With everything else going on I completely forgot to post these photos of the visitor we had last week!
One cold morning this week I was walking down our frosted pier, thinking Arctic thoughts when a flapping movement caught my eye. While a polar bear wouldn’t have been out-of-place in those sort of temperatures, it was a slightly smaller mammal I spotted.
Morning!
I hadn’t had my morning coffee so I thought my tired brain might be seeing things – but nope, there was definitely a seal – flopping in an ungainly fashion down the ramp.
Ice Ice Baby
I was a bit worried he was injured because seals don’t usually come into the marina and also because he was so very little – but apparently the juveniles like to go wandering, so he was probably just fine. I snuck as close as I could to check but before I could offer him the leftover seafood chowder I was taking to work for lunch he jumped in the water and swum off – much more graceful in water than on land
PS – I really don’t have the words to do justice to the amazing people who came out in support of my blog on mental illness. The response was more than I possibly could have expected. I’ve had friends, family and complete strangers contact me with positive messages and stories of their own struggles – some also coming out publicly for the first time. All I can say is that you are all stars. The more we talk about it, whether privately or publicly, the more we realise – and the world realises – we are not on our own and we are a force to be reckoned with. I don’t normally do soppy and emotional, but you guys made me soppy and emotional – shame on you (and thank you!) 🙂
So we’re still sitting in Opua. The weather has been rubbish so Paddy decided it would be a good time to get some rigging work done on the boat (it is much cheaper here than inWellington).
Unfortunately what we thought would be a one-day job hit a couple of snags and it looks like it won’t be finished until Monday. The tricky part of the whole performance is that we are not staying in the marina anymore – being so close to the yacht club bar and the chandleries (shops that sell boat stuff) was proving a little expensive, so we decided to go live on the pick outside the marina.
This was fine until we needed to get work done on the boat. The rigging company we were using had the use of a marina berth that belonged to one of the ferries though, so we were allowed to stay there while our rigging was being worked on. That too was fine – until the ferry returned and wanted its berth back. It left at 6am and returned at 11pm so we were okay to stay there during the day, but had to clear out by the evening. That also would have been fine, except that it has been blowing like a bastard for the past few days and anchoring and berthing the boat has been a little challenging to say the least!
Each morning we have had to up anchor and maneuver Wildflower into the berth. This can be tricky at the best of times but, with the wind howling and current ripping through the marina, squeezing 18 tonnes of steel into a space between two other boats can be pretty interesting!
It became even more interesting the other morning when our engine decided it was going to die at the most inopportune moment. We were heading into the marina, there were boats everywhere, the wind was blowing and I was standing at the bow of the boat ready to throw a line to friends of ours who have been helping us park over the past few days.
Paddy popped his head out the cockpit and very calmly said “we’ve lost the engine. I’m going to try to get us into that empty berth (luckily there was one nearby) but there’s a chance we might run into it, so make sure you don’t get hurt. I’m going to jump off (the boat) and you are going to have to throw the lines to me – but you’re going to have to be quick.”
The funny thing was, I didn’t panic. When we were out at sea sometimes I freaked myself out thinking of all the things that could go wrong, but when we were facing an impending crash landing I was reasonably calm. I figured there was nothing we could do to change the situation we were in so we had to do the best we could to get ourselves out of it. I guess taking the choice out of the matter kind of took away the fear.
Paddy managed to coast the boat into the empty berth and leap off the side, while I threw him the ropes. I’m afraid all the excitement may have affected my throwing technique a little (read I flailed ineffectually) but I got the ropes to him and that’s all that really matters! Paddy tied us up to the dock and someone from a boat nearby ran over to give us a hand. I noticed he adhered to the marina code of helping us out, checking that we were okay and buggering off before it got too embarrassing – well done that man!
I was really impressed with the way Paddy calmly assessed the situation, worked out what needed to be done and did it with the minimum of drama. Had I been on the helm I would have been more likely to wave my arms in the air like Kermit the Frog on a bad day and go hide under something.
The most likely culprit was an air bubble in our fuel (I’m sure there is a more technical explanation but that will do for now) caused by all the jostling round we were doing out at anchor. We are now making sure there is a lot more fuel in our tanks just in case – and so far haven’t had any more problems (touch wood!)
Once the day’s work on the boat has been done we then have to back out of the berth in a slightly nerve-wracking three-point turn (which Paddy executes like a pro) and head back out to the anchorage. Anchoring can also be quite fun when you are trying to do it in 25 knots of wind. There comes a point when you stop looking around thinking ‘that’s a nice boat’ and start thinking ‘that looks expensive!’
At one point we were trying to do this at the same time that the cruising club was running its weekly yacht race. I don’t know whether the racers recognized that we were trying to anchor, but it was certainly rather unnerving trying to steer the boat into the wind while race boats zipped right behind us. You can honk your horn to signal if you are turning to port, starboard or reversing, but as far as I am aware there is no signal for ‘piss off we’re trying to anchor’ – please feel free to correct me if I am wrong though! If there isn’t then there jolly well should be and I shall be campaigning vigorously for it to be included in future Boat masters training!
We did get to escape for a couple of days though, before the work on the boat started. We headed out to the Bay of Islands and anchored up at a little place called Robertson Island. It’s a nature reserve with lots of birdies and stuff and a snorkeling trail that I am sure will be a lot more appealing when the water is a little warmer than 10 squillion degrees below zero! We did see a couple of terribly hopeful looking girls lying on the beach in bikinis – we on the other hand were rugged up in jackets and jumpers.
The highlight of that trip came on the first afternoon we were there. I was cleaning up below deck when Paddy called me up to say there were dolphins in the bay. We watched them leaping around the bow of a large boat that was anchored there (which was strange in itself because dolphins tend to hang around moving boats and disappear when they get bored.) I suggested we take the dinghy over but Paddy reckoned that might spook them, so we watched from the boat for a while. Then I spotted a couple of kayakers heading out and was amazed at how close the dolphins got to them.
When somebody else turned up in a dinghy and it didn’t scare them off I started doing my best annoying little girl impression “Can we? Can we? Can we??!!!” Paddy eventually caved and we headed out towards the pod. It was the most amazing experience. The dolphins were huge (common dolphins we think) and had no problems with us being there. They swum under the dinghy and leapt out of the water right in front of us, doing flips and generally showing off. They were having a great time – and so were we! The funny thing about dolphins is that, no matter how many times you see them, you still get a buzz out of it. They are just stunning, sleek and shiny and joyful, and all the people out there with them were clapping their hands and letting out involuntary squeals of delight. I’ve seen dolphins from the boat a few times now, but that was the closest I had ever been to them. You could have reached out and touched them – if they had stayed still long enough!
Its funny – other than swimming with turtles and snorkeling with tropical fish – I didn’t actually have much luck when it came to spotting sea critters during our Pacific trip. We left Tonga before the whales turned up (though we did see some from a distance while we were traveling), we waited two days in a place called Manta-ray Bay for the mantas to turn up – only to have them arrive the day after we left, and don’t even get me started on dugongs – I swear they are a mythical creature! It wasn’t until we got home that I got to get up close and personal with sea creatures! I know there is a whole debate about whether you should get up close to dolphins and whales, but these guys had no issues with us being there – if there was even the slightest sign that they were distressed we would have been out of there. We didn’t feed them and we didn’t go out on a trip to hunt them out – they came to visit us! So I figure that’s okay.
Below is a public link to a Facebook album with dolphin pics (I tried to upload them to WordPress but the wifi here didn’t like that). They were taken from the boat because our camera isn’t waterproof (that’s definitely on the list for the next trip!) so they aren’t as great as they would have been had we taken the camera in the dinghy – but you get the picture!
Move over locusts, triffids and body-snatchers, Opua marina is experiencing a plague of jellyfish.
Over the past few days large pink gelatinous blobs have been oozing around the boats. I find them fascinating – I could watch them gloop
their way around for hours, but the swarm seems to be causing a few issues with some of the boats.
What for me are a pretty pink distraction have been a slimy nuisance for others, clogging up water cooled fridges and gunking up generators. I quite liked the idea of a somewhat bemused jellyfish looking up at you from inside the fridge, but the stories I have been hearing about having
to remove them have kind of destroyed that image. Paddy has had it happen to himself on previous occasions and tells me it is a rather messy and unpleasant process. It’s certainly not an issue I would have ever thought of!
This particular breed of jellyfish has long flowing tendrils. Paddy reckons the ones with the dangly bits are the ones that do the stinging, but we are not 100% sure what breed these ones are. Needless to say, neither of us has volunteered to jump in and find out!
A fellow cruiser told us about an unidentified sea critter that got into the boat when it was a baby and wasn’t discovered until it outgrew
its hidey-hole. This can be a problem on a more expensive scale in Wellington when it comes to mussels. These guys enter the boat as microscopic spores, find a good place to cling and then grow until they start to clog stuff up. Paddy learned this the hard way when he discovered a crop of them growing on the refridgerator condenser. He figured such a bizarre thing couldn’t happen more than once and replaced the offending condenser, only to have the green-lipped hitchhikers turn up again 12 months later. He managed to solve the problem by changing to a keel cooler – a closed circuit cooling unit mounted on a vessel’s hull beneath the waterline (I had to google that!), but it certainly was an expensive exercise!
Below are a few gratuitous jelly fish shots. I got a few odd looks while kneeling down taking pictures, but I just think they’re awesome!
Niue – population: 1400 people, a pod of dolphins and more chooks than New Zealand has sheep.
It is also an amazing example of courage in the face of disaster.
In 2004 Niue was clobbered by a tropical cyclone that pretty much levelled a large portion of it. Cyclone Heta was a category 5 that devastated the tiny island’s capital of Alofi, wiping out most of its commercial, electronic and communication infrastructure.
Six years later, after an aid injection from New Zealand and Australia, the tourism industry is growing,the marine life is returning, you can scuba dive, swim with dolphins, snorkel and sample the local cuisine. Both Paddy and I agree its somewhere we are happy to see our taxpayer dollar at work.
So technically this blog entry is a little off topic since we didn’t actually sail to Niue, but it ticks the tropical paradise and scuba diving boxes so I’m running with it – It’s my blog and I can bend the rules if I want to! 🙂
Paddy and I have just come back from a week in Niue (though both of us felt we really needed two!). It was essentially meant to be a diving holiday, but we fell in love with the place in the process.
If you’re looking for flash hotels with hottubs and Sky TV then perhaps Niue isn’t the place for you. But if you want to be able to chill out, commune with awesome seacritters, and are happy to operate on island time, you will love it. There is only one plane in and out each week, so you arrive on a plane full of strangers and leave knowing the vast majority of them through running into them at the islands local hangouts (like the Niue Yacht Club that doubles as an icecream parlour or the Washaway Cafe where you pour your own drinks, write down what you bought in a book, put your money in the till and take your own change).
For me the highlights were diving, dolphins and whalesong and I experienced all of these through the fantastic folk at Niue Dive. I’m a bit of a newbie diver and I hadn’t been in the water for a little while so I have to admit I was a bit of a scaredy cat at first. I was by far the least experienced on all the dives we did but Annie, Ian and BJ from the dive shop were wonderfully patient with me and in the end had me doing things that exhilarated and challenged me. I hadn’t had much experience cave diving and we did quite a bit of that, but I was able to do it in my time and at my pace and was really proud of myself when I actually did it. I also went down the deepest I have so far (27 metres) which wasn’t half as scary as I thought it would be.
Sometimes, when you’re inexperienced, you get the feeling that you are holding up the works for those who actually know what they are doing, but I never got that feeling from any of the people we went out with, it was pretty much all in my head. Whenever someone said ‘don’t worry, we’ve all been there’ it didn’t feel like a platitude and I actually really appreciated it every time I heard it.
While the caves were fascinating, and some truly beautiful when you saw the sunlight shining through from the surface, I have to say it was the reef diving I enjoyed the most – just cruising around checking out clown fish and giant clams and seeing the coral regenerating.
When you are underwater it becomes very obvious how much damage the cyclone has done. There is a vast amount of dead coral, which is sad, but there are also signs of life – and that life becomes all the more vibrant in contrast. The new coral growth and the fish and the sea snakes stand out all the more for it I think.
One of my favourite dive spots was Snake Gully – it had coral and critters, beautiful caverns – and of course, sea snakes.
I didn’t know this, but sea snakes (or at least the ones in Niue) actually swim up to the surface to breathe. It was quite fascinating watching them from the boat before we dived in, their little snakey heads popping up out of the water to gulp a few breaths before slowly slithering back down again. From the bottom it was really lovely to watch, four or five snakes at a time winding slowly winding upwards like reverse reptilian rain.
And yes they are poisonous, but they have such teeny tiny teeth that you’d pretty much have to shove your finger down their throat and squeeze their head for them to be able to do any damage – all the same, I wasn’t game to cuddle one, no matter how friendly they seemed to be!
Whales are another reason people are drawn to Niue, and usually at this time of year mother whales come in to the island to calve. Unfortunately this season, because of the La Nina weather pattern (please correct me if I’m wrong, I always get them muddled up!) the water has been a couple of degrees too warm for them, so there haven’t been so many around. We were able to see some coming in pretty close from the Coral Gardens resort we were staying at, but we didn’t have so much luck finding them when we were out in the boats. We were however able to hear them singing underwater, which was magical.
The dolphins were fabulous too – it was my first time swimming with dolphins and they were just beautiful! The dolphins that hang around Niue are Spinners, named for their habit of leaping out of the water and whirling around like dervishes – apparently just for the hell of it. I’ve heard that dolphins get all the food they need in 15 minutes a day and spend the rest of their time playing and shagging – and we definitely spotted a little bit of both on this trip!
My favourite was a little baby dolphin in the pod who was trying desperately to keep up with the big kids – when they leapt out of the water he followed with a bit of a feeble splash and he could only manage about one and a half spins before falling back into the water – but hey, he was trying!
A spinner spinning
Sadly there are a lot of abandoned buildings that still have not been rebuilt and apparently there are three times more Niueans living in New Zealand than there are now in Niue. But as one local said to us ‘if they all came back, where would they fit?’ I guess it shows that those who stayed are the ones who love the place, and that there is the opportunity to leave and make a life elsewhere for those who want to.
Niue is a lovely little place, but it is isolated so the tourism industry is vital for it. So go there, it’s gorgeous – and if you don’t believe me, here are some more pictures to make you jealous 🙂
Warm welcome at the airportPaddy and I looking ravishing in rubber!Ian hauling the dive boat out of the waterLimu Pools - snorkeling spot
Arches at Limu PoolsNiuean weather forecast
View from Coral Gardens (also comes with complimentary whales!)Cal and Dam go cavingCal, Dam, Tom and TJ prepare to climb a coconut treeSuccess!
I read about these amazing creatures in a diving magazine and, while it is highly unlikely we will come across them in the Pacific, I felt the need to share my discovery.
I’d heard of Beluga whales before but had never seen pictures – they are literally snow white, like icebergs with fins. They are utterly beautiful with the most expressive faces – and they are also sadly declining in numbers.
These gorgeous beasties live in all Arctic seas and neighbouring territories – babies are born brown, their skin darkens to black and then turns white as they become adults. The melanin levels in their skin drop as they grow and elderly Beluga’s are a yellowish colour.
They can hoon about at 22km/h but their cruising speed is 2-5km/h
They are clever and curious and have their own women’s groups, kindergartens and midwives and the males are very civilised when it comes to vying for a lady’s affections.
In short, they are fascinating.
Sadly unlimited fishing, ocean pollution and industrial waste has slashed their numbers – causing illness in adults and mutations in babies.
They interact well with humans and apparently a number are thriving in captivity, but as far as I am concerned they belong in the wild and we need to stop crapping in their backyard – end rant.
I filched the above picture from a Nature’s Crusaders blog and am thoroughly supportive of any efforts to protect their habitat.
Stay tuned for next week’s amazing critter (I’ll try to pick something a little closer to where we are heading next time!)
