We parted ways with our friends a few
days ago; us to Havelock Marina to spend a couple of days restocking and
organising the boat, and them back to Wellington. We had a great week together
and we’re going to miss them a lot.
The route into Havelock Marina is
quite interesting for a keelboat as much of the channel approaching the marina
is very shallow and large sections dry out completely at low tide. The way in was
very well marked, but all the same we still felt a little apprehensive
navigating our way through the channel for the first time as our keel draws almost 2 metres
underneath the boat. We started to make our approach about two hours before high
tide, which seemed like a good time for us to go in as we didn’t
see less than 2 metres of water below the keel. However, once in the marina at
low tide, our depth sounder showed 0.1 metres beneath the keel. We were
practically resting on the bottom!
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| Approach to Havelock |
We had a fairly sizeable list of jobs
to do in Havelock – grocery shopping, laundry, finish putting up solar
panels, check engine electrics, fill water tanks, clean the boat, put dinghy
away, fill engine diesel, petrol, and gas bottle – but we managed to get everything
done in our two nights there. It wasn’t much fun being back in the marina after
spending nights at anchor in beautiful bays so we were very keen to get
back out as quickly as possible.
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| Havelock Marina |
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| Heading back out |
Enjoyed browsing through your blog; very well done! (Perhaps some inspiration to update ours!) Brought back some pleasant memories, too, as we sailed across the Pacific in 2012 in company with Steve on Desolina. We met Steve in La Cruz, Mexico, shortly before the "Puddle Jump" and although we left Banderas Bay a few days before Desolina, Steve beat us into Hiva Oha by seven hours! Desolina is a fast boat. We shared many anchorages with Desolina and good times with Steve through the Marquesas, Rangaroa (Tuamotus), Society Islands and Tonga, before arriving in New Zealand in November, 2012. We were sad when Steve decided to put Desolina up for sale and fly home after reaching NZ, but we are glad to see she ended up in such good hands and is being put to such god use! Enjoy your cruising, and take care to stay safe!
ReplyDeleteBob & Linda Hargreaves
SV Bright Angel
P.S. We came across you through your posts on YIT; we also post there on passage, and occasionally at other times.