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!