Well it's May already and another year is almost half gone. The time seems to race past the older one gets!
Quite a lot has happened since the last update which I seem to remember finished with us getting ready to go away with our friends on their 50 foot launch Holo Malana, shown on the left anchored in Mansion House Bay on Kawau Island where we spent a few days. But more of that later.
We left Tutukaka early on the morning of Good Friday and headed off for Great Barrier expecting a good sail but as is so often the case on this coast, the wind was right on the nose, the sea quite snotty and we ended up motoring the whole 52 miles. Seven and a half hours later we arrived just as the sea flattened out, the sun came out and it turned into a beautiful day. And that's pretty much how it stayed the whole 10 days we were away. We spent a few days in Fitzroy harbour at the northern end of the island fishing, eating, drinking and sleeping (all in about equal quantities) before we got sick of all the excitement and motored down to Tryphena, about 15 miles down towards the bottom end of the island.
The fishing was pretty good at Fitzroy, we caught quite a few snapper and Doreen took the prize for the best fish...a nice sized John Dory. She had actually hooked a small undersize snapper (about 10cm.) and the John Dory thought it looked like a tasty morsel wriggling round on the end of the line and came along and took it hook, line and snapper!
For anyone who hasn't been there and is even remotely interested, Great Barrier Island is about 20 miles from top to bottom, 5 miles across and is a typical volcanic island ie. hilly and covered in native forest. The permanent population is around 700 people living mainly in Fitzroy in the north, Claris in the middle and Tryphena in the south. It's situated about 25 miles off the coast midway between Auckland and Whangarei.
Anyway, back to the story. We were lucky enough to be able to use a friend's mooring right by the wharf in Tryphena so had a good safe spot and felt comfortable leaving the boat and going ashore for extended periods. One day we borrowed a friend's car and drove the length of the island stopping in for a couple of hours at an old school friend of Doreen's who has a farm right on the water's edge half way down the island. That night was my birthday (thank you all for your cards, phone calls and emails) and we all went ashore and had dinner in one of the two restaurants in the area.
After a few days at Tryphena we got restless again and hauled up the anchor and motored down to Kawau Island in the Hauraki Gulf. We anchored in Mansion House Bay right opposite
Governor Grey's house (The Mansion) where we spent a couple of very pleasant days going ashore for short walks (the men) and long walks (the women).The picture on left shows Doreen and our friends coming back to the boat after a walk ashore.
By now we were running out of space to put all the empty bottles. An average morning while we were away saw about five empty wine bottles and one rum bottle needing to be disposed of plus our friends had to go back to work so we reluctantly up-anchored and sailed back up the coast to Tutukaka, about 8 hours away.
While we were away our boat builder had been on our boat and removed the two fuel tanks that needed replacing so we arrived back to find a temporary floor with a big hole under it! They ended up having to cut the tanks up to get them out otherwise they would have had to do some serious damage to the galley and navigation area and rather than replace them as they were we've had one big tank made that will be easily accessed in the event it ever needs attention. At the moment the new tank has been built and we're just waiting for the boat builder to come back and fit it in.
After the beautiful weather we had at Easter, the last couple of weeks have been awful with strong winds and a lot of rain and right now a major low pressure area the size of Australia with a centre of 960 hps is due to descend on us. Should be fun!
Until next time...............
