New boats mean renewed interest in the blokes equivalent of the progressive tea. "I'll show you mine if you show me yours" is our unspoken motto, and before long, fan belts are being tightened and oil filters removed to the appreciative sighs of the assembled witnesses, twenty-five cent cans of beer in hand.
The discussion moves from generators to coolant and back to shear pins for bow thrusters, but eventually I become distracted by a day pass for the buses that needs some use so we set out in search of bicycle locks.
In the harbour, we from the other side of the world, are a novelty. At home we are often told that our flag is not recognised by others. Indeed quite a few do mistake it for that of New Zealand, but overwhelmingly they recognise it for what it is, stop and ask if we have brought our boat all that way and ask us about the weather at home and in return they tell us a little of where they live and how many generations of their family have lived in their village and how interesting it must be to live in a country so new.
We agree of course, and try to explain to them how interesting it is to be visiting a country where one's garden shed predates our European settlement by four hundred years.
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