeat her descent, full of happiness and joy. That was the extent of our interaction. My usual random and often benign chitty chat conversations share a fine view or cracking weather. Steps. That was truely a first and I loved it. Later that day, curiosity got the better of me so I checked out the steps myself, and blow me, the riser – tread relationship was indeed perfect. Her words were truely spot on.

Grace’s photo made the local press in Oamaru. It must have been a slow news week. If I recall correctly the words said something akin to ‘she’s a beauty’. Well that’s kind but the dock where we were tied was a pig. Even on a quiet weather day there was surge coming in under the dock and Grace would ride backwards and forwards straining her lines. And I was somewhat paranoid about our shiny paintwork and wooden piles and grimy tyres. Even with fender boards it was bum clenching.

In the end we went to anchor opposite the entrance but muddy as the floor was, it was the ‘wrong type of mud’ and we couldn’t get the anchor to set. So we then anchored just off the moorings further into the harbour. The anchor was grand there but it was all a little tight with not enough swinging room so we ended picking up a mooring that the harbourmaster had told us wasn’t big enough for Grace. And we were fine as the wind had dropped by then.

So Oamaru was a bit of a kerfuffle. We did however catch up with our ping pong UK friends Rob, Kate and family who pinged back to the UK last August, planning on recreating a life there only to pong back to NZ in February. Apparently ping pong Brits are a thing here.

Rob came aboard and helped us sail about 45 miles down to Dunedin. Grace was flying in probably 30 knots by the time we came through narrows towards Port Chalmers. Can’t say exactly as our wind instruments arn’t currently working. Three reefs in the main and a well reefed headsail were all we had up. It was good fun and lovely to have Rob on board for the day.

Kate drove down to meet us but we couldn’t launch the dinghy for an hour as we waited for the wind to abate. The pub called. We had dinner. I had intensely glowing red cheeks.

The wind stayed high for a few days. Enough to tip the dinghy upside down. We went ashore for a walk and on our return, the dinghy was half on, half off the dock, the outboard submerged under the water. Arse. We rowed home and Dave worked on the engine the following day and managed to get it running.

And we rubbed shoulders with some You Tubers. We last saw Colin and his catamaran, Parlay Revival in Panama. They’d just been struck by lightening the day we saw them. We stopped by to say hi and blagged a cuppa. He’d managed to blag a go on one of the Sail GP boats that had been racing the previous weekend in Lyttelton. That’s what fame can do for you. He described it as incredible. I’m paraphrasing there.