Our Current Position

Tuesday 26 March 2019

North Island Circumnavigation Complete!


We are back at Marsden Cove Marina, which we last departed on 8th June last year and so have now sailed the whole way around the North Island of New Zealand (admittedly via Tonga!).

Our Circumnavigation of North Island

We had a nice last few days at Great Barrier Island. We headed around to Port Fitzroy to try to get some diesel, but we mistimed it and the pumps were closed. So we bought hot dogs and ice cream instead and headed back to X-Pat. We then headed around to Kaiarara Bay to anchor for a few days.

On Thursday, we headed ashore and completed a lovely but steep walk up to the Kauri dam and then onwards up to the top of Mount Hobson.  The dam was used when the logging industry in the area was at its peak. Timber was piled up in the water behind the dam and then released to flush all of the logs down the valley. It must have been a spectacular sight when it was released. There is not a lot left of the dam now.

The first of many suspension bridges

The Kauri Dam

... and the steps just go on and on and on


From the dam we climbed steadily upwards to the top of Mount Hobson (621m). The views were spectacular back across the Hauraki Gulf and we could even see X-Pat anchored down in the bay, looking very lonely. Having not walked very far for a while the 14km return trip was a bit of a shock to the system! We were both in need of serious lubrication that evening!

The view from the top of Mt Hobson, X-Pat is in the bay.

The panorama


Whilst enjoying our sundowners we had a visitor on board in the form of a Pateke duck. These birds breed only in New Zealand and the world population is only 2,500 birds. It was therefore pretty special that this one came to say hello.

The rare Pateke duck


On Friday we left Great Barrier Island and headed back to Urquhart Bay on the mainland. This was a distance of about 45 nm and we had been expecting an easterly breeze, which would have made a nice downwind sail back. Unfortunately, the breeze didn’t materialise and we ended up motor sailing the whole way.

One anchored in Urquhart’s Bay we went into boat maintenance mode. Pat dived down and scrubbed the hull to get rid of the slime and marine growth, which had accumulated over the last couple of months. We also serviced the engine, which has been put to good use over the last few months.

Checking the rig in preparation for the next adventure


On Monday we headed into Marsden Cove Marina, passing our friends, Stuart and Sally on Blythe Spirit who were just leaving. They had obviously heard that we were coming. The maintenance work continued today and tomorrow we are heading home to Pymble for a month of fun with the family.


Next instalment May …..

Wednesday 20 March 2019

North Bound

When you start drinking Cup O’ Soup instead of sun downers you know it is time to leave! As the weather and the water, cooled we departed South Island on Monday 11th and headed out through the Tory Channel, leaving Queen Charlotte Sound behind us. Dodging ferries and other traffic we headed out to the mouth of the channel, timing our passage to take advantage of the 6 knots of tide. If that had been against us we would have been going backwards!

Farewell South Island

Harvest time on the Tory Channel
Once through the choppy channel entrance we were greeted by an almost completely still Cook Strait. You can tell it’s still when the albatross are all sitting on the water. They rely on the wind to glide effortlessly across the water and when there isn’t any they just sit there and save energy. We were quite nervous about crossing this notorious stretch of water and so we weren’t too disappointed by the lack of wind and it meant we had great views of the pod of seven dusky dolphins that came to see us off.

Exiting the Tory Channel into the Cook Strait


This Albatross wasn't enjoying the still conditions

One of seven Dusky dolphins which came to say goodbye


The Cook Strait and the east coast of North island in general, is quite busy with commercial shipping carrying goods up and down the coast, as well as cruise ships and fishing boats. The ships all carry AIS and so are easy to spot on our chart plotter but the fishing boats often turn it off and so it’s important to keep a good watch. We had a few confusing close encounters with fishing boats along the way as it is always difficult to judge how far things are away in the dark.

The Cook Strait is a busy place!

Fishing boat at Dusk

One of many container ships heading down the coast

As we rounded Cape Palliser we settled into our watch system for the next four days.  This consists of us taking turns for 3 hours each at night and 5 hours each during the day.  Pat also does an early evening 4 hour watch while Debi does hers in the morning.  When not on watch, we sleep, or try to.  It’s not always easy when the boat is pitching and the noise that Bob, our auto-helm, makes, is almost, but not quite, enough to make us take the helm ourselves.

The trip was uneventful with very light winds so we had a combination of sailing and motor sailing. We had the engine on for about 60% of the trip which was a  little more than we would have liked, but we covered the 555nm miles in a little over 4 days which was pretty much as planned. We arrived into Tryphena harbour on Great Barrier Island on Friday afternoon and after four dry days the bottle of bubbly came out, followed by a pretty solid sleep.

Feeling in need of some exercise after the long passage, we hauled out our inflatable kayak and headed off to explore on land.  It is a lot easier to carry than the dinghy and, as the tide goes in and out a very long way here, we contemplated using it as our means of transport while we are here.  However, on our way back to the boat the kayak insisted on going to port (left).  Eventually we got around the problem by Debi paddling on the left side only and we managed to wobble our way back to the boat.  The problem turned out to be a missing front tracking fin.  We went back in the dinghy later to look for it but to no avail so that has put paid to any further kayak trips until a replacement can be found.

Kayak madness


Our arrival in Tryphena was carefully timed to coincide with the St. Patrick’s day celidh at the Currach Irish pub in Tryphena. We were frequent patrons of this fine establishment last year and were very pleased to return. We had a nice meal and some chaotic dancing, and just a few glasses of Guinness. So we have now added a fourth “D” to the dangerous three “D’s” known to cruisers, Drink, Darkness, Dinghy and Dancing! A very dangerous combination, but we managed to get safely back to X-Pat despite them all.

Enough said!

The not very Irish, Irish band


On Monday (18th), despite feeling a bit jaded, we decided to head around to the east coast of the island, something we didn’t manage to do on our last visit. We knew there was a light easterly forecast and thought we would be fine. However, as we got around to the east side we were met with a 2-3m swell, which wasn’t at all comfortable.

We persevered, motor sailing along a very spectacular coastline and decided to explore what is possibly the only anchorage on the east coast which is sheltered in an east wind. This is a place called “The Cove” on the NW side of Rakitu (Arid) Island. This proved to be an absolutely lovely little anchorage through a fairly narrow entrance in between some spectacular rocks.  Pat managed to catch a snapper, which we had for supper and we settled down for a nice evening in the cove.

At anchor in The Cove

Rakitu Island

Time for some exercise


This morning we took the dinghy ashore and explored the island. Like many islands here, this one is now administered by the Department of Conservation. There were a number of buildings on the shore but none looked particularly inhabited. We did a short walk up the valley to the east side of the island, with views back down the coast of Great Barrier Island where we had sailed yesterday.

Back on board X-Pat we departed the Cove and headed around the Northern tip of Great Barrier Island and we are now anchored in Nimaru Bay on the west side of the island again. The weather is a bit grey but the water temperature is 20 degree C, which is a lot better than the 13 degrees that we left behind in Queen Charlotte Sound!

Tomorrow we plan to head around to Port Fitzroy.



Friday 8 March 2019

Chilling in Picton

Welcome to the new look blog. We have been aware for a while that the tracker wasn’t very obvious on the blog and Pat finally worked out how to rectify it! Hopefully it is now easier for people to follow us.

We headed into Waikawa marina, which is just north of Picton, on Sunday. This is a wonderfully friendly place with lots of local sailors happy to help out with whatever you need. Debi contacted a few people through her “Women who Sail” facebook group and Juliet came down to the boat on Monday to say hello and give us a few tips. She and her husband run Oddies chandlery (oddiesmarine.co.nz) at the marina and kindly leant us their vehicle so that we could go and do our provisioning. That was very useful for topping up the onboard cellar as there is no public transport and car hire is very expensive.

Enjoying the sunshine at Waikawa Marina
Picton Harbour

On Tuesday we headed out to the Marlborough wine region on board a “hop-on hop-off” bus. Unfortunately our trip coincided with a cruise ship coming in which meant that things were busy and also that the bus service was truncated mid afternoon in order to get the cruise people back to Picton for 3pm. This meant things were a little rushed, but we still managed to visit three wineries, have lunch and visit a chocolate factory. Again, this was a useful trip for replenishing the onboard cellar.

Lunch at Framingham Winery

On our return from the vineyards we visited the Edwin Fox Museum. The Edwin Fox is the ninth oldest wooden troop ship in the world and was built in India in 1853. She is built from teak and saul with a copper bottom. Originally built as a cargo ship she was used to carry troops during the Crimean war and also transported prisoners to Australia and brought early settlers to New Zealand. After being used as a stationary freezer ship and then coal storage vessel in Picton, she was removed from the harbour and beached in Shakespeare Bay, Picton in 1967. She lay there for 20 years before locals managed to raise enough money to re-float her in 1986 and start the long preservation process. She now lies in a dry dock in Picton and it is amazing to go and stand in the hold and see how the hull has survived all those years of neglect and abuse. Her full history can be found here: www.edwinfoxsociety.com/history/

The Edwin Fox

The Edwin Fox
Tuesday evening was spent at the Waikawa sailing club where we met Nicky, Paul and the crew of local boat “On Appro”. This was a very enjoyable evening exchanging stories and getting a few tips on sailing in the area and the meals served were delicious and good value for money.

During our remaining time in the marina we managed to get X-Pat thoroughly cleaned, topped up our water and diesel and did a few running repairs. Yesterday (Thursday) we left the marina and are now anchored back in Carey Bay, just across from Picton. We are having a lazy day onboard as it is raining today, only our second day of rain on the whole trip. We had hoped to depart the Sounds tomorrow and head north to Great Barrier Island. However, the various weather forecasts, which we normally use are not in very good agreement which always makes us nervous. We will review again tonight but don’t want to take any chances crossing the Cook Strait so it may be a while before we feel comfortable to go.


Still on the Gold Coast

After a lot of debate we decided a few weeks ago that we would give up with trying to get the autopilot fixed here on the Gold Coast and jus...