Nightshift- North Burger King Tour continued...

We eventually found shelter from the sea but not the wind in a small bay up near the entrance to the harbour. The met service had apparently been taken by surprise and a low had formed right on top of Great Barrier Island and deepened further than expected. It was forecast to hang around for at least another 3 days providing more rain and strong winds. We had planned to stay a few more days on the island but didn’t fancy bouncing at anchor in driving rain for 3 days. One bright spot was that the S/F wind was a good direction to sail down to Auckland so the next day once again under double reefed main and working jib we sailed for Auckland. I called Westhaven Marina on the cell phone from near Channel Island, off the top of the Coromandel Peninsular, to book a berth. This was no problem and I was told by the woman on the phone, that she needed our time of arrival. At this stage we were hard on the wind in the Colville Channel in 2-3 metre swells and rain. I tried to explain that we were a yacht and if the wind freed me up a bit I might be there tonight — if not maybe in the morning. She seemed to feel I was being deliberately evasive and got quite upset, obviously not a sailor. I told her a time which turned out to be about 10 hours out but she was happy and gave us a berth number albeit with a veiled threat that if we were early it would probably not be available. As we got into the Hauraki Gulf the wind moderated and the Genoa actually got unfurled for a time as the clouds disappeared and the sun shone and Auckland welcomed us with gentle winds and sunshine. As we approached Rangitoto we noticed that there where more boats than I had ever seen in one place.

Westhaven Marina was very handy to the city, being right under the harbour bridge, it has 1800 boats. I was surprised by the price of just $10.50 per night for a walk on marina with power and water. Auckland was great fun and the weather wasn’t even too bad with just occasional showers. We caught up with Ian Syme who had just finished a delivery up that way, which sounded like a very entertaining trip. I found several Burger Kings in Auckland and saw several movies.

After a week in Auckland Tropical Cyclone Paula was looming north of NZ. If it did strike us it would be in about 3 or 4 days time. We had been in Auckland long enough but if the cyclone did come ashore I wanted to be in a marina. As we had friends in Opua Marina we decided to head straight for there. I rang from Auckland and booked the last 10m berth in the new marina there. We had a great sail from Auckland to Bay of Islands. Once we got up to Kawerau Island the strong easterly and squalls returned. The wind was directly on the beam, constantly 25 knots rising to gale force in the squalls, but only for a few minutes then easing back to about 25 again. The swell was 2m F and building with the bottom of Cyclone Paula pushing up an ever growing easterly swell, although the troughs were a long way apart and not too uncomfortable. In the late afternoon a big plastic NZ customs launch appeared out of the misty rain, looked us over and then disappeared back into the murk, they probably decided that drug smugglers would have a flasher yacht. We continued to sail fast for us, under double reefed main and working jib as usual, and dawn saw us off Cape Brett at the entrance to the Bay of Islands. I got something of a surprise when Rachel woke me at 0800hrs. The swell that had only been about 2 metres the previous night had now risen to at least 4 metres, which looked impressive but was actually very comfortable, as the troughs were a long way apart and very rounded. The wind kept bending with us as we sailed into Bay of Islands and then up to Opua and we started the motor for the first time off the end of the Opua whart when we dropped the sails to motor into the marina. When we arrived, as usual for us the heavens opened and it poured. Opua Marina is very nice, only one year old. It is already full and they are trying to get consent to double its size. Many of the overseas yachts that previously stayed in Whangarei now stay in Opua. As luck would have it an old school friend of mine, whom we were hoping to catch up with, had just taken a Skippers job on a millionaires yacht, which was berthed two berths down from us. So we spent most evenings on their yacht with him and his wife (she is the first mate). The vessel is an unusual yacht, a 58 ft long sloop with a carbon fibre mast and booms (plural, being that the boom extended out as far as the pulpit), and no rigging. It has a fixed boom for the mainsail and another fixed boom the headsail is mounted on. The whole mast pivots on a big bearing enabling reefing to be done by simply spinning the main boom down wind — reefing then turning the whole assembly around again, it looked a little weird with no rigging to hold it all up.

We stayed in Opua longer than we expected, the weather ranged between not very flash and lousy. We had now been officially told that due to La Nina, it was a bad year to sail around the North Island. Tropical Cyclone Paula slid off a few hundred miles east of NZ and got downgraded, but not before giving us lots of strong easterly winds and rain. Since it was not good cruising weather we hired a car and drove around Northland. I was somewhat at a loss with no local Burger King restaurant, but not being the sort that is easily deterred, I drove all the way to Whangarei and located both a Burger King and a movie theatre. Time was now getting shorter and there had been no good weather windows to get around Cape Reinga since we had been there, so we decided that the next suitable forecast we would go. The first time we planned to go with a forecast of S/E winds a sub tropical low formed on North Cape. The second time the forecast was Ok we awoke to black skies, driving rain and 30 knots of easterly in the marina. The third attempt the forecast looked Ok for a couple of days, but we would run into a fairly nasty looking front about two/three days out. As 48 hours would wee me with plenty of sea room off the West Coast I wasn’t too concerned. We left at 0800hrs under grey threatening skies, after clearing Bay of Islands we were back with our familiar combination of working jib and double reefed main sailing fast with the StE wind aft of the beam. The constant passage of squalls continued the by now familiar pattern of gust fronts and rain. 24 hours later we were off Noah Cape and right on cue. The wind backed to N/E but died between North Cape and Cape Reinga. We had to motor for an hour or two but got the wind back at Cape Reinga. We passed 8nm off Cape Reinga to avoid the tidal overfalls marked on the chart. The sea was the calmest we had on the entire trip and the weeks of easterly winds had set up a strong west going current across the top which gave us a 2 to 3 knot boost.