Tag: Bay of Islands

Mystery solved!

Paddy likes watching crab fishing shows – the type where rugged fisher-folk battle monstrous seas at ghastly times of year for that last big catch.

Paddy’s Dad has Sky TV and in between the recordings of documentaries, motor-racing and engineering programmes sits a lot of crustacean catching – courtesy of sonny boy.

It’s become a bit of a running gag with us every time we go to visit.

“What are we watching? Not bloody crab fishing again!” (Most of the time we aren’t watching crab fishing – Paddy just likes to announce that we are to wind him up.)

It was bloody crab fishing we were watching at the weekend however when I picked up the first clue towards what our mystery critters might be.

Is it a shrimp? Is it a plane?
Is it a shrimp? Is it a plane?

This time the battle between man and crab was taking part in the North Sea and starred fisherfolk with accents so think they needed sub-titles despite speaking in English.

They weren’t having much luck and were pulling up all manner of things that weren’t actually crabs – including these odd-looking creatures they called “squat lobsters” which looked suspiciously like a larger version of our unidentified swarm.

I turned to Google where I discovered a blog on how to cook the things, but it wasn’t a New Zealand-based one so I still wasn’t 100% sure

Squat lobster
Squat Lobster courtesy of A Fish Blog.com

But Te Ara – the Encyclopedia of New Zealand sealed the deal with this boggle-eyed chap

Creative Commons -Courtesy of Niel Bruce and Alison MacDiarmid. 'Crabs, crayfish and other crustaceans - Lobsters, prawns and krill', Te Ara - the Encyclopedia of New Zealand)')
Look into my eyeeees… (Crabs, crayfish and other crustaceans – Lobsters, prawns and krill’, Te Ara – the Encyclopedia of New Zealand)

Accompanied by the following entry:

Swarms of these bug-eyed crustaceans often wash ashore in summer on southern beaches. They are the juveniles of the squat lobster (Munida gregaria), commonly known as whale krill or lobster krill, and they are an important food for seabirds and fish. Adult squat lobsters live on the sea floor and are not commonly seen.

So mystery solved – thanks guys!

Our squillions of swarming shrimp-things were in fact baby squat lobsters

Boil up
Boil up

Paddy’s response to all the excitement? “See? crab fishing is educational!”

In Limbo (and more dolphins!)

 “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!

 

 

Parking woes and playing with dolphins

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!