A Milestone Achieved

Our First Sighting of Land - New Zealand!

 
Sunday evening just as the sun was setting, Calypso tied up to the quarantine dock in Opua, New Zealand. We're here! From the very beginning, we had always dreamt of the day we'd reach New Zealand and now we've achieved that milestone.

Rounding Cape Brett into Bay of Islands

We can't claim to have had an easy passage. The first few days were beating into the wind and heavy seas. Maybe, one day I just might get to understand why the wind is ALWAYS on the nose in such conditions or too far up the backside to fly the gennaker in calm conditions. Whatever happened to a nice fast beam reach?

The rough conditions must have been to blame as while we were having our breakfast on Thursday morning, "George", our beloved auto pilot system, gave up the ghost. Now, the demise of George might not mean much to most landlubbers, but it is a major dilemma in our lives especially on a long passage. Paul pulled the system apart, cleaned everything and reassembled again, all in tossing seas, but to no avail. George would not reawaken. 

Foot Steering (Hands were too cold)

We had less than 200 nautical miles to our destination which meant that we should be arriving some time on Friday afternoon, however now, we were forced to hand steer the entire time. As we'd already had four nights of watches, we simply couldn't contemplate non-stop at the helm. After a full day of it taking turns every hour or two, (and you've got to know just how damned cold it was out in the cockpit), we gave up and decided to heave to for the night. This enabled us to get a bit of a rest but the downside was that we lost 17nm in the wrong direction and it took us half the morning to get back to the starting block. The winds and currents against us made it impractical to motor against them so we spent the next day tacking back and forth, only managing to progress a mere 35nm before we hove to again that night. Not exactly an impressive distance.

Paul's Catch of the Day

To make an overly long story short, eventually conditions improved so it really was rather pleasant out there. We were entertained by dolphins playing in the wake of our bow and the comical activities of all the albatross and petrels trying to catch our dragging lures or diving for the fishy guts of a tuna we had caught. In total, we hove to for three nights and made good time on our last day when we thought we'd have to go on for a fourth, so all's well that ends well.

Wonderful sights of Albatross

Opua is not really a town from what we can see, it is a marina and official entry port set in the back of the Bay of Islands. The Bay of Islands can only be described as magnificent. A beautiful entrance to what we've always known to be a beautiful country. And we even had a welcoming dolphin escort just before pulling up to the quarantine dock.

And officialdom here? What an absolute pleasure it all was. Friendly, efficient, welcoming and just ever so painless. We knew that they would confiscate certain food items but it wasn't nearly as bad as anticipated and they were just so very nice about it all. 

Now comes the time for some serious boat work. Poor Calypso is feeling somewhat bedraggled and she is suffering from leaks in every quarter. What needs to be done and what we can afford to do are two separate issues but we know we have to haul out for bottom work and try to address some of the more serious items. At the same time, we didn't come all the way to New Zealand to labour solely on the boat; we are really hoping that we can tour around to see some of the sights of these beautiful islands.

It is possible to buy a second hand car here on a buy back basis so we'll be looking into that as an option once we've had a chance to investigate. As today is our first day, we'll find our feet a bit first before making any major decisions.

Wednesday Night Racing Through the Anchorage

As a PS to the Minerva Reef issue, it appears that things have been happening during our trip down here. Firstly, the news went out to Tonga and New Zealand. Tonga is reportedly irate and New Zealand actually sent out a plane to investigate, communicating with one of the other boats affected. It is rumoured that the issue will now be taken up at the United Nations. All this over a circle of reef that doesn't even stick up above sea level! I personally think that the Fijian patrol boat was out on a training exercise and, as it was full moon and the reef is full of lobster, they wanted it all to themselves to reap the rewards. If that is the case, they were extremely stupid to have made an issue of us being there. They could have anchored away from us, said nothing and still collected the lobster without any repercussions. It seems that we'll be following this little saga for a while yet.

Now for some catch up sleep.