Commodore
November 22, 2024

Saturday 23 to Monday 25 November – Heading to Great Barrier Island

We had a good sleep over on Friday, considering the amount of wine bottles that were cleared away in the morning! We headed off back to Whangarei for breakfast, enjoying going to some of our old haunts, where we stocked up on a few things. Rowan had a meeting with a solar specialist, they have come up with some ideas where we can increase our output which would be great. We have to run the generator most days to charge our batteries so we would love to do this less.

In the evening we joined Patrick and Sarah for supper at the marina restaurant. This couple we met in French Polynesia and spent some time with them. Sarah is an Italian Oncologist who smokes like a chimney! Now she does Accident and Emergency locums to keep her hand in. Patrick inherited money, this is his second circumnavigation but with a different partner. Sarah gets very seasick so they are researching buying a catamaran, Patrick currently has his lovely Oyster which he has done a lot of work to, so I don’t think he is as keen to move to the dark side of Catamarans. He and Sarah got married on a cruise in Antartica at the end of last year, so we had loads to celebrate.

Sunday morning there was a good little artisanal market at the marina with loads of people out shopping. Great for stocking up on some fresh produce as we wont have many shops again until Friday when we are booked into a marina in Auckland. We headed out in our little rental car to visit the glow worm caves, sadly you can only enter the caves on a tour which takes an hour. We did not have time as we were meeting Rowan’s cousin Roy for lunch in Waipu further south down the coast. We had a stunning walk along the beach after lunch, the men had a little skinny dip and tried to catch a few waves body surfing.

Monday morning we set off for Great Barrier Island, having bumped into Phil who crewed for us from Fiji, he has a boat here in the marina. It was a lovely calm day as forecast, we had the sails up but very little wind, so we had the motors on. We had arranged yesterday to meet up with Roy and Libby on their fishing boat, somewhere near Sail Rock. They wanted to fish and planned to bring us some fish for lunch. I was sceptical how the plan would work, how they would board PolePole in the middle of the sea, but it worked like a dream, we put fenders out, got them close by and they jumped on board. We successfully towed their boat behind PolePole, while Roy filleted the fish, and Libs and I made a salad. With wasabi, pickled ginger and soy sauce we had a delicious Sashimi lunch. We saw them off pretty promptly after eating as we were getting further and further away from the huge sand dunes at their home, and we still had at least 30 miles to go and wanted to be in before dark.

The wind played all sorts of tricks on us and died behind Little Barrier Island, it was banging the Main sail so much we took the sails down. Of course 10 minutes later we came out of the shadow of the island and the wind picked up. We had less than an hour to go, we could not be bothered to put the sails back up. We finally entered this wonderful bay, full of fish farms, but the island looks untouched, covered by thick bush and trees with just a handful of houses. It must be pretty remote living being out here. We wiggled our way through and found a lovely anchorage, engulfed by calm waters, sunshine and the wonderful noise of the Tui bird.

Our pontoon with the Whangarei Heads in the distance

A big marina with a load of different boats

A walk along Waipu beach, a few miles further north 40 Pilot whales beached themselves in the afternoon, we heard today 37 were rescued and pushed out to sea