I had a really good weekend. It's that awesome midwinter weather you get sometimes, with really hot sunshine, blue skies, blue water, green hills, and everything looking so bright it makes your eyes hurt. The only way you can tell it isn't *summer* is the way the air is cold instead of muggy and warm.

On Saturday we were supposed to go to a Coastguard social event (watching the Bledisloe Cup on TV at the Nag's Head, the semi-official coasties' pub) but the weather was too nice to waste watching a rugby game (aah! blasphemy!) so we went to Muriwai in West Auckland instead to look at the gannet colony. It was cool. They sit there all geometrically aligned, exactly the same distance from each other. When one comes in with food or nesting material, it goes past your face like a fighter plane and then hovers over the colony looking for a place to land. They're beautiful birds. When the incoming bird locates its mate on the ground, they "talk" to each other and do a little dance, wrapping their necks around each other's and bowing. There is a fur seal colony at Muriwai too, but I couldn't spot any in the water.

On Sunday I was on duty, but even though there were a zillion boats out, we didn't get any jobs, so that was good. It must have been a non-idiot day or something. So the whole day was spent lounging around on the boat at various locations, soaking up sunshine and chasing penguins. There were penguins by the truckload - they like warm days with a calm sea, or maybe it's just that they're easier to spot on such days.

AAANNND there were dolphins!! Great big ones, too, they must have been bottlenoses rather than common dolphins. They weren't in a playing mood, they were heading out of the harbour in a purposeful manner, but it was great to see them. I think there were six or seven of them, at least that's how many were visible or spouting at any one time.

After the boat was all washed up and back on its pontoons for the night crew, we sat around for a while listening to Bubbles and Mole trying to outdo each other with stories from their navy days, and we were just about to leave when some of the police guys came in and asked if we wanted to try out the police boat. So we went for a ride with them while it was getting dark. It was great fun. They have similar RHIBs to Coastguard but much longer. They can do really awesome high-speed turns. :-)

And that's what I did on the weekend. I'm waiting for a couple of rolls of film to be developed; if I get any good photos back I'll see about scanning them.

Brunnen-"the speed freak"G