It was so foggy/rainy we needed a sign to point us to the lighthouse.
OK, it wasn't raining every day. Some absolutely beautiful scenery in New Zealand.
It’s been a long time sine we’ve updated
our blog. Frankly, after 3 ½ years of
tropical adventures, the weather in New Zealand put a bit of a damper on our
interest. The Kiwis were the most friendly and helpful people of anywhere we’ve
visited and the bit of the North
Island that we saw was
beautiful, but the weather pretty much sucked!
To be fair though, it was the worst “summer” on record for the North Island and the Kiwis after being optimistic for an
improvement right through February, were unabashedly apologetic as March came
in like a lion. While it would have been
lovely to have hot, sunny weather, we have had 3 ½ years of pretty much
non-stop summer, so we don’t expect any sympathy and we’ll stop whinging now.
The problem with an even bigger gap than
normal in our blogging is that we can’t possibly do justice to all of the great
experiences we’ve had and the wonderful people we’ve met over the past 6
months.
We spent our first week in Opua celebrating
our arrival along with dozens of other yacht crews who participated in the
Island Cruising Association’s All Points Rally. John and Jennifer arranged an
amazing program of tours (including a wine tasting and a Maori culture night at
the Wataingi Treaty grounds), seminars and parties. After recovering from that, we spent the rest
of November getting boat work done by the very skilled craftsmen in the area.
Malcolm of CMC Design, was especially excellent, doing a real proper job of
fixing our leaking water tanks (buried behind structural bulkheads) and a
couple of other things. Malcolm and his lovely wife Joan, have just finished a
9 year, mostly high-latitude circumnavigation including a full circuit around
South America (=twice around the Horn!).
Among many others who made us feel so welcome in Opua we want to mention
Glen, Margaret, Mike and especially Bob Fassio of Cater Marine, who were
amazingly friendly and helpful.
We bought a car from Phil at Cars for
Cruisers; a 1997 Nissan Cefiro station wagon.
It was a decent ride - though the in-dash TV didn’t work J. Its difficult to get around
in New Zealand
without a vehicle. For a small country they have a lot of roads, and certainly
in the North Island, some of the most consistently
hilly and twisty we have ever encountered.
Our friends Jim and Jeannie from Victoria were in New
Zealand for a few months while we were there and we spent
some time with them, including a rain drenched trip to Cape
Rienga – the northernmost tip, and a
lovely sunny day sailing in the Bay
of Islands with their
daughter and son-in-law along. OK, we
said no more whinging about the weather, but at Cape Rienga, it was raining and
blowing so hard and the fog was so thick, that we had to ask where the
lighthouse was and we never did see the ocean, 100m below us – we all became
slightly hysterical as we sat in the car waiting for a break so we could dash
out and take pictures!
90 mile beach at the top of the north island. You can drive on the beach here, just pay attention to the tide...
Gannet colony on the west coast.
800 year old Kauri tree. We saw a 2000 year old specimen. Nice that a few are left to help remind us of our place in the scheme of things.
To help protect the Kauris, you are required to disinfect your shoes before entering the reserves.
For Christmas we were invited to stay with
our friends Sal and Al whom we first met in Trinidad back in 1996, when we were
both cruising in the Caribbean. They now have
a lovely house on a hill above the little seaside village
of Sandspit, about an hour north of Auckland. We hadn’t seen them since they had spent a
year on their boat in BC in 2000-01. It was great to see them again and join in
their family’s Christmas celebration. Thanks
you two for the fabulous SUNNY days spent touring and hospitality for us and
the Cosgroves. Our real celebration was
when our son Tristan, flew in to Auckland from Victoria, early on Boxing Day
morning. It had been a year since we had seen him and it was wonderful to hug
him close.
Together in the Kiwi rain.
Cathy and Tristan in the Bay of Islands.
Tristan wake surfing in front of Idyll Island.
The dolphins cruised/leapt through the anchorage at Roberton Island on a regular basis.
After Tristan and his ½ Kiwi cousin James,
had participated in the Rhythm and Vines 3 day New Years music festival in
Gisborne (complete with torrential rain, knee deep mud and roads closed due to
slides), we spent some time sailing in the beautiful Bay of Islands. Then it
was time to join up with cousins Neil and Christine from Victoria who were in
Huia (where Christine grew up on the west coast across from Auckland), in a
bach on the beach for Christine’s niece’s wedding. In spite of the torrential
rains and flooding of the days before, requiring bailing of the lawn (no
kidding!), the day of the wedding was dry, the bride gorgeous and the
celebration, traditional kiwi feasting and partying . We were made to feel a
part of the family and had a great time.
Then it was time to say “Goodbye”, to
Tristan; the difficult part about this nomadic lifestyle of ours. We returned to Idyll Island in Opua, where we
had left her on a mooring. The weather was looking good and we needed to get her
down to Auckland to get our watermaker fixed (again!). The calm weather allowed
a stop for a dive at Poor Knights island on the way. It is a renowned
sub-tropical dive site, the operative word being “sub”! The water was a tad
chilly at 17C in our tropical weight wetsuits but lots to see, though very
different from our warm water experiences.
We stopped at several nice anchorages along the way, and everywhere were
the Kiwi “Fishos”. It seems their
national passion (next to rugby) is fishing and a lot of them spend a lot of
time out on the water.
Auckland Harbour was
great! We found a berth right downtown
at the Viaduct were all the action is and only paid NZ$45 per night – we would
have expected around twice that for our floating double-wide. We took in a
couple of movies (Tinker Tailor and The Iron Lady) in the deluxe theatres they
have in NZ, where you can be served dinner and a glass of wine while you
watch! After getting our watermaker
sorted out by Chris of Lighthouse Marine – a real professional and marine
systems expert as well as a nice guy, we headed across the Hauraki Gulf to the Coramandel Peninsula. For several days we had to sit
out a weather system in a couple of nice little anchorages (after years in the
tropics, it was a luxury to find mud bottoms and no coral heads to get our
chain wrapped around!). The weather
cleared and we scooted around to Great
Mercury Island.
Lots of Kiwi boats there enjoying their summer vacations - and the
scallops! We saw lots of divers and even
small “recreational dredges” working the area and assumed that the scallop beds
must be decimated. So we jumped in for a closer look and found to our surprise
that there were heaps of scallops. We helped ourselves to enough for a very tasty
dinner, washed down with some excellent cold Kiwi chardonnay.
After a few days, the next weather system
was on its way and so were we. Back to Auckland to finish
repairs to the watermaker (Sea Recovery and their NZ agent Lighthouse Marine,
have been excellent with after sales support), have a visit with friends and a
bit of shopping. On our way back up to Opua we were able to rendezvous with Al
and Sal on their boat “Jack Nesbitt”. It
was fun to see them again on the same boat (a lovely little Victoria 34) that we had first met them on
15 years ago. We got back to Opua, not
quite as calm a sea as on the way down, in time to meet Russell and Jane, whom
we had met in St. Maarten just after we started cruising. He’s Kiwi and she’s a
Brit, they have a house and kids in Vancouver
and they live on their boat which is currently in Turkey! They spent a week with us
which started off with another Kiwi wedding of a friend of theirs. Not quite as
many guests as the Huia extravaganza, but large quantities of alcohol - these
Kiwis do know how to party! The rest of the week with Russell and Jane was very
wet and windy, but luckily they had brought a case of wine with them, so between
that and the ship’s stores we just about managed.
Sal and Al enjoying the view from their home at Sandspit.
That brings us to mid-March and our
scheduled haul-out at Norsand boatyard in Whangarei, a day’s sail back down the
coast. We just managed to sneak in and find a nice protected bay a few miles
down river from Whangarei before another front came through. Winds to 40 knots
(~75 kph) and lots of rain. When the
weather cleared we proceeded to Norsand where they specialize in catamarans and
the guys were incredibly attentive to detail to make sure all went smoothly,
and it did. Once we were securely installed “on the hard”, we had 3 days (in driving
rain and wind – sorry, no more whinging) to organize the work to be done before
making our first trip home since we left 4 years ago! It was a bit unplanned
and unfortunately precipitated by the unexpected and severe stroke that our
sister-in-law in Calgary had recently suffered.
We flew via Shanghai
on Air New Zealand who lived up to their
reputation for excellent service, even in cattle class. Without a visa, we had
only 36 hours in Shanghai. A brief glimpse of modern China, but
fascinating nonetheless. We stayed at the big new Howard Johnson’s and it was
beautiful – not your average HoJo. We successfully managed a couple of lunches
in little local restaurants where they spoke no English, but dinner turned out
to be a bit beyond us. We tried several spots, but the picture menus, while
helpful in figuring out what we might be ordering, put us off our feed a bit –
especially the full colour shots of the whole bullfrog and skinned duck, head,
feet and all, in the soupbowls. Maybe next time… We spent several hours at the Shanghai museum – wonderful to see the
reality of all those millennia of artistry. We finished by taking the MagLev
train back to the airport. The fastest train in the world, we hit 431 kph, with
no real sense of speed until we passed the other one going the other way at the
same speed – like an explosion.
We flew straight to Calgary and spent a few
days visiting with Cathy’s brother Jon and his wife, Marge, who is dealing with
her stroke amazingly positively. Jon and their adult kids are supporting her
every waking hour. It was pretty inspiring to see how they are all pulling
together to deal with this unfortunate event. We then flew to Victoria where we stayed with cousins Neil
and Christine who made their house our house. Thanks guys! Friends Jim and
Renate who were cruising on their boat in the Bahamas, very generously gave us
the use of their nice little Subaru wagon for the entire time we were
there.
We drove up Vancouver Island (500km) to
spend a long weekend with Tristan in Port Hardy. He has really set himself up
nicely. He took us out on logging roads
to the area where he is doing environmental impact assessment and mitigation
for a major wind farm project. We also got out to San Josef Bay on the west
coast where we had many ocean canoeing adventures back in the old days
pre-Tristan. He is renting a nice house
with a couple of friends, a view out over the straits and a neighbourhood black
bear. We were invited to join him (Tristan,
not the bear) and his friends at a house party and had a really good time in
spite of being twice the age of everyone else there. Back in Victoria we had a great family Easter dinner
at Neil and Christine’s. And many more
dinners and lunches with family and friends. Thanks to all. It was wonderful to
see everyone again and we were amazed at how easily we seemed to slip back into
that reality. A bit of a whirlwind though,
made more whirly by us deciding to compress our storage locker to the next
smaller size. Hard to believe we thought we needed to keep all that stuff!
After 3 weeks it was time to get back down
under to Idyll Island to get her ready for the trip
back to the tropics. Back at the
boatyard we found that the work had progressed well, though with a few
surprises (new windlass, rebuild of both engine exhaust systems, etc); nothing
a few more boat bucks (B.O.A.T. = Break Out Another Thousand) couldn’t
solve… Then we were back in the water –
all good – and proceeded to load up with provisions for the next 6 months and
off to Tonga!
