A week on land in pictures

We had a fantastic week in the cottage we rented in the Coromandel. Rather than write another long blog post I thought I'd document our week on land in pictures instead. Here are a few highlights from the week...

Beautiful waterfall off the 309 road

A stand of old Kauri trees on the track off the 309 road

Tree huggers - this one is about 500 years old. We couldn't even span half way around the trunk.

Stunning Coromandel Kauri forest off the 309 road

View of the Coromandel Harbour, Coromandel Town

Kennedy Bay, Eastern Coromandel

Burning our bums at Hot Water Beach - the thermal spring water is about 60 degrees celsius

We finally managed to dig a decent pool after the massive breaking waves subsided a little - we had to build ourselves a good breaker wall though

Golden sandy beaches near Cathedral Cove

Mid tide at Cathedral Cove

Cruising the Hauraki Gulf

After my mum joined us on the boat we spent two weeks cruising the nursery waters of the Hauraki Gulf. My mum had not done much sailing before and her only experience prior to joining us had been a weekend sailing on the North Sea during which she spent most of the time in the bottom of the cockpit feeling seasick. I was keen to remedy her past experience and show her a good time sailing in New Zealand.

After spending a night on the boat in the marina to acclimatise and get over the worst of the jet lag, we set sail for Waiheke Island, an easy 15 mile and 3-4 hour sail. The conditions were ideal for an introductory sail with a flat calm sea and variable 10kts of wind, and my mum enjoyed helming which was a good way to take her mind off any potential seasickness.  We sailed to Oneroa Bay, which is one of the most popular anchorages on the northern side of Waiheke Island. The bay was busy, but not crowded and had a nice long stretch of beach, which was perfect for a morning walk. The beaches on Waiheke had some of the most beautiful shells I’ve seen the entire trip.

Beach at Oneroa Bay, Waiheke Island

Mum and me at Oneroa Bay, Waiheke Island

We spent two nights at the Oneroa Bay anchorage relaxing back into a slower pace of life after the hectic trip up the East coast. Dave even caught us fish for dinner after considerable effort chasing a large school of fish around the bay in the dinghy (note: we still have mastered this fishing malarkey). After leaving Oneroa Bay we sailed around the western end of Waiheke to Rocky Bay on the southern side of the island. From Rocky Bay we took the dinghy ashore to Whakanewha Regional Park where there were some beautiful beaches and walking tracks in the bush.

Freshly caught Kawhai for dinner

Sunset at Rocky Bay, Waiheke Island

Nikau Palms in Whakanewha Regional Park, Waiheke Island

On the beach at Rocky Bay, Waiheke Island

We had arranged to visit some friends who have recently moved to Auckland so, after a few nights at Waiheke, we set sail toward the city, stopping off overnight at a little sand spit island, and DOC nature reserve, called Motuihe Island. The island was used as a quarantine zone for migrants in the 1800s. We had a perfect sail into Auckland on the Friday morning and even managed to get our spinnaker out for the first time ever! This was pretty exciting for us but we weren’t sure whether we had packed it correctly and were a little worried about ropes getting tangled when we hoisted it. However, everything went smoothly and we had a beautiful downwind run into the city of sails flying our largest and most colourful sail. Another tick off our sailing bucket list.

Our colourful spinnaker with Auckland on the horizon

We arranged a berth at Bayswater Marina on the north shore for a night. All of the marinas in Auckland were pretty full at the time as the Volvo Ocean Race was on in Auckland, and I think we were lucky to get a spot at all. The Volvo Ocean Race (formally the Whitbread Round the World Race) is held every 3 years and has 9 or 10 legs to the race and in-port races at many stop off cities. As it happens the boats were doing a harbour race in Auckland that Saturday and there was an extensive exhibition area set up with models of the boats and what the inside crew quarters looked like – definitely more sparse than our living quarters on Desolina! I also had a good time with my mum having a girl’s day out in the city with some shopping, lunch and a massage. It felt good to be pampered in civilisation after so many weeks on the boat.

View of Auckland City from our berth in Bayswater Marina

Our time in Auckland was cut short by the impending Cyclone Pam, which was headed toward New Zealand after wreaking havoc in the South Pacific Islands. We wanted Desolina to be safely tucked up in the marina when the bad weather hit (apparently starting to come in on Sunday morning). Bayswater marina had limited availability over the weekend, was not particularly sheltered having only a floating sea wall, and was the most expensive marina we’ve stayed in yet at $45 a night, so we decided to sail back up to Gulf Harbour marina to weather out the storm there. We had relatively quick but blustery 3-hour sail back to Gulf Harbour, arriving in the dark. One of the marina staff came out to meet us on the dock and help us find our berth in the dark, which we were very grateful for. I think we made a wise choice to stay at Gulf Harbour for Cyclone Pam as the marina seems to be extremely well sheltered from the wind. We only saw 20kts of wind in the marina at worst, while it was blowing 40-50kts out in the Hauraki Gulf.

 

Shakespear Regional Park, near Gulf Harbour

While Desolina was confined to the marina to wait out the worst of Cyclone Pam, we took the opportunity to do the usual boat chores – laundry and re-stocking food and water ready for the following week up to Kawau Island. Kawau Island was a 3-4 hour sail north of Gulf Harbour and felt a million miles from Auckland although its probably only about 30 miles from the city in reality. The island is mostly privately owned although there is a DOC reserve where you can get off and walk around. We also had a look around the Mansion House, which was the private residence of one of New Zealand’s first governors, Sir George Grey, and is now managed by DOC.

Mum with the giant redwood on Kawau Island

Messing about on Kawau Island

During our stay at Kawau Island we went into the Boating Club bar and got chatting with the owners there. It turns out that they are short staffed over the Easter weekend and they offered us some casual work for a few days. So we’ll be back at Kawau in a couple of weeks to earn a few more dollars for our cruising kitty. In the meantime, we’re off for a week in the Coromandel on land. We’ve rented a batch for the week with my mum and are looking forward to the luxuries of a house and exploring the beautiful coastline there.

Tauranga to Hauraki Gulf

Our unforeseen stop in Tauranga set us back a bit on our schedule to get to Auckland. We had planned to take a little bit of time sailing up the east coast of the Coromandel Peninsula and across Mercury Bay. However, we left Tauranga on the Tuesday morning and needed to be in Auckland by the following Saturday, which meant that we ended up skimming over this section of coastline. We spent a night at Mayor Island again, and one night at Slipper Island. However both anchorages were a bit bouncy in the southeast swell coming across the Bay of Plenty. We left the anchorage at Slipper Island on the Thursday morning and spent around 6-7 hours doing a slow sail up the 30 miles of coastline to Great Mercury Island.

Mercury Bay was particularly beautiful, and the anchorage at Great Mercury Island was well sheltered with a nice beach and anchoring in 4 metres of crystal clear water. We had planned to stay overnight at Great Mercury Island on the Thursday and Friday nights and do the last leg around to Auckland on Saturday, however MetService issued a wind warning for the Hauraki Gulf over the weekend. Reluctantly, given the beautiful anchorage, we decided it would be sensible for us to sail to Gulf Harbour marina ahead of the nasty weather, which was forecast to be building to 25kts gusting 35kts from Friday morning onwards. In the end we arrived at Great Mercury Island around 4pm, stopped off for a few hours for a nap and some dinner and departed again at 9pm ready to do the 55 mile, 12 hour overnight sail to Gulf Harbour marina.

Sailing into Mercury Bay

Leaving the anchorage in the dark was interesting as there was still quite a lot of boat traffic, mainly fishing vessels, to contend with. We were also a little nervous about sailing across the Hauraki Gulf at night because of busy shipping route into Auckland Harbour. We have an AIS receiver on board, which receives signals from other boats that have an AIS transponder. The AIS gives us information about other boats’ position, speed and heading, and calculates our potential proximity based on our own speed and heading and theirs. We found this really useful for navigation at night, as it’s sometimes difficult to work out how close you are going to pass to large tankers.

We rounded Cape Colville at the top of the Coromandel Peninsula around 2am and started to head across the gulf. As forecast, the wind started to build in the early hours of the morning, just after my 3am watch started, and we made quick progress sailing at 6-7kts with the wind on our beam. Once the wind really started to pick up, around 6am, I woke Dave up to help reef the sails as we started to head up into 25kts of wind. Thankfully we made it into the marina around 9am Friday morning, before the forecast 35kts kicked in. We were both pretty tired after only getting in one 3-hour sleep each overnight so we put our heads down for a nap as soon as we were safely tied to the dock.

It was nice to have a couple of days in the marina to tidy up the boat and re-stock the fridge before my mum joined us. She flew in from the UK late on the Saturday evening and we planned for her to catch the ferry from Auckland on Sunday out to Gulf Harbour. Unfortunately I hadn’t looked closely at the ferry timetable and only realised the day before that the ferry operates a limited weekend schedule with only a 9am departure from Auckland on a Sunday morning. I felt really guilty when I left a message at her hotel about the ferry times, and instructions to catch the 7am airport bus to get her to the ferry check-in at 8:30am, after stepping off a 24hr flight and only arriving at her hotel at 1am that morning! To her credit, she bounced off the ferry at 9:30am looking very bright eyed and excited to have arrived. Now we’re looking forward to unpacking the kayak and getting back into holiday mode as we cruise around the islands in the Hauraki Gulf.

East Cape

It’s been a busy couple of weeks since my last blog post, and we’ve done more than a few miles in that time. Departing Gisborne we had a reasonably fast sail up the rest of the east coast to East Cape with a steady 10-15kt downwind sail, a moderate easterly swell and a little current with us to help speed things along.  We had read that there could be some strong rip tides and overfalls around East Cape, and there is a bank of shallow water (Ranfurly Bank) about 15 miles offshore from the Cape, which can also build up big waves. Keeping all of this in mind, we departed Gisborne mid-afternoon to time our sail around East Cape the following morning as it got light, and also around the time of slack water. This leg of the journey was about 80 miles and took around 17 hours. Unfortunately the second leg of our trip after East Cape was not quite so straightforward.

Cook's Landing, Gisborne

Looking down on Gisborne Harbour

After rounding East Cape we had a very challenging day of sailing. Tacking into the wind, very close hauled, against current, and in fairly turbulent sea conditions, we made very little headway towards our next waypoint – Cape Runaway, which was only a matter of 25 miles away. I think “soul destroying” was the phase Dave used as we examined our track on the GPS, virtually tacking back and forth across ourselves as the current pushed us backwards. We weren’t able to take the sails down and motor our way through it as we only have a small engine and we wouldn’t be able to make any more headway motoring against wind and waves than we were able to sailing. In summary we spent 12 hours sailing and only gained about 20 miles in that time. Finally the winds dropped off in the evening and shifted a little and we gratefully started up the engine and were able to start motor-sailing more or less in the right direction. However, our peace was relatively short lived.

Sleeping on passage

From Cape Runaway we motor-sailed into the night on a course for Mayor Island at the western end of the Bay of Plenty via White Island, a distance of some 80 miles. Because of the awkward wind direction we ended up motor-sailing much further north of White Island than we had planned, about 40 miles offshore. As we approached closer to White Island we could smell the sulfur coming from the volcano. During one of Dave’s night watches, around 4am, he suddenly noticed the engine temperature had risen above normal. That was the first time the engine temperature had ever moved, and he immediately turned the engine off and woke me up. While Dave went below to try to figure out what had gone wrong I went outside to mind the sails. This was the last thing either of us needed after the day we’d had and on the second night of our passage.

White Island in the distance

As Dave examined the engine it quickly became apparent what had gone wrong - the heat exchanger again! One of the bolts holding the heat exchanger in place had sheared off completely and as a result one of the pipes had disconnected. Dave managed to do a temporary fix with some cable ties and we spent the rest of the night motor-sailing and anxiously checking the engine temperature every 5 minutes. Late the next morning we were able to turn the engine off and sail the rest of the way to Mayor Island arriving around 7pm on the Saturday evening after leaving Gisborne on the Thursday afternoon. Exhausted from the journey we fixed ourselves some dinner and fell into bed for a decent nights sleep.

Sailing from Mayor Island back to Tauranga

The next morning we had to address the issue of the heat exchanger and what to do about it. We chalked up the why of the problem to an old bolt and over zealous tightening of said bolt when we replaced the heat exchanger a few weeks ago in Havelock. But the how to fix it did present a significant problem for us. The clearance between the engine and the bulkhead is only about 10cm, a very awkward, small gap. We also weren’t sure we had the right tools to do the job, and to get to the bolt we would need to take off most of the cooling system. After some discussion we decided the safest course of action was to head to the nearest marina, and marine mechanic if we needed them. Luckily Tauranga was only 20 miles from us, but frustratingly in the wrong direction from where we wanted to go. At least the wind was going in the right direction this time and we managed to sail within about 200m of the marina before having to turn the engine on. A few set backs and engine issues are inevitable on a boat if you sail for long enough I suppose.

Mount Maunganui at the entrance to Tauranga Harbour

We really enjoyed our couple of nights in Tauranga and if we hadn’t been on a schedule to get to Auckland to pick my mum up, who was flying in from the UK, we would have liked to explore a little more. Sailing into the marina alone was quite an experience. Mount Maunganui, an old volcano that dominates the skyline and guards the entrance of the harbour, makes for a very impressive entrance. Then the marina itself is within the tidal flow of the estuary. We had timed our entrance for near slack water but even so the marina said it would send Fred out in a small boat to meet us to guide us in. Indeed Fred did come steaming up to us as we approached the marina and hailed, “Welcome to Tauranga”. We were very glad for his guidance, as even though most of the strength had come out of the tide, we still had to crab our way diagonally down the channel between the piers and into our berth!

Sailing into Tauranga Harbour

 Fortunately, once in the marina, Dave was able to find the tools he needed to extract the bolt end and re-bolt the heat exchanger back into place with much less difficulty than he expected. Three nights later we were back at Mayor Island again and making headway in the right direction. Seriously, lesson learnt; when you replace an engine part, also replace the rusty bolts holding it in place!