Category: Bay of Islands

 “It’ll be great, we’ll get three summers in a row!” –  This was one of Paddy’s selling points when trying to lure me into running away to sea

After several days of listening to rain pounding on the roof and wind shrieking in the shrouds though – I have been given cause to doubt the wisdom of that particular statement. It seems we have been waiting on the weather in some form or another since we have been back in New Zealand.

It’s a strange kind of limbo – we’re home but we’re not really home. We still have quite a bit of sailing to do before we get back to Wellington.

The plan was to sail around the Bay of Islands for a bit before heading to the Hauraki Gulf where our friends Fergus and Diane would show us around their cruising ground. The one flaw in the plan however was the sodding weather.

We had some lovely days up North (in between the grungy ones) and we did manage to get out and about in the Bay of Islands for a bit – but our plans to head further South have pretty much been thwarted at every turn.

It got to the point that – should we have any chance of getting home for Christmas – we simply had to go as soon as we safely could. The day we left the Bay of Islands was grey and pouring with rain. The conditions weren’t dangerous, the wind wasn’t even blowing that hard – it was just cold and wet. (I did get the chance to wear the funky orange hat I picked up at the boatie swapmeet in Opua though, and it was brilliant!) It took us longer than expected to get out of the Bay of Islands because we did had the wind and swell against us a bit – but nothing compared to what we’ve had on previous trips.

For some reason though, I started getting jittery – which is strange because it was the first time I had felt that way sailing for ages. I think part of it was the fact that, other than puttering around the bay, we haven’t really been out for quite a while. The other part probably had something to do with the weather. Even when the conditions are fine, if it’s cold and grey everything just seems scarier.

So I tried to imagine that the sea and sky were a beautiful Pacific blue instead of grungy New Zealand grey – that helped a little. Then I started trying to think of things that made me happy and I hit upon the dolphins that came to play with us at Robertson Island. Just as I’d finished talking about them with Paddy, I saw a splash out of the corner of my eye and, sure enough, it was a dolphin – I couldn’t believe it! There was a wee pod of them – they were smaller than the last ones we saw (maybe bottlenose?) – and they played around in our bow wave, leaping over the top of each other, diving under the boat and popping up out the other side. There was one that particularly liked leaping out of the bigger waves and slapping them with its tail when it came down – they were just having a good old play. Of course that completely cheered me up – it’s hard to feel bad when you are surrounded by creatures that are having so much fun.

In the Hauraki Gulf they have a bylaw that states boats cannot be within so many metres of dolphins and that you should not disrupt their path. That’s kind of hard when they decide they want to play with you and start swimming around and under your boat (clever critters though – they know to stay away from the propeller). If we tried to stay out of their path we’d have been weaving all over the show, and they probably would have thought it was part of the game! I have a sneaking suspicion that the person who wrote the dolphin bylaw hadn’t actually spent much time on a boat around dolphins.

Once we were out of the Bay of Islands we decided to overnight in a little place called Whangaruru Harbour and leave first thing in the morning, that way we wouldn’t be trying to get to our original destination, Tutukaka, in the dark. The next day we headed for Great Barrier Island. We actually had a pretty good sail, with about 18 knots on the beam we managed to make about 70 miles in 12 hours. I felt much better about things too – I even managed to relax enough to have a wee snooze in the cockpit. I felt a bit silly about getting butterflies the day before, but I think I am just one of those people who have to keep doing things or they create all sorts of silly fears and blocks in their head. I guess it was just high time I got back on the horse.

The plan was to overnight in Great Barrier and then head for Auckland where we would wait out a forecast Southerly but, in keeping with the theme of our previous plans, the weather put paid to this too. The wind was forecast to get up pretty high for a day, which is why we headed for Great Barrier, but then it decided to stick around. We were lucky though because we were tucked up nice and sheltered while the rain and wind walloped the rest of the country. It is rather unusual to have the low pressure systems that are this aggressive at this time of year – but it just seems to be the theme of things at the moment. The spot we were in, Port Fitzroy, was lovely and I’m sure is even lovelier when Mother Nature isn’t throwing a tantrum.

I do admit I started to lose my sense of humour a little though (read had a minor meltdown). This feels like the longest, slowest limp home ever and it’s just frustrating to be so close to home but have it take so long to get there. I am used to a world where, if you need to be somewhere, you just jump on a plane and you are there in an hour. Technically we could do that from Auckland, but it wouldn’t solve any problems because we’d still have to get the boat back to Wellington. Leaving the boat in Auckland over Christmas isn’t really an option because its pretty much impossible to find a berth or a mooring at this time of year and those that are available will be hideously expensive. We could leave the boat at anchor, but that is dodgy in itself. If something happens – someone hits it, the weather packs up or the anchor drags and there isn’t anyone on board to do anything about it then the boat isn’t insured (not to mention we don’t want our baby getting hurt!)

The biggest issue for me is that I’m determined to be home at Mum and Dad’s in Christchurch for Christmas (we will be flying from Welly now, not sailing) and at this stage it looks like we will be cutting it pretty close. I got pretty upset about it initially but then Paddy got me to realise that getting upset at the weather wont change anything – the weather will do what the weather will do and I’ll just be upset. So we’ll wait for the Southerly to go through and then we’ll go from there. There is a big high lurking around the corner and if we can hook on to the back of that then we stand a reasonable chance of getting to Wellington on or around Christmas (though it’s hard to predict what the weather is going to do so many days in advance) – wish us luck!