Day 32 Thursday February 15, 2024, Napier, New Zealand

Arrival 12:00 All Aboard 18:30 Departure 19:00

As we make our way to Hawkes Bay and Napier, two large tugboats on either end of Insignia are tethered to mooring lines to act as stabilizers just like Rotorua the previous day.

Napier's Annual Art Deco Festival begins today and runs to February 18. The last fully run festival was February 2020. Covid caused cancellation in years 2021 & 2022 while Cyclone Gabrielle forced cancellation last year. The festival has been running for twenty years.

Over the four-day festival visitors are treated to a variety of events including a golf tournament, plays, parade, live music, city tours and a gala on the Saturday. Vintage cars from the period can be seen throughout the city centre.

You can see many of the residents getting into the festive spirit wearing period pieces from the 1920s and 1931s. It would have been nice to be here in the evening.

A brief history of Napier and the surrounding Hawke's Bay revealed an earthquake occurred here on February 3, 1931. It caused 256 deaths and thousands were injured.

The centre of the earthquake was 15 kms from Napier and lasted for 2 and a half minutes with a magnitude of 7.8 of the Richter scale. Over the next two weeks 525 aftershocks were felt with a total of 597 recorded by the end of February. I cannot imagine what the devastation must have looked like.

Another port another WOW. We must certainly return to New Zealand at some future point.

As we leave the port at 19:00 the two tugboats from this morning are pulling us away. We are now on our way to the capital of New Zealand, Wellington. The distance is 212 nautical miles.

As seen from our stateroom HMNZS Manawanui (A09) is in port. She was commissioned in 1988 as a diving support vessel for the Royal New Zealand Navy.