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Back to NZ as Cruisers! 2007 1 Feb 2007 Ok, OK, we are still alive, thank you for your queries, just taking it easy around the old stamping grounds. In November we steeled ourselves to get back to reality and headed down to Auckland to meet up with friends and family and to do the usual boat stuff that needs doing. We had a great sail down the coast - best of the whole season, sails poled out (first time it had been calm enough all season to do it) and reached 9 knots - a new personal best for Daemon. And that was loaded down with cruising crap and lots of yummy stuff from New Cal - the French do canned stuff so much better than anyone else. After a stop in Tutukaka to catch up with our (now very fat & happy) cat & her slaves, and a rest in Kawau we arrived back in Auckland. Needless to say December passed in a haze of solvent fumes and a whirl of social busy-ness. We spent Xmas at my brother's place on Waiheke, and it was great to catch up with family and overeat to a ridiculous degree. We then headed off to Coromandel and Great Barrier Island to lounge about and get back into the cruising lifestyle. I knew I had succeeded when someone asked me the time and the closest I could come up with was "mid-January". Great Barrier was as wonderful as I remembered it, and we got so lazy we only went out of the Port Fitzroy/Port Abercrombie area on our last day there. I could have spent another couple of months there no problem. Highlights were the burger bar on the wharf at Port Fitzroy (ah, the traditional kiwi Hawaiian burger, complete with canned pineapple & beetroot, can't go past it!) and the yachtie facilities at Smokehouse Bay. These were destroyed by a landslide a few years back, and have just been rebuilt. They comprise a shed with a bath & shower (hot water supplied by a wetback stove powered by driftwood), an outdoor bath with a great view over the bay, some smokehouses for smoking fish, BBQ areas and some concrete laundry tubs with manual wringers (water supplied by alkathene pipes strung through the trees) and rotary clotheslines on the shore. We had bit of a lumpy trip back to Waiheke, but the memory of that has faded, but the memory of the whales & dolphins we saw on the way hasn't. So, off to the South Island next week to do the tourist thing. I'm looking forward to it.
Away at last! NZ Shakedown Cruise 2006. 15 May 2006 Well folks, today is the day! Last Thursday's weather window slammed shut, but from now on it looks good. It will be a fast ride out of town, with the winds predicted at 30-40 knot south-westerlies, but at least it is behind us, so the ride will be reasonably flat. I sure as hell hope so anyway. I am precooking soups & corned beef so we can have meals that fill us without having to spend time in a rolly galley during those first queasy days at sea. We got the self-steering fitted and went for a test run, and it seemed to work very well, even in very light airs, so that is a relief, it will be so much better than the old one, which required constant assistance, and would have been way too tiring to manage on a long voyage. Final provisioning, refuelling & watering has been done, and we are off to clear customs at 11.00am. Very exciting, t is happening at last. See you on the Tonga blog that will be coming! 4 May 2006 Sigh. Still sitting in Westhaven. Our self-steering arrived a week ago and the brackets for it a couple of days later, but the weather has been unremittingly crap, so we haven't been able to install it fully. However the weather for the weekend looks promising, so we're keeping our fingers crossed that we can install & test it this weekend, as current forecasts indicate a good weather window next Thursday, which we'd like to leave on. We have decided to leave from Auckland, as the distance is about the same from here as from Opua, so we would just be adding to the journey. I have done almost all our provisioning, so have food for about 3 months (at least). Just fresh veges & meat to get. We have done the Westhaven line dance and have moved jetties to F pier, out from the Yacht Squadron, which is prone to party noise when it is hired out on the weekends for functions. This weekend the International Powerboat Regatta is on, and currently there is a boat practicing in the harbour, which sounds like a low-flying jet. Can't wait for the full-blown regatta - not! Taking the extra time has been good - we have finished (almost) all the little extra tasks, and have had to catch up with friends. We also had time to do a refresher on first aid stuff with the Yacht Lifeline guys, whom I can't recommend highly enough. Brent was very patient with us as we sat down with our pig hocks and subjected them to all sorts of injections and suturing. I swear my piggie would have been the prettiest-stitched one in the operating theatre - I was going to post a photo of it, but Bruce vetoed that on the grounds of disgustingness. It was really worthwhile exercise: we both now feel quite confident about giving injections & stitching, and, probably better still, are confident about the other person, having watched them do it. 6 April 2006 Well, here we are back in Westhaven, and we even made it in time for Daphne & Alan's wedding, which we were getting a bit nervous about making it to. We're here finishing up the refit and seeing friends and family. We are at F1 07, just out from the Richmond Yacht Club if you want to drop down. Bruce is a happy boy - he had installed the SSB radio while we were away but while we could receive transmissions, we had no joy in sending messages. The problem was compounded by having the wrong cable for his computer so he couldn't connect and try out the email. When we got back in, we got Jacques the radio/modem guy in and he checked it out and said it was all ok (I suspect the microphone hadn't been turned on), and with the correct cables it all went fine, so we are now connected. Bruce had been depressed and thought we would need to add heaps more copper ground plate, so after that he perked up considerably. 28 March 2006 Sigh. Another day, another bay, another bloody gale. We have been holed up at Whangarei Heads for the last 4 days as the back end of ex-cyclone Wati sat above us. We started in Urquhart's Bay for a night, then moved to Taurikura to see some people Bruce knew from his childhood and to pick up some supplies from the store. While we were in there Maritime Radio announced a gale warning for the area, and given the wind conditions, it seemed the best place to sit it out. We were the only anchored boat in the bay, so at least we didn't have to worry about anyone else dragging their anchor on to us. To make matters interesting, every weather forecast broadcast gave different wind directions, which made it bit of a worry, however once you are in Taurikura, the sandbanks and very narrow channels make it difficult to move in high winds. It must have been an amusing sight from the shore to see more and more gear shifted off the deck to reduce windage, and more and more anchor chain let out as the wind increased. After deciding there wasn't much more we could do, we hunkered down inside and spent the night doing anchor watch. We didn't drag, and the boat handled it very well, but there were moments during 50+ knot gusts when the boat would get slammed over onto her side which could turn your bowels to water. When the worst of the gale blew itself out, we moved to Urquhart's Bay again, to avoid the South-easterly winds forecast. However the swell in there quickly became dangerous, so we moved down to Macleod's Bay, where we were sheltered from the swell and a bit of the wind. Bruce managed to get 3 snapper in about half an hour, so we ate well that night. An interesting fact is that you can only be scared for a day or two, then you get pissed off with it all. A small head could be seen emerging into the howling rain shouting "Oh for god's sake! Enough already!" at odd intervals. Another thing to emerge is the change in daily routine which occurs as the days pass when you are stuck below in a space the size of the average bathroom. Day 1 - do all chores, get the boat ship-shape, have your navigation up to date for any emergency exit that may be required. Day 2 - rest, reading & romance. Day 3 - heavy drinking and vicious card games (It should be a Maritime Safety requirement that canasta cards are banned on all craft). Day 4 - rifling through the first aid kit to see if there is anything interesting & diverting in there. When all else fails, more heavy drinking & karaoke-ing to very bad lounge music from the 1950s & 60s can pass the time. Usually about then Bruce finds urgent maintenance is required in the engine room (AKA gimp hole) and retreats there until I've stopped singing.
23 March 2006 Our time in Whangaroa was pure magic - it has to have been one of my favourite places ever, still unspoiled. There were heaps of fish & shellfish (lots of escapees from the oyster leases), and we dined well on oysters, ceviche & cockle& pipi paella. I had my birthday while we were there and Bruce shouted me lunch at Kingfish Lodge to celebrate. Didn't get to check out the facilities they have for your driver or pilot though. In the morning we had gone for a major kayak trip to the heads, which was very, very cool, heaps of fish all around the kayaks, but I was somewhat nervous after the woman in the shop had told me that there were sharks at the entrance. Hmmn, what does the grey/black underside of a kayak look like - a tasty seal maybe? Bruce & Bronwyn & Phil from Sophia 2 climbed the Duke's Nose mountain one day while we were gale-bound in Lane's Cove. Very energetic of them! The cove was a great place to sit out southerly gales, snug in a little horseshoe-shaped bay with 200 metre rock walls all around keeping the wind out. Probably still be there if we didn't have limited holding tank capacity for the head! Another (unwanted) birthday surprise was discovering we had an alternator problem and our batteries weren't charging. Phil (an electrician) offered to come over & help, but it was a Friday, so we decided that if it needed a part, the best thing to do was to get it to Kerikeri so it could be done by the weekend, so Bruce hitched in and got it checked there, blessedly to find it was only the negative screw that had fallen out & it only took 5 minutes to fix. Phew! Could have fixed it at anchor, but at least he got to go to the supermarket in Kerikeri & get some fresh supplies! After that we started on the long (and reluctant trip back towards Auckland). Our first night was in Horseshoe Bay in the Cavalli Islands. Fortunately the weather was calm & settled (unlike the trip past it on the way up) so we could anchor with only a bit of a roll from the swell to disrupt our sleep. The water was amazingly clear, the bottom was visible from deck which made great fish & ray (and anchor) watching. Bruce went snorkeling & was adopted by a school of young kingfish. Unfortunately while we were there, Bruce developed toothache, so we then headed in to Russell so he could get it checked out. Of course when we got there it had gone, but we spent a day in Russell and a couple of nights at Roberton Island which was lovely, despite Bruce making me go on enforced march up the hill at high speed to view the sunset. We are now waiting out unfavourable winds and some rain in Whangaruru Harbour, feasting on figs from a tree by the beach, and some damn fine hot cross buns I made. Alison Holst is now my baking goddess!
10 March 2006 We are now anchored in Lane's Cove in Whangaroa Harbour, and is is gob-smackingly gorgeous (yes, I know, but it really is!). It is like something out of a Lord of the Rings sets, with 200metre cliffs all around, covered in bush, but with lots of rocky outcrops. the closest thing I've seen to it is the Na Pali coastline around Kauai in Hawaii. The great part is that it is only about 5 metres deep, so anchoring is a dream. We have just got back from a provisioning trip to the store in Whangaroa (after discovering the Totara North store has closed) and a lunch at the local hotel. We have just had a couple of "firsts". Bruce has caught his first fish so it is ceviche for dinner, and I have made my first loaf of bread (potato & caraway), and it was GOOD! Yesterday's trip up was pretty crappy, the swell from the gale we had the other night was very sloppy and the wind was all over the place. I (Jill) started feeling a bit off, so decided to try some seasick pills I'd bought. I spent the rest of the day as a drooling idiot (worse than usual, OK?) and kept falling asleep. Won't take those again! We had a bit of excitement when we were in the Bay of Islands, as a gale came through. The weather had been a bit indifferent, and after leaving the marina (in textbook style) we heading out to have a look around the islands and look for a sheltered spot to sit out the forecast high winds. We were amazed to find that the best hurricane hole in the Bay of Islands was almost empty, so we ducked in there and got a prime spot close to shore behind all the cliffs to keep out of the winds, and it worked well for 2 days. On the third night, as the nowcasting was reporting 46 knots of wind in the Bay, the wind started funneling around the corner and into the bay we were in, at about 30 knot strength. The spot close to the beach didn't look quite so appealing then! However we knew the anchor was well-dug in, and we sat anchor watch with the engine running and a course to another bay ready to go if we started to drag, but about midnight it died down and the wind went around, so it all quietened down. A charter boat in the same bay was not so lucky - they tried to move at the height of the wind and made a complete bollox of it and ended up on the beach, but managed to get themselves off again. 2 March 2006 Well here we are in the marina at Opua in the Bay of Islands checking it out as a departure point for May. Looks good, apart from our spectacularly embarrassing entrance where we tried to come into our allocated berth with a huge tide and 20 knots of wind behind us. As they say about Westsails, manoeuvres like a loaf of bread, turns on a football field, so we ended up being carried forward at 3 knots, despite being in full reverse and ended up wedged sideways across a fortunately empty marina berth a couple along from where we should have been. With a little help from fellow cruisers we got into that berth with no damage done, and the marina said we could use that one instead (Marina person: "It is a catamaran berth, you should be able to fit into it sideways." Me: "Um, no, not by about 18 inches, and don't ask me how I know.") My sole consolation has been watching every other boat, including local fishing boats, do exactly the same thing, all day, and in much better conditions than us. That and the hot showers repaying my debt to personal hygiene for the week. Whangarei Heads was great, despite a joggly harbour and some annoying deck noises. Bruce was all nostalgic about being back in his turangawaewae, and I have to admit it is lovely. I think that is what has been so amazing so far - how beautiful the scenery is. There hasn't been many places that haven't been jaw-droppingly lovely - no wonder tourists go nuts for it. While we were in Whangarei Heads we had dinner with Sue & Laurie who fostered Anna, our 18 year old Devon Rex cat. It was great to see her and to see how well she had settled in, so I don't feel anywhere near as guilty now. Oh yeah, it was good to see Laurie & Sue as well! After the Heads, we had another great sail to Whangaruru Harbour, which is very lovely (I know I'm sounding like a stuck record, but...) and we found a great bach on the shore where we were sorely tempted to kill the occupants and take it over. Maybe when we have finished sailing... The sail from Whangaruru to Bay of Islands was uneventful - very little wind, so the motor got a thrashing. Laurie had been telling us about being attacked by a sunfish off Cape Brett and at one stage Bruce got all excited because he thought he saw a sunfish. It was a very dastardly & clever sunfish, because it had managed to disguise itself to look EXACTLY like a dead penguin. Damn, they're cunning. What we didn't see until today's paper, was the 9 metre whale shark basking off Cape Brett that day. Actually, it was probably another cunningly disguised sunfish. Twenty-somethingth Feb 2006 Well, we have got out of Westhaven at last, something I was beginning to think would never happen! The last day was bit of a rush, hungover from the night before's farewells, we dropped my car off at a dealer to sell for me (please never make me have to go back to the Car Fair - it is one of the inner circles of hell!) and had breakfast with friends before they dropped us back at the boat and bade us farewell. We watered & dieseled up and headed out the entrance to Westhaven for the first time in almost 3 years. What a mission that has been! We had a perfect sail to Waiheke, when we anchored and spent an evening with my brother Bob & his wife Deb at their place there. And we had a DAY OF REST! Still rare enough to capitalise! Then we sailed around to see my nephew Nat at the oyster farm he runs at Te Matuku Bay on the bottom of Waiheke. We came away with some fresh eggs and some oysters, so dined well that night. We then sailed up to Kawau, but the wind was blowing right into Bon Accord harbour, making it an uncomfortable harbour, so we headed down to Mahurangi Harbour where we spent a few days on Bruce's Uncle Graham's mooring and enjoyed his hospitality. Yesterday we did a 10 hour run up to Whangarei Heads, with pretty perfect sailing conditions, and that's where we are now, so here I am writing this with a beer in one hand and music playing. This is how it was meant to be! |
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Last updated April 08, 2010
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