Month: January 2010

Many, many months ago I posed this question on the http://www.cruisersforum.com website (I’ll link the post as soon as I get to land). Which place do I chose for arrival and which to store the the boat in NZ while we visit the states? I got a lot of great answers, many of which led me to choose Opua as our entry point. Now that I’ve actually sailed into and out of NZ I feel like I can throw in my own opinion for the upcoming (and rather large I hear) 2010 Pacific Puddle Jump Fleet. I’ll be bluntly honest with my opinion and it will hurt a few feelings out there.

Opua is not my favorite place on Earth…that’s for sure. For those of you planning on joining the All Points to Opua Rally, I don’t recommend it. You arrive in this nice marina and at first, you’re feeling great. You check in and go ashore to check out the rally event schedule on to find out that everything costs at least $15. You figure, why not, and go to get some cash only to realize there’s no ATM at the marina. No problem. You’ll just walk into town and hit the bank. Where’s the closest town with a bank? Oh, that would be Paihia…an hour plus hike away. So you settle for a cab and ask the marina office to call one for you. Huh? What’d you say? Twenty bucks each way? But it’s only 3 miles down the road!?! So you head back to the boat and turn on the radio for the morning net. You wade through some attempted humor for a few minutes, listen to some guy yell at all the new arrivals for using the wrong VHF frequencies to chat, and then that same guy reads a weather forecast that’s already repeated 20 times a day elsewhere on the VHF and loops continuously on WX station 8. A bunch of people call in and thank him for this and you are confused why. After listening to all this, the most awkward radio net in the world, you deduct that the Yachtie Shuttle run by one of the locals is a decent option. It’s $6NZ but you go on his schedule and are therefore stuck in town for a few hours even if the only reason you went there was to get some cash. On top of all this, you decide to get a night at the marina to get some internet work done and wash the boat. After paying a premium for the marina (12m slip for me was $33NZ compared to $24 in Whangarei and $16.50 in Kerikeri), you log on to the internet only to find out that 1gb of transfer, enough for a few iTunes songs and to watch 5 youtube videos of your new nephew, costs $45 dollars and the company charging you for this access is owned by NO OTHER THAN THE GUY WHO ORGANIZED THE ALL POINTS TO OPUA RALLY!

My recommendation. Check into Opua and unless you broke something on the way that needs an immediate fix, leave Opua. Anchor out at Russell or behind Motumaire Island off Pahia. Go to the bank, use the internet, hit the store, grab some meals and then go out and see the Bay of Islands. I do have to comment on the few things that made Opua nice. The burgers, the seafood chowder, and the eggs benny at the Marina Cafe are awesome. Bob, the American who works in the most expensive chandlery I’ve ever seen, Cater Marine, was the super helpful. And Melita, at the Marina Shop, who sold me a liability insurance policy I needed for keeping the boat in a marina, was great. I also have to add the disclaimer that it’s only by word of mouth that I heard the guy who organized the rally runs Pacific Wifi. I didn’t have time to check my facts on that but will as soon as we get to OZ.

I also have some thoughts on Whangarei, where we ended up storing the boat while we returned to the states for a month. But I’ll save those for a later blog post. All in all, my official opinion is this. Don’t make set plans to remain in any one place in NZ for the season. There’s good cruising to be had and absolutely no reason to sit around on your boat in a marina or at a mooring. If you’re only planning to drop the boat off somewhere and travel by land to the South Island or head back home for a few months, anywhere will do. Find the cheapest and stick it there. I would look somewhere like the Kerikeri Marina in Doves Bay, or the marina in Tutukaka, or on the pile moorings at Kissing Point in Whangarei where we kept Dosia. $120NZ/month isn’t bad when you’re only looking for a parking spot. These places don’t offer much in amenities but who cares when you won’t be there to enjoy them. Don’t fall for the hype!

(posted by Marge)

All’s well aboard. We officially went an entire 24 hours without turning on the engine. Guess we found those winds they’d been promising, huh? We averaged a solid 6.5 knots all day yesterday and on my watch last night I woke Drew to see if he wanted to pull in some of the sails because we were doing close to 8.5! We did slow it down a bit which is my preference at night.

Starting to find the rythym that normally comes after three or four days. You get into a pattern with the night watches and stuff and the time just ticks by. I haven’t showered in four days though so my hair and underarm’s are starting to really bug me. If it stays much the same as it has been for the past 72 hours then hopefully we’ll get to take some showers today!

Weather forecast is still looking good for the next four days and by late Monday/early Tuesday we should know for sure what the tail end of our journey is going to be like. About 475 miles away from our current position lies Middleton and Elizabeth Reefs so there is always the option for us to stop there if the weather turns. I always hope that timing wise it works out to pass reefs such as these during the day, just from a safety stand point, and to be able to just truck on by. At that point in the trip, you’re more ready to just get it over with than anything.

More tomorrow! Here’s to the winds keeping up…

(posted by Marge)

Let’s see…we cooked fresh lobster for dinner, had a pleasant convo with a sea turtle about the East Australian Current, and I got a mani/pedi. Oh wait…those were day 2 dreams! A pleasant and calm day at sea, however, so my reality wasn’t much to complain about either. We’re pluggin’ along. Again we sailed under spinnaker all day yesterday averaging anywhere from 5 to 5 1/2 knots. The past two nights it’s been as if someone flipped a switch as soon as it got dark and the winds just disappeared. Personally, I enjoy a calm night at sea but no winds means I’m not getting to Australia any faster, thus we have a problem; We motored through it again last night and woke this morning, day 3, to winds from the East that are currently pushing us along at a gratifying 7 knots.

Back to the shelf for me again as I burned through an entire book yesterday. My Sisters Keeper. Complete tear jerker. At sea we can’t afford for me to be tearing through our rolls of toilet paper so today perhaps I’ll go for something with a bit more humor!

(posted by Marge)

After a gut bomb breakfast of eggs benedict (“eggs benny for breaky” in NZ talk) at the Marina Cafe yesterday morning, we were ready to haul tail. Customs arrived right on time, fueling up was quick and easy, and we were headed out of the Bay of Islands by eleven o’clock. Had a really, really nice day of sailing up the coast of New Zealand under spinnaker. The only hard part about dinner was Drew having to decide which of the pre made meals he wanted. We went with chicken casserole, green beans, and thus, dinner was taken care of. That’s my kind of cooking underway! Right before sunset a pod of dolphins came by the play around on the bow a little bit. We were able to get some great video of that and I assured Drew they knew it was our last passage for a while and wanted to make it memorable (I haven’t had great luck seeing dolphins throughout our trips).

We rounded the North Cape while on Drew’s watch, motor sailed for much of the night as the winds died out when night fell, and are now headed towards the Three Kinds Islands. We’ll leave those long behind us in our second day at sea and for hundreds of miles it’ll be just us, the water, and any visitors that might pop up along the way!