Dad and I completed a fantastic four day cruise last week with stops at Mahurangi Harbour, Kawau Island and Motutapu Island. I had hoped to be able to report on our trip as we went, but as it turned out, and to my great frustration, none of the places we anchored had mobile broadband coverage. Here is a description of what we got up to. Photos will follow shortly.
We left the marina about 8:30am Monday under very gray skies and a light SW breeze and were sailing by about 8:45. We sailed down the harbour past North Head and across towards Rangitoto Island before turning north towards the Whangaparoa Peninsula. We had a little traffic to deal with – a naval vessel was leaving the Devonport Naval Base as we passed and a cargo ship approached the harbour from the north as we passed between Takapuna and Rangitoto. We initially considered attempting to get across the channel ahead of the cargo ship but elected eventually to take a more westerly course, allowing it to pass us to starboard.
According to the log we made 3-4 knots to Tiri Channel in 5-10 knots of breeze. However over the course of the trip we realized that the log was consistently underestimating our speed by 1.5-2 knots relative to the GPS, regardless of the tide. So of course we choose now to believe the GPS! After passing Whangaparoa (about 1:30pm I think) we turned towards the NW and set course for Mahurangi. About the same time the breeze freshened significantly. Although it had been forecast to build to 15 knots, I think the breeze was consistently above that with gusts to at least 20 knots. It was probably the most exciting sail of the trip. With the No. 2 headsail on, the boat (and Dad on the helm) handled the conditions beautifully. It took us only about an hour and a half to make Mahurangi Harbour. We anchored in Sullivans Bay just inside the entrance on the western side where there is a Regional Park. It was a beautiful spot with just a few other boats in the bay.
After anchoring I took a swim to the beach – about 150m each way, and after dinner we both fell asleep about 6pm! Although I woke later and read for a few hours, Dad slept for about 12 hours. I got up at one point in the night just to look at the stars – a wonderful sight when you don’t have the glare of city lights to dim the night sky.
The next morning we got the small outboard going and made a trip ashore, before weighing anchor mid-morning and heading back out of the harbour. We turned north and headed for Kawau Bay, passing the sailing ship Soren Larsen at anchor near Mullet Point. The wind freshened again about midday. We were initially a little indecisive about our plans, thinking that we might stop for lunch at Buckletons Beach, Algies Beach or back in the lee of Mullet Point. We headed off across Kawau Bay toward Buckletons, partly because we had to tack in that direction to make Algies, but decided part of the way there that there wasn’t a compelling reason to stop at either place. Eventually we decided to head east directly to Kawau.
It took us a little while to figure out where the entrance to Bon Accord Harbour was, but eventually we found it and headed in to look for an anchorage. Schoolhouse Bay was pretty full. We dropped our sails and motored back west towards Tide Cove on the south side of the harbour entrance, where we initially anchored just off the shore and had some lunch. Afterwards I went for a swim off the back of the boat, and discovered that I was able to stand on the bottom within a few metres from the stern. The tide was still going out, so it was clear that we would have to find somewhere else to spend the night.
We motored around to Harris Bay east of Schoolhouse where there was good depth of water and shelter from the west. There were quite a few boats already in the bay, and in fact it became quite crowded over the course of the afternoon as many boats arrived to spend the night.
That night we had one of the non-sailing highlights of the trip – we got to see the Comet McNaught just above the hills to our south west. I had heard a lot of people talking about the comet on the radio, but hadn’t realised how impressive it would be. I have recollections of straining to see Halley’s Comet back in the 80′s, but this was really quite amazing with its long tail clearly visible. Unfortunately, without a completely stable platform for the long exposure time needed at night I couldn’t get a photo.
On Wednesday morning, we decided that we wanted to try to get to Waiheke Island, at least to Oneroa Bay and perhaps further east with the idea of completing a circumnavigation on our way home on Thursday. We left quite early given the distance we were aiming for and first motored around to Mansion House Bay for a brief stop to use the facilities there. I was amazed by the number of jellyfish in the water (hadn’t seen any inside the harbour). We were also quite excited to see a very large (3+ft) kingfish swim right under the boat.
We headed out of the bay in a light westerly breeze and turned south for the Tiri Channel. 15 knots was forecast for the afternoon, so we set the No. 2 headsail. However, the wind dropped further as we made our way south and so we decided that it was an ideal time to figure out how to fly the gennaker. I had a few clues since I use one on my catamaran, but we hadn’t had any guidance from the guy I bought the boat from, so this involved a bit of guesswork (including figuring out which sailbag actually contained the gennaker!) Eventually, to our great satisfaction we got it hoisted and brought the jib down. It was quite an impressive sight and the boat got along very nicely.
However, once we got to the Tiri Channel, between the Whangaparoa Peninsula and Tiri Tiri Matangi Island, the wind died almost completely. We were hardly moving for a very long time until we eventually picked up a little breeze and continued south towards Rakino Island. We had hoped to leave Rakino to starboard and head on to Oneroa on Waiheke Island. However the breeze was still very light and progress was very slow. Eventually (I think it was about 4pm) we realized that it probably wasn’t going to be feasible for us to make Waiheke and we began to look for other options. The easterly side of Rakino doesn’t have very good holding, so the best option seemed to be Motutapu to the west. Given the complete lack of wind by this stage, we decided that we had no option but to motor the rest of the way. We motored for about 35 minutes, getting to a point between Rakino and Motutapu before a fairly decent breeze came in and we hoisted the sails again. We had a good ride the rest of the way to Mullet Bay on Motutapu where we found good shelter from the west with a few other boats already at anchor.
By this time the breeze was really quite good, and possibly we could have actually continued on to Waiheke. However, we had spent such a long time on the water moving so slowly that we had really lost our enthusiasm for further sailing for the day and were happy to take a break and have dinner.
Motutapu is (imo) one of the less inviting islands in the gulf – relatively bare and with generally stony beaches, so the view of the bay was fairly uninspiring. However I went ashore at one point to look around and the view from the island back east into the gulf was really very nice. We had a really nice sunset and I managed to get some pretty good pictures. I was also interested to find a WWII gun emplacement dug into the hill at the south end of the beach.
One amusing thing here was that there were some kids on a launch in the bay that had a little radio controlled model powerboat (about 12 inches long). They were blasting it around the bay and buzzed me as I rowed back to the boat from the beach.
Thursday was also a little frustrating. 10 knots was forecast, so we put the No. 1 headsail on for the first time. We first sailed south to Home Bay, again to use the facilities there. This is really quite an attra
ctive place, with mature trees and a very large well kept grass area – in fact the ranger was mowing it as we went ashore. There are also foundations from a WWII US army supply base that was located there. If we had known, it would have been nice to spend the night there instead of the more austere surroundings of Mullet Bay.
Once back on the boat we headed off, hoping to stop at Surfdale on Waiheke Island for lunch. However the breeze was very light. We managed to get past Rakino to south of the Haystack (Orarapa Islet), but then found ourselves mostly becalmed for quite a while. Eventually we decided that since the ride back to Auckland would likely be a slow one, we would be better to make a start right away and abandon the plan to stop at Waiheke. We found a little bit of breeze and put the gennaker up and had a very good ride to just about Brown’s Island, making as much as 5 knots in only about 5 knots of wind. However the breeze again died and we were left looking for wind. Quite frustrating. Realising that it might stay that way for the rest of the day, we decided about a third of the way from Brown’s Island to North Head to cut our losses and motor home – which took about an hour and a half. The breeze actually came up fairly strongly on the way and there was a lot of traffic in the harbour that kicked up quite a chop. However by this stage we were eager to get home with as little fuss as possible, so continued under power.
When we got to shelter inside the marina entrance we successfully pulled the dinghy back up on the boat – an exercise that had proved to be quite difficult when Jonathan and I had tried a couple of weeks ago. I think that experience made it a lot easier to do this time. The only other event of note was a few minutes later as we were motoring up the marina towards our pier, one of the contestants in the Auckland Match Racing Cup who was also returning to his berth came up behind us at quite a pace and appeared to be planning to slip past our starboard side. In actual fact the guy on the helm hadn’t even seen us, which we realized when he was about 10 feet from us! Aided by a few yells he took successful evasive action.
All in all a really wonderful time away.