Tag Archives | Nordhavn

This
is an edited version of an article shortly to appear in Pacific
PowerBoat magazine.

We
set off after
Boxing Day for
a seven week cruise,
our first
stop being
Motutapu
Island at
our
favoured anchorage of
Waikalabubu. We
love that name – sounds very exotic. Here it’s
very sheltered in south-westerlies and only minutes away from great
fishing in the Rakino Channel.

After
collecting Di’s
sister, Sharon
and her
husband, Doug from
Gulf Harbour marina we head to
Mahurangi
Harbour.
The popular
anchorage here is Otarawao Bay on the port side as you enter, but
it’s
often used by shore-based jet skiers breaking all the rules so we
head a further mile up harbour to anchor off
Oaua Point
at the entrance to the Pukapuka Inlet. Here
it’s more sheltered and quieter, the only sounds
being the splashes of some large fish jumping.

Spending
a few days
around
Kawau
Island we
enjoy good
fishing on the island’s
north-east
coast
around
Fairchild Reef. In strong westerlies a good anchorage at
Kawau is
difficult to find, the
best one being
Harris Bay
in Bon Accord Harbour if
you tuck close to shore.
But
that’s
generally
crowded so
we anchor at Goldsworthy Bay on the southern side of Kawau Bay
finding
excellent shelter and
only two other boats for company.
In northerlies our preference is the
very picturesque Bostaquet
Bay with
its great sandy beach.

A
visit to the Kawau Boating Club is a must with diesel and water at
the wharf, basic
provisions, laundry
and shower facilities available
and an
excellent licensed cafe where
we enjoy a
perfect lunch of seafood
chowder and
smoked fish pie. In
fact we like it so much we join the club.

Most
of our time is spent at Aotea
/ Great
Barrier Island and overall
it’s
hard to beat, providing
a huge
number of varied, safe and interesting anchorages and
some great
sandy beaches. It’s
well
supplied with fuel (although
$1 per litre above mainland prices),
water and stores
and offers
superb
fishing. We
regularly
caught good
feeds of snapper up to a 72cm,
7kg
specimen that we returned to the sea and
even caught
legal snapper in five
metres of
water at one of our anchorages.

There
must be a few crays around too as the skipper of a nearby
boat gave
us the rare treat of one to enjoy. We
offered him a bottle of wine in return, but he preferred a loaf of
bread, something we’ll be happy to trade for a cray any day.

The
Barrier also has many great walking tracks taking you to scenic
vantage points, hot
mineral springs, kauri dams, waterfalls and the remains of a whaling
station. If the arts are your thing you
can visit the studios of
several local talented painters and potters.

Our
preferred Barrier
anchorages
are Kiwiriki (“Two-Island”) Bay
and Wairahi
(“Ghost”) Bay in Port Fitzroy, Nagle Cove and Karaka Bay (where
laundry facilities are available at
Orama Oasis)
in Port
Abercrombie, the Broken Islands in
settled weather, Bowling
Alley Bay in
north-westerlies through to easterlies and Whangaparapara in
easterlies or light westerlies.

Port
Fitzroy’s Smokehouse
Bay is very popular and it’s well worth going ashore to see the
bath house, where
you can also do
some laundry, exchange
books and most often chat with
other boaties.
Fresh water
is available here at high water from a hose on the grid. Incidentally
water is no longer available at Forestry
Bay and while there is usually water available from Whangaparapara
the supply has been turned off due to low supplies.

Nearby
Smokehouse
Bay in
Ghost Bay Barrier Gold sell manuka honey and related products from a
rustic barn where you can also catch up on the local news.

Recycling
can be disposed free and garbage $5 per bag near the Port Fitzroy
wharf where fuel, water, ice and bait are also available. Take
a short
walk up the hill where
a store offers
basic supplies, beverages
and lpg bottle refills. However
stocks are intermittent here and
the best
place for supplies is Tryphena where virtually everything is
consistently
available
from the Stonewall Store at Puriri Bay, one
of the island’s nicest sandy beaches
except in
strong westerlies.

The
Barrier has its own private radio station working VHF channel 01 with
weather forecasts at 0745 and 1745 while
Coastguard can be contacted on channel 60.

In
most of the anchorages we
visit there
are
roughly 60 per cent yachts and 40 per cent motor vessels. Among the
yachts it’s noticeable there are less traditional designs and more
imports, including
catamarans. When
we started cruising in the 1980s 12 metre vessels such as Marklines,
Corsairs, Rivieras
and
Vindexes were considered large and
Kennedy 46s
were enormous. Now these are
small by comparison with many of today’s newer vessels and
it’s not uncommon to see vessels in the 20-25 metre range.
Unfortunately
some of
these large vessels cause enormous wakes of around 1.5m, a fact that
seems to escape the
notice of some
of their skippers.

Despite
exceptional numbers of cruisers predicted
to enjoy
this
holiday
season we
didn’t notice
areas we visited being
any busier
than normal.
Maybe people had less annual leave available
or was it
the relatively strong south-westerlies prevalent for much of the time
– in all of
our time away there were only a handful of days with light winds.

The
subject of sharks has been widely covered in the media since
Waihi Beach’s tragic fatal attack in
early January.
We hooked and released six
small
sharks while snapper fishing and saw several others
swimming near us or other anchored boats including three large bronze
whalers just off Port Fitzroy wharf,
one in
Whangaparapara and one in Tryphena.
On the
homeward journey we also see a large shark inside Kawau’s Bon
Accord Harbour. The
experts say sharks
are more noticeable because
the water’s clearer and there’s more people around to notice
them, but we’re not convinced and others
aren’t either judging
by the
noticeable drop in numbers of swimmers off anchored
boats. There’s
a strong case for not filleting fish where people are likely to swim
as sharks are certainly attracted by the
scraps.
It’s
much better
to bag the frames and scraps and dump
them later
in deeper
isolated waters,
something
we’re now
doing and encourage others to do the same.

From
the Barrier
we make a side trip to
the stunning
Mercury
Islands (25 miles
from Tryphena) and Whitianga (43 miles
from Tryphena) and
wonder why more
cruisers don’t make this
relatively short trip down from the Barrier.
Our close
friends Frank and Marie are staying at Whitianga’s
Simpsons
Beach and join us for a three day trip to the Mercurys.

We
find
Whitianga’s
Mercury Bay tough going for fishing, although Great
Mercury
Island
provides
us with snapper, kahawai and grandaddy hapuka.

Mercury
Cove is snug in all winds except strong south-easterlies while
Coralie Bay is great in westerlies and the various sandy
bays along
the south coast are delightful
in northerlies. Another
option in strong westerlies is Kennedy Bay about eleven miles to the
east on the Coromandel Peninsula. There
are many other glorious beaches on the Coromandel’s east coast but
most of them are only suitable for anchoring over night in very
settled weather due to swell.

Around
Whitianga overnight
anchoring in
south-westerlies is good off Wharekaho (“Simpsons”) Beach or
Cooks Beach,
but there
are no good anchoring
options in easterlies.

Whitianga
is a perfect
place to re-supply and it’s generally possible to use a mooring in
the harbour for
this purpose,
while
diesel is available from the marina at mainland prices. In
town is the amazing shop called Pinky’s – something like an
up-market
$2 shop offering
a huge range of
useful products and
we challenge anybody to come out of there without buying something.

On
our way home we backtrack our outward voyage via Great Barrier and
Kawau and
cutting our planned time away by three days due to a forecast of
winds around 50 knots and heavy rain. When this weather arrives
Rapport is safely on her marina and we’re home once again, planning
our next trip.