All posts by stewart135

Moorea

April 6, 2017 stewart135 Leave a comment

What a beautiful place! With little wind we motor sailed around to the N side of Moorea and went in to Cooks Bay and anchored well up the bay at 17 30.271S 149 49.224W in 40’ of water. Ironically the good Capt Cook didn’t actually use this anchorage but I think he would be pleased as it is beautiful.

We only stayed for a night as whilst the anchorage was deep and safe with a good mud base, the bay was brown with the run off following some heavy rain. We left Phylis and headed around to the far prettier anchorage behind the reef at Opunohu Bay, two miles W of Cooks Bay.

And what an anchorage! We joined about a dozen other yachts anchored in 12’ on white sand 100m behind the reef at 17 28.976S 149 48.737W. We finally got to meet Avatar and Jacaranda, names I’d been hearing on the SSB net for more than a year. And within a day or so, we met up again with Emma Louise and then Reao as they arrived in as well. Moorea is a popular stop and not just for the cruiser fleet. We had a succession of superyachts and cruise liners in. I think that Wind Spirit is the prettiest of them. It does have sails and will even occasionally run them out.

We had some more rain. Lots of it. With torrential rain we had the advantage of free showers and the waterfalls on the cliffs above us sprang into life and looked great for a day or so. As the anchorage at Opunohu Bay is right at the edge of the reef we weren’t bothered by run off and we kept our clean white sand surround throughout.

With the wild weather came glorious sunsets. My thanks to Sheryl on Emma Louise for one of the best we have ever had taken of Skylark. I’m pretty sure she is taking a picture of me taking a picture of the paddler!

The kids played with a new toy – a big drag ring that Mary Ann II passed on to us after it failed to help Julia in her search for an easy way to get in to the dinghy. It is greatly appreciated and is being well used and abused.

And then, joy! A kids boat! Lou had put where we were up on the Kids4sail Facebook page and a CA boat, Stop Work Order, had followed through and came to meet up. The whole family was a delight. Truly and Hannah hit it off and Eleanor and Cameron hung out too. I think big sister, Ciara, enjoyed a bit of peace from the smalls too but did come across for the sleepover we had when Pat and Corise headed ashore to celebrate their 20th wedding anniversary. One morning, Truly came to do school with us. Most afternoons were spent exploring the local area and throwing themselves in off one of the boats.

Eleanor and I had gone to ask Top Dive about diving with them and for refilling our bottles. $85 a single dive and $30 for a refill is the highest we have encountered anywhere, Pacific or Caribbean. We left in the huff. However, we found out that Pat and Corice dive and in Cameron, we found another junior diver. We managed to get one dive in on the outside of the reef and Pat was kind enough to refill our bottles. The dive sight we choose was 400m to the E of the Opunohu Bay entrance (look for a string of white buoys placed out by the dive boats). We dropped in with a fair amount of surge and enjoyed rolling over the banks of coral running out as spines from the reef. We were a little surprised by a big Silvertip coming to have a look at us. 10’ of shark which the book says is in the “dangerous” category always looks big close up!

We also did some snorkelling. When the missionaries got their teeth into the locals, tiki, the revered carved in stone representations of their ancestors overnight became “heathen idols”. Rather than just destroy them, some of the locals rebelled and moved three huge tiki out to the edge of the reef where they remain. In just ten feet of water, they are in great condition. Find them at a white ball near 17 29.224S 149 52.735W. Swim N towards the reef. They are within 30m.

Just 400m W of the Intercontinental Hotel is a sandbank on the edge of the inside channel where rays and sharks have become used to tourists feeding them at 0830hrs each morning. It was a long dinghy ride around but so worth it. We had lots of over friendly Stingrays mobbing us and the Black Tip Reef sharks cruised around us without ever getting too close. It was marvellous. Whilst we didn’t have the chunks of fresh tuna that Plastik Plankton suggested were favourites, the tinned stuff we had seemed to go down pretty well too. Word of advice – if you don’t want to be jumped by Stingrays stay horizontal in the water. As soon as you go upright, they crawl all over you!

We had one major expedition towards the Belvedere view point, a high point between Cooks and Opunohu bays. We didn’t quite make it but got some great views on the way and courtesy of the café at the Agricultural Research Station, some of the best vanilla ice-cream ever. A mistake in route selection on the way down turned out to be a fortunate one as we found a river with good pools to jump in to to cool off.

I stayed behind to help Craig and Steve track down the problem with Craig’s engine which had suddenly just decided to stop working. It took several hours to track down a split pipe, very slowly leaking in a difficult to see spot, letting air into the system. Once we found the leak it was quickly fixed. We celebrated with a spot of lunch at the nearby Hilton.

We said our goodbyes as we choose to move before a new system bringing wind from N arrived, exactly where we wouldn’t want it from for the overnight passage up to Huahine. There were tears when we said goodbye to Stop Work Order as they are heading back to Tahiti to pick up some parts but we hope that our routes will intertwine again sooner rather than later.

Moorea is spectacular. If I was to describe the views in the bay then I’d say think Fatu Hiva and the Bay of Virgins and think BIGGER! We enjoyed being back on a white sand anchorage after the deep Rangiroa and the not so clean Tahiti. It is just a joy walking off the back of the boat into warm clear water. And a pleasure to be back into a cruising community again – we have missed it. We are looking forward to being around a lot more boats this year as we travel continue our travels W.

Update posts

Tahiti

March 29, 2017 stewart135 Leave a comment

We arrived at Marina Taina just as the sun set. We toured through the mooring field to find Mary Ann II shining our torch around but failing to see them. We picked up a free ball, celebrated our arrival with a beer and listened to the traffic rush by.

Mary Ann II was but 200m S from us when we woke the next morning in the big mooring field. It was good to see them and hilarious to listen to a good, loud Yorkshire lady in full flow, suggesting the lady on the next boat over really should “PUT SOME CLOTHES ON”. She didn’t comply whilst we were there! The two fields have maybe 150 balls between them with more anchoring space on the W side of the channel as well. “A” is for long term stays and “B” is for more transient boats. We paid about $15 a day. The facilities in the marina are pretty good with the best showers I have had in the Pacific, reasonably cheap laundry and a good bar with happy hour. There were lot of boats inside the marina as well as the off season rates are very reasonable. It all changes on the 1 Apr and there were a lot of people getting ready to leave.

We ended up at one dockside party thrown by Liward, which was another great education for the girls. The lady of the party, Lili, was impressed with Eleanor’s announcement that she liked maths and wanted to be an engineer like Kym on Phylis. Lili massively reinforced the Girl Power mindset we are giving the girls by presenting each of them with a sticker of where she had been an engineer. Some small place called NASA!

We feel into a routine quickly. I’d be up early to go to the local shop for bread. Breakfast would follow just after 0800hrs, there would be school for the girls, some bits and pieces for me to fix and then play in the afternoon. The girls were a great help as we rerigged the lazy jack system after our personal saviour, John stitched it up with his solid iron ancient sewing machine that just works a treat. Both kids went up the mast, one to take measurements for the new sails and one to take lines up. It was a great view from the top of the mast. The view across the reef to Moorea was fantastic.

We travelled in to Papeete to shop a couple of times and found out to the cost of a taxi that buses stop running out from the city by 1700hrs. Lesson learnt – Travel in early and leave by just after lunch, before the buses get taken over by kids travelling home from school. We met back up with Phylis and met new friends, Aron and Craig, a NZ couple that have decided to push off and try the sailing life. They bought a boat in Tahiti, Reao, a Dufour and are learning to sail the hard way. Just pushing off and going for it. I admire their spirit and wish them all the best in their travels. They will head back to NZ this year.

John and Julia had visited the local Intercontinental Hotel for its Friday night dance spectacular and recommended it to us. Having only seen a couple of shows before, the brilliant kid one at the end of the school year and then Bastille Day at Hiva Oa, we were keen to see the differences. The show was fantastic. I still don’t understand how someone can wiggle their hips quite as fast as the soloist did. Stunning. Some of the older generation of male watchers looked as if they were overheating a bit! The troupe danced for about an hour and the girls got the chance to have their photos taken with some of the stars.

It was a great night but unfortunately with a sad ending. Julia on her way back to our table slipped and fell. She was in considerable pain and John had to take her to hospital. One bust and displaced humerus later, Mary Ann II’s ideas of travels were on hold for a couple of months. Can’t really call it an upside but with Julia unable to get on the boat, Topsail Insurance came through big time to cover the cost of staying ashore in a lovely Air BnB house on the water front, a few hundred metres S of the marina. We understand Murphy is just loving the aircon! The girls certainly enjoyed the pool that the house has. Only trouble is, there was so much chlorine in it, their hair went green!

We had organised a day out to explore Tahiti the next day. In the end, with John and Julia being unable to come out to play, Steve and Cheryl from Emma Louise and ourselves went off in two cars. We visited the Point of Venus, where Capt Cook spent time in 1769 to watch the transit of Venus in an attempt to work out how far the Earth was from the Sun. Interestingly also at the point there is a memorial to the landing of the first French missionaries (there had been earlier British ones but the locals hadn’t taken to their form of Christianity) and just along from it was a genuine Robert Stevenson lighthouse, built in 1867.

One of the problems with car hire in Tahiti is that unless you pay the $180-250 a day price for a 4×4, you are left very restricted where you can visit. Really, it is the main road around the outside of the island only as all the roads up the hills are dirt tracks and you can’t take a normal hire car on those. The main tarmac road stops at in the N side of Tahiti Iti at Tautira. The rest of the road around the southern part of Tahiti Iti was destroyed a few years ago by a storm. It is yet to be rebuilt. We ended up stopping there for lunch, eating enormous portions of chow mien and a baguette butty with chips and steak at the outside kitchen that all the locals frequented as well. Bliss – even though I did feel afterwards as though the proverbial wafer thin mint would not be a good idea! We also found a big tiki guarding the village. These are rare in the Societies as most had been destroyed during the transition to Christianity.

On our way back towards the Marina, we stopped at the official Botanical Gardens which was just across the road from the Paul Gaugin Museum. Perhaps both had been good in their day but sadly the museum is now a closed ruin and the botanical gardens need a lot of work. There were plenty of interesting plants but not a single sign up to say what they actually were. The cage that the two Galapagos tortoise are kept in, gifted to the Gardens in 1928, was small and could have been in far better repair. It rather looks like the funding for the botanics ran out long ago.

Just another mile down the road, we stopped at another park, the Vaipahi Spring Gardens. This was beautifully maintained, plants well signed and told a story of a chiefs’ elevation to heaven by way of a series of ritual purifications in the streams around the park. It had 2-4 hrs walks up in to the hills which we didn’t have time for. I am sure they would have been as interesting as the park. Eleanor will remember this place as she fell in to the last purification pool and we had to rummage around in the silt to find her flip flops.

For our last day, John, Eleanor and I went up and dived a crashed plane and a couple of wrecks on the S end of the runway. Hannah, Aron and Craig snorkelled above us. To our delight we saw our first proper Clown Fish on a patch of reef close to the aircraft but other than that there wasn’t a lot of life about.

We stayed about a week in Tahiti, all at Marina Tiana. After saying our final goodbyes to John, Julia and Murphy we left Tahiti and drove out of the pass towards our next stop, Moorea, a whole 15miles away. We look forward to seeing them back in the UK in a year or so.

Lou, with perfect timing, captured a great photo of one of the many boarders playing in the surf at the edge of the pass. More practise required before we try this!

Update posts

Rangiroa

March 17, 2017 stewart135 Leave a comment

Rangiroa was to be our last atoll in the Tuamotus. I’d love to have spent more time exploring more of this huge group but it would take years to do so properly. Next time with a compressor onboard……

One problem that I encountered when renewing my nav info for the year was that the wonderful Tuamotus Tidal Guestimator had not been updated in the Soggy Paws website. This was a bit of a blow. I managed to download the NOAA info on Rangiroa tides and then cross checked it against the WXTide32 programme I had and found that the two didn’t correlate. Typical.

We arrived at the pass of Rangiroa I thought about on time to find a great big dive ship waiting on the outside with the tide still howling out and big standing waves evident at least half a mile from the pass. I had a chat with the Captain who agreed with my data, added another reference which appeared to be as equally wrong. We agreed we would be waiting a while to get in. Remember my post on “The Vagaries of Tuamotus Tides” ?? It applied! After over an hour hanging around, a dive school rib came over and the local suggested we would be able sneak in if we stayed close in to the E side of the pass. Punching about 5knts of tide, thankfully in flat water out of the race, we were able to do so. The dive ship waited another 45mins before the actual slack.

The bay at Rangiroa was empty other than our old friend Soren of Taranga who had arrived a week before to do some diving with his new crew,Magnus, Fleming and Nico, a good bunch. We picked up one of the free moorings @ 14 58.930S 147 38.106W provided by the town just off one of the posh hotels. We quickly moved to another buoy 300m W in deeper water as the original, very close to shore was too sheltered from the winds and we weren’t getting power. We dove on the new one and found it to be heavy and in good order.

It was just as well that we did move. A couple of days into our stay we had a localised gale which roared in on us out of the W with no warning and nothing in the forecast. 30+ miles of fetch and 35+kts of wind gave us a short, very nasty sea and both Taranga and ourselves were thrown around violently. Our dinghy, down but padlocked on, snapped its security cable and I was required to get the canoe down, quickly surf down to the dinghy and stop it before it hit shore. Not much fun at all in the dark but we were lucky we felt the cable snap and were able to save the dinghy and engine from being smashed up. The gale blew itself out by the morning but the weather wasn’t settled Trades. The sky, at times, could only be described as steel in colour.

Eleanor and myself found a handy dive shop to fill our bottles and the Aquarium, a dive area inside the Tiputa pass, unaffected by the current which had a maximum depth of around 15m. We managed to get six dives in, gradually spending longer underwater as Eleanor’s confidence, buoyancy technique and stamina improved. A highlight would be the huge Moray eel that came out and nuzzled the camera, hoping it was food.

I also did a dive on the pass with the Taranga crowd. A little different to anywhere else I had been, you drop into the blue and descend to around 35m and hang 30-50m off the bottom, waiting to see what appears. We got a glimpse of a Great Hammerhead, solitary and huge, well below us on the floor and then were surprised when half a dozen Scallop Hammerhead appeared in full hunting order. When you can see the eye stalks you know they are a little close.

They charged in at us fast, thankfully realised we weren’t for eating and quickly turned away in search of better prey. Watching a full size Manta ray swim over me as we did our 5m safety stop at the end of the dive was magical.

Life around the anchorage once the weather settled, was pleasant. We became a roosting place for Sooty Terns and we watched the local kids practise on the big 6 mans canoes around us. There was a pretty good supermarket a 10min walk up the road where we could get bread at 0830hrs every morning and we got together with the Taranga crowd most days. We even ended up in the big hotel enjoying G&Ts at the beach front bar, eating a drizzle cake that the girls had made to celebrate Nico’s birthday. The only trouble with Rangiroa is it is too big and spread out. It certainly felt the most touristy of all the atolls we have visited. If we had more time and had explored away from the passes (and therefore the tourists), perhaps I would feel differently but other than the pass diving, I could enjoy everything here at any of the other smaller atolls.

We made friends with the owner of the cafe/bar/restaurant at the pier that provides pretty good free internet for paying customers. Lily is a character. A widow, her husband a French soldier killed in Afghanistan, she set up the place on her husband’s island rather than go to her home, Madagascar where they had met. She was a cheerful flirt and buzz-ball of energy and their son is in the same mould. Toue, Etan, his best friend and Hannah quickly came thick as thieves and had a great time. Hannah handled herself with aplomb whenever they said goodbye, done in strictly French fashion, in which Toue was very enthusiastic in doing!

Lou was very keen in moving on to catch the boat kids we had seen in the Marina at Tahiti. We said our goodbyes again to Soren and wish him luck in his next endeavour somewhere as yet unspecified in the Far East with the liveaboard dive boat he and his friends are planning. We will stay in touch and I hope to dive with him again one day.

Seeing no great change in the outlook but suspicious of the inaccuracy of forecasts in what we had experienced the previous week, we left to a forecast E at 15-20kts for the 210mile reach S to Tahiti. Life is never that easy. We came out and immediately hit 25+kts and that didn’t significantly change for the whole trip. With squalls hitting 38kts, lightening storms all around us through the night and an average of 25-28kts, we alternated between 2 and 3 reefs and charged along. Our second to last hour run of 10 Nm as the seas abated in the shadow of Tahiti and we approached the entrance to Papeete Harbour with 3 reefs and a hanky up is our best single hour run ever. Tahiti was largely hidden in cloud as we approached. Moorea looked magnificent!

We arrived at last light with the sun setting over Moorea 10Nm to our W. We crawled through the narrow pass by the airport, waiting for clearance to cross the end of the runway, to the mooring ball fields at Marina Taina and tied up.

The noise and lights of the city of Papeete told a story. Skylark, after looking after us for so long in the boonies, was back in civilisation.

Update posts

Returning to French Polynesia – Life on the Hard

February 28, 2017 stewart135 Leave a comment

Leaving NZ didn’t turn out to be easy. Our first issue as we did our normal panic packing was a realisation that we had an extra bag. A full 23kg+ bag over our allowance, of which we were over weight already. How could we have miscounted?? We decided that there was nothing for it but to hit the airport and hope they didn’t cut up too much. It proved to be a minor issue. We paid $70NZ for the extra bag and weight – no problem at all. However, we immediately hit a bigger stumbling block.

Because we had flown in to NZ SO long ago (November – really?), the airline wanted to know where our onward ticket was, a requirement of entry to French Polynesia. All our protests that we were European or simply on our return flight to our original location didn’t cut it with the lady behind the desk. “No, we didn’t have a letter from the yacht allowing us to join it. It is my boat and I am it’s Captain”. In the end, confused, she sent for the manager, who having asked us our tale, told the desk firmly they didn’t NEED to know about us and to book us on. After lots of Neanderthal looks from the desk at the manager, lots of ardent thank yous from us to the manager, we headed to departures. For those following on from us, be aware that FP is tightening up the regulations and even as a European, if you leave your boat in FP, you require a return ticket out off FP or a bond arranged with an agent in Tahiti for the airline to let you back in. Make sure you check the current regs before you travel. We got lucky with the manager who dealt with us. You might not be so.

We had two nights in Papeete in a little flat, running around ordering bottom paint and a big food order to be delivered up by the supply ship, Cobia. We met up with John, Julia and Murphy of Mary Ann II and they were a massive help in showing us around. They had spent the summer in Marina Papeete in the middle of town and, having explored the town in detail, John had co-written a guide for yachties on where to find pretty much anything you needed. He was able to point me to a funny little machine shop by the dock which incidentally stocked Jotun and Hempel paints at commercial prices for the fishing fleet. Louis, the shop’s owner and a keen rugby fan, wanted two thirds of what the Apataki Caranage wanted for one I’d never heard of before, half the price of ABC3 (what I had on) and a third of the price of Micron 66, lovely paint but foully expensive. I ended up buying 20l of Hempel – a good German commercial brand. John’s investigative work saved me a fortune! His document is published in both Noonsite and the Soggy Paws’ blog site. In the same style as the Panama Guide, it is excellent and I strongly recommend it to you if you need to shop or stock up in Tahiti.

I’m afraid we had less luck with Tahiti Sail, the one operating “sail maker” in Tahiti. We had asked them for a quote to look over and tart up the sails to get me down to Tahiti as I intended to order new sails to take us across to Aus. After advice and finding that such noted yachts as Lumiel, Mary Ann II and So What all had new sails done by Lee Sails, an outfit in Hong Kong, I went ahead and got quoted for a new main and genoa. The repair quote I got back from Tahiti Sails for, frankly, not a lot of work was staggering and higher than the quote I got from Lee Sails for new. I even went back to them to ask if they were quoting for repair or new sails! On a whim, I asked them to quote for new sails too and was amazed to find that their price was more than double than Lee Sails – over 10k Euro. When asked why, they answered “quality cost” and that the sails would be coming all the way from UK! In the midst of this, I got an email from the one sail “expert” in the firm to say he had fallen out with the owner and he was leaving the business. I eventually allowed them to fix a small patch on the genoa only. I know people believe that FP is at the end of the earth but importing goods is easy, there is a price point for value and Tahiti Sails has yet to meet it. I understand the owner (not a yachtie) believes he can squeeze the market as he has to date had the monopoly. My advice would be, unless you absolutely have to have work done by them, don’t. We have since found that two ladies, a yachtie and a local have just set up a small repair shop down near Marina Taina and they have been getting good reviews. For new sails, look abroad yourself and simply appoint an agent to get your tax free goods in. It isn’t difficult.

Whilst dawdling with Mary Ann II in Marina Papeete, we also met up with a couple of kids boats, Be and Be, an Aus boat with four kids and Sangvind with two boys. We had a good night out together, eating down on the waterfront in the street stalls, the kids skateboarding in the park and having deep and meaningful conversations out of earshot of the parents! We are hoping to be able to catch up with both boats a little down island. Good people.

We flew back up to Apataki to find the yard had been battered by a storm a couple of weeks previously with winds hitting 85kts. The phone lines were down, the jetty and workshop was gone and it had taken two days to dig the slip and launch channel out. Thankfully all the houses had survived, as had all the boats in the yard.

Skylark, other than a small infestation of ants, a common problem in the yard, was in good nick. But it was so hot! With the yard sheltered from the slight breeze there was, daytime temperature hit 40+C inside and the night time was only a few degrees cooler. We left the tinfoil over the windows to keep some of the heat out and it helped a little. With time to kill, the girls decided to have fun with their hair again. Frizzy is in!

I helped Alfred, the yard’s owner, fix the swing and the girls had a great time twisting it up and trying to make themselves sick.

I took to getting up before dawn as the only time the heat was bearable when working on Skylark was before 0900hrs. There were days enough to waste some time wandering across the atoll to see a few dawns as well. Hannah decided she wanted come one morning and we were blessed by a beautiful sky.

With the heat and with lots of mosquitos about, our first few days back are easily described as very unpleasant. We got more bad news when we heard that the Cobia wasn’t to deliver to Apataki for another week, potentially meaning extra and unwanted time frying on the hard. We asked why she wasn’t running to Apataki and simply got a shrug. Presumably not enough business. With our sails, paint and food all due on her, we were unhappy that our timetable had been knocked back by at least a week. Frantic calls by Skype (and a lot of help by John and Julia at the Papeete end) meant we were able to rearrange delivery on another ship to Arutua, an atoll some 40 miles W of Apataki. It cost us $100US in fuel costs to pick our stuff up but it meant we could eat something other than eggs and start painting. In the meantime, we polished the hull, changed the anodes, did the small bits and pieces we needed to do get her re-commissioned inside and out.

We sanded Skylark down. Wearing the painting zoot suits was an exercise in torture but on the bright side, it was a great way to sweat the weight of NZ overindulgence off!

The girls, desperate to help, got in on the act and helped with the sail drives and props with their separate non-copper epoxy paint job and touching up with barrier paint where required whilst we waited for the hull paint to arrive.

Once that appeared they got in the act again. The large size suits were hilariously massive on them and they couldn’t last long in the heat but they were a big help throughout.

In the end, we had enough paint (and time) for three coats for the hulls and four for the edges and waterline. It was a sweaty exercise but there is something very satisfying about seeing your yacht turn into a swan again. Compared to the coats of red and blue paint she has been dressed in before, we think she looks best in black.

We launched without incident and were so glad to be back at anchor and into a breeze again. We had a few days to wait for our sails but life had started to look up again. We swam, snorkelled and explored the water around us, just chilling.

One of the yachts in the yard was owned by a Frenchman, Léon Philibien. Léon is a professional photographer and he travels everywhere with his paraglider, which he take most of his shots from. He took some wonderful ones of the yard, atoll and of Skylark for which we are very grateful for the use of. I doubt if many yachts have their own aerial shots set in the Tuamotus! We are hoping that we meet him down island when we can repay his kindness again with his favourite tipple – whisky! His blog is pretty impressive – lesadventuresdelamatine.blogspot.fr . The five photos below are his copyright.

Our sails arrived on the Cobia (Tahiti Sails missing delivery by a week) and we had the engine on and the anchor up before we even had them hanked back on. We had had enough of Apataki, not its fault, just too much heat and a degree of frustration meant we needed to get going. Our first sunset on the move again on 2017 was beautiful.

We ran out the N pass with no wind, engines on and a 60 mile overnight passage ahead to get to Rangiroa.

Update posts

Auckland and farewell to NZ

February 24, 2017 stewart135 1 Comment

Lou had been working hard to get the car details out and about in the hope of a quick sale of it and all the camping stuff that we had. Of course, it is never that simple and we had had no bites at all from the posts she had put up.

For our final period in Auckland, she had arranged for us to stay at a workaway in the Mt Eden area. Right up on the hill at the end of the road, the house was at the end of a steep drive. Rented by Kharen, a single mum and Alex, her lovely 12 year old daughter, she had decided that with the hours she worked, the large garden would never be brought under control unless she got help and so her looking for workaways. It was great fun. We lived in an enormous room on the ground floor with probably as much floor space as our flat in Stockbridge. We were able to spread out, clean, wash and repack all the stuff we had acquired in NZ, separating what we would take back to the boat and what would be left behind.

The work on the garden entailed everyone getting involved. I did the noisy stuff and cut down some trees, Lou and the girls weeded and picked out huge numbers of unwanted bulbs and I even managed to do a little carpet laying to the outhouse, converted into a hideaway for Alex. I tried to make a new shelter under the deck area with a large tarp which looked good until the rain came. With not enough angle and too little tension, it failed. I understand that Kharen will try again with more angle and perhaps supports fitted too.

Of course it wasn’t all work. We had some great meals and chats with Kharen. Hannah was particularly appreciative of her time with Alex, someone who shares her love of art and is in this person’s humble opinion, exhibiting a considerable talent already. There was a visit to the Auckland Zoo where Hannah, near beside herself, got to see a baby giraffe (for those not in the know, her very, very favourite animal) and even a Kiwi in a special low light environmental area. No photos allowed though, so you get to see the sign.

We had a good time doing the last real mall shopping we expect to be able to do until we either see Australia or perhaps the UK. Clothes were delivered back to Op shops, more clothes were handed down by Alex and bags were packed. I managed to run around a variety of boat shops and found most of my shopping list – new bearings for the main track, an acid wash for the water generator, West System epoxy, a gel coat repair kit, bulbs and copper strip being the main items. Lou continued to try and get rid of the car but we still had no luck. In the end, we took it back to the company that we bought it from, signed it in to their care for sale and left it with them for eventual disposal. It may take a while but we should get some money back in time.

We also managed to run out to see the Hobans for an evening, the Workaway family we stayed with back in November. We yet again had a lovely time with them and I hope that we will see (at least!) the kids on our side of the world when they spread their wings. Lovely people.

We left NZ with a big smile on our faces. We had had a wonderful time, staying with four great families and meeting many more good people as we travelled around. We were regularly blown away by the hospitality we encountered and the help and advice we received was excellent. Our thanks to you, the Shafts, Hoban, Sell and Hope families. You were wonderful and we hope that one day we will be able to return your hospitality.

And the sport and the outdoor lifestyle? Just marvellous. You don’t see many smokers (priced out of existence – $25+ a pack and rising at 10% a year) and you rarely see overweight – people are just too busy at either some sport or just out tramping. As someone said to us, there is as much pride shown here for someone that gets even to a district sports team as getting good exam results. The number of small towns we drove through with huge signs up, congratulating pupils getting in to a junior NZ team was great to see.

NZ is still a young country and there remain historic difficulties due to the land grabbing tactics of the original white settlers from the Maori clans. However, the modern acceptance and integration of Maori culture and acceptance of the debt suggests that the country is in a far healthier state than say USA, SA or Aus are with their indigenous minorities. The mania for rugby helps, of course. Don’t think I met a NZ child who didn’t know the haka and wasn’t intensely proud of where it came from!

Although we liked the cosmopolitan nature of Auckland, we both thought that it is getting too big , with an influence that is becoming even more pervasive than London is to the UK. I’d suggest that if there are to be problems in NZ in the future, it will be because of this seemingly unchecked growth and the hoovering of resource, personal and finance, from the rest of the country. Whilst I enjoyed the warmth of the North, the majesty of the South Island attracts me massively and I’d love to explore that better. What a place. I think, as I have said before, it is Scotland on acid.

Would I go back to NZ? Could I live there?

Yes.

In a heartbeat.

Best thing I can say about a place, really.

NB. Be aware all views stated here in the singular form are solely the views of the author. They may or may not be subscribed to by the long haired Admiral!

PS. We will be returning to the UK on 6 Dec 2017. The flights are booked.

Update posts

Coromandel

February 16, 2017 stewart135 Leave a comment

The Coromandel is the popular peninsular and beach holiday area, just 60 miles from Auckland. Wildly popular during the holiday period, it had been recommended that we not visit it in the Christmas holidays on our travels S. On the basis everyone was back to work and school by the start of Feb, it seemed to make perfect sense to make it our last stop before we returned to Auckland.

We found a campsite which sounded rather interesting. A pool, close to a couple of towns with shops and a butterfly farm? We had to look. We had also made arrangements to met back up with the Belgium family who had taken a house somewhere on the W coast.

The campsite was a good one. A bit run down in places but the pool was good and the butterfly farm doubled up as a green house for exotic plants and flowers. You were supposed to pay each time you entered but Hannah didn’t read the script, made friends with the man who ran it and was constantly in and out of it. Eleanor took these photos.

One of the great attractions of the Coromandel is Hot Water Beach. With hot springs bubbling up from under the sand, it allows you to dig your own pool and wallow in superheated water. Having borrowed spades from the campsite, it was about an hour drive across the peninsula. We stopped on the way and found an excellent dive shop where Eleanor equipped herself with a underwater noise maker and we all ate a good size lunch of fish and chips.

We arrived at the end of the road and walked the 500m out across the sand to where we joined a couple of hundred others digging out pools at low tide to wallow in. It didn’t take long to dig something impressive out. Along the beach over the length of maybe 200m, the water came out as simply steam (scalding) to where we dug our pit, somewhere in the 45-50C range. There were places in our wee pool where you simply couldn’t put your feet but it was fun once you learnt to to regulate the heat. Running into the sea was as good as a cold plunge after a sauna and was wonderfully invigorating after the sulphurous smelling hot pool.

For our trip across, we had picked up a guest, Caroline, a French dentist on an extended cycling tour of NZ staying at our campsite. She was a bit stuck as her bike had been stolen a couple of days before but it had been thankfully dumped and found quickly by a local with nothing stolen from it. The only issue was a broken derailleur whose replacement needed to come from Christchurch. We took pity on her and she came across to enjoy a day not being stuck in camp. NZ justice being as it was, the local cops had caught the thief within a day and to mitigate for the crime and save everyone’s time, got the thief to pay for the damage. She got her bike back, fully fixed the day we left for Auckland.

As an interlude and final stop off before we headed back to the city, the Coromandel was a good choice. I’m not sure if it would be that great with the crowds there but in the off season, it suited us pretty well.

Lou phoned Kharen, the lady of our last workaway to see if we could arrive a day early to Auckland as the rain that had dogged us all the way back up the N island had caught up with us again. We packed a wet tent in the back of the car and drove a little less than two hours to Auckland.

Update posts

Concerning Hobbits

February 12, 2017 stewart135 Leave a comment

Lou had been determined to see Hobbiton in the dry and so we had come north quickly to ensure our day there would be before the scheduled wet weather forecast. We got it right and arrived in sunshine, the last there was for several days.

Although Lord of the Rings was filmed nearly 20 years ago, with limited funding and perhaps a degree of short sightedness, the original Hobbiton was largely deconstructed with just a couple of hobbit hole doors being left on the farm land used as the set. When the family that owned the land was approached to allow the filming of The Hobbit, they agreed but with the proviso that this time, the set would be preserved and turned into a tourist attraction as a joint venture with the film company. With the success of both trilogies, it is no surprise that the site has become wildly popular and averages between 2000 – 3000 visitors a day. Open 364 days in the year, at $90 a head basic entry fee, the turnover is impressive. That’s before you add in the gift shop, restaurant and alike. Want your wedding there? No problem – pay the price and you too can have a private ceremony by the Party Tree! Yup – a real money spinner. But beautifully done.

The whole set up is impressive in its attention to detail. The buses that take you from the visitor reception to the site must have the best audio and video kit I have ever seen on a bus and there is no stinting on the money to keep the place top notch. With a team of dedicated gardeners, the whole place looks terrific. Given a free hand, each hobbit hole’s garden is individually decorated and the gardens are real. The gardeners were even having an internal competition on who could grow the best pumpkin!

I think that the photos say it all. It is a lovely visit to do. Admittedly, it is an immersion into a film set world and you are held by the hand as you walk around, kept to a tight schedule for your particular visit surrounded by other tourists.

But for anyone with an imagination, you really are in The Shire.

A great day out.

Update posts

North Island again–Wellington, Rotarua and Tree Running

February 6, 2017 stewart135 Leave a comment

Wellington lived up to its nickname of the Windy City. Whilst the campsite we used just out of town was well sheltered (but as a DOC and v low cost, was inhabited with a bunch of German lads drunkenly, loudly and increasingly desperately trying to pull some traveller girls camped there too until 0230hrs…), Wellington requires you to lean in to the wind.

We met up with the Belgium family at the wonderful Otaga Museum and spent the whole day there, wandering around the halls. As it was a school day, the crowds were light and we had no queues to stand in to get in to the museum’s major exhibit on Gallipoli. Yet again Sir Peter Jackson had got involved and the exhibit was terrific. It took a couple of hours just to go around it and I could have happily gone around again, there being so much information on offer.

Saying our goodbyes again and a promise to try and meet up again at Coremandel, we did a big jump N towards Rotarua, famous for its hot pools and geysers.

We had been given the details of a thermal river, about 30km S of Rotarua that you could go and soak in by the Ranger at the Wellington Campsite and we headed for that. Three or four miles down a dirt track took us to a small car park and a track down to the smoking stream. We visited a couple of the pools and loved the heat. We thought the water must have been around the 40C mark. We shared the top pool with a bunch of Korean ladies, gabbering away, everyone talking at once and saved one’s phone after she fell in to everyone’s amusement, trying to get that perfect shot of the rest. A good humoured lot!

The next morning, much to the kids delight, we surprised them by heading off the main road and taking them to a “Go Ape” tree runners centre. Technically, Hannah was allowed only to do the first two of the six levels because of her height but the staff was happy for her to try the harder stuff as long as Dad went too. I thought it a fair cop. The courses started small, gradually getting longer, more complex and higher off the ground. Needless to say, she did us proud, nervelessly throwing herself over the courses and the staff were a little surprised to hear her screaming her way down the big death slide (called “flying foxes” in NZ – no idea why) with a ecstatic smile at the end of level four! Eleanor and I completed level five but we ran out of time to complete last level.

We had a timetable to keep with a dry Hobbiton and with 60km to get there and a little over an hour to get there, we needed to move – fast!

Update posts

Nelson, Havelock and back to the ferry

February 4, 2017 stewart135 Leave a comment

It was rather strange packing up all by ourselves after so long in the company of Starcharger and ZigZag. Our time left in NZ had ticked down to a few weeks and with a need to spend a bit of time back Auckland selling the car, we decided we needed to start heading back towards the ferry.

We stopped in Nelson almost by chance. This is next town W of Blenheim. We were very glad we did stop as we arrived to find the town absolutely buzzing. There was a street performers festival on and performers from Europe and the US had made the journey to show and the town centre was full of street market stands as well. The girls were captivated by some brilliant acts and the street market provided both lunch and one of the most extraordinary blue slushies, by the look of the debris, definitely enjoyed by Hannah!

We hadn’t booked a camping ground for that night and directed by a sign we saw at the side of the road, ended up staying in one above a river that rented out gold panning equipment. The last big dig at it had been about 10 years previous and there were lots of photos of the gold nuggets extracted from the river, sadly for the owners not in commercially viable quantities. We tried our hand and Eleanor found one tiny flake but I am afraid the excitement was overshadowed by being eaten alive by the worst concentration of sand flies we had encountered anywhere in NZ. There were some other kids there from a Jehovah Witness group up for a weekend from Christchurch and the girls had a happy time playing in the river with them. They were also impressed by the passion singing of Christian battle songs – definitely militant Christians!

We had tried to keep an eye out for Hobbit and LOTR filming sites and we came across one, used for the barrel running scene as the dwarves escaped from the Forest Elves dungeon. We had a great time jumping from the rocks into the deep pools, the girls shaming some teenagers into following them off the high ledges they used.

We kept moving, stopping briefly in Havelock, proclaiming itself “The Mussel Capital of NZ”. We found an excellent little chandlery where I finally found the wire mesh I needed to fix my water-maker. It is a good little store with helpful staff and a big section of the place put aside for second hand stuff which is well worth a rummage. To our surprise, on the other side of the road was a proper, traditional UK pub, the first we had seen. The place was newly re-opened and was very smartly done up. Owned by an ex sailor, the old photos and ships reliefs detailing his time at sea on blue water trawlers was fascinating. The beer was pretty good too.

We stopped at our last campsite on S island, just an hour away from the ferry. Smith’s Farm is a neat, well run and sheltered campsite, now the main endeavour of a farming family that just couldn’t make end’s meet with the moderately sized dairy herd they had. They sublet most of their land out but have held on to a few acres for the campsite. They still keep a few sheep, cattle, goats and rabbits but it is as an campsite attraction only. On your arrival you get a bag of pellet food and a muffin each. The muffins go down well and the petting animals are nearly round, so successful is the campsite! Its other attraction is a waterfall about a 30min walk into the hills where you can see glow worms once the sun has set. It is a easy walk up and back but remember to take a torch each as the ground in the forest is rough and it is pitch black under the canopy. We surprised a couple of possum on the way back down. I hadn’t realised how dumb these beasties are and was surprised at how close they allowed us to get to them, presumably dazzled by our lights. The farm has made a real effort to kill them off as they devastate local bird numbers but they aren’t been helped by the next farm down refusing to do likewise. Classed as vermin, it is stated NZ government aspiration to clear NZ of possum by 2040.

We met a Belgium family at the camp site with three kids are travelling the world by plane for a year. We helped them move their camping equipment in our car for the ferry crossing. They had been stuck with the need to change cars (bizarrely rentals needed to stay on the island they originated on – none too helpful when you are loaded down with camping equipment) and our poor beast was down on its axles as I drove on to the boat. The family had to walk aboard as there was no room for anyone but me! The crossing was benign and we parted ways with the promise of meeting up at the Wellington Museum the next day.

Update posts

Abel Tasman

February 3, 2017 stewart135 Leave a comment

The Abel Tasman is a glorious area. Situated at the NW corner of the South Island, it is an area of outstanding natural beauty by the sea extending into the hills, very much at the end of the road and it would be the last place we would visit with Alastair and Gill as they needed to head N to fly home to the UK.

We decided to stay at what turned out to be a fairly noisy campsite on a roundabout at the edge of Motueka, the last “big” town on the S edge of the park. However, the town was beside the sea on an estuary and an even bigger plus, had a marina less than a mile walk away which Alastair and myself were keen to look at. The campsite that we had originally thought about, set in the hills at the end of a rough track was being used for a week long festival, the festival we had been told about by a lady we had met in our very first campsite in Auckland the week we arrived in NZ. Called “Illuminate” it did sound fun, but not at $250 each for a weeks ticket being the only time period you could buy! There is a UK festival of the same name, organised by some of the same people. We may investigate when we get home.

We had a good look around the town, did some shopping, visited one of the best kept cemetery we had seen (H was most impressed by the flowers) and walked around the mudflats of the estuary.

We also ran in to Gollum, Smaug and Gandalf sitting on top of the local sports hall!

The coast line of the Abel Tasman is spectacular but unless you want to walk the trail which is a five day trek, the best way of seeing as much as you can is to take a fast boat out along the coast, get dropped off and then walk back to another prearranged pickup point. We went for the longest available walk, about 18km. It was a great trek. We saw and heard lots of cicadas, met a nosy Weka, another one of NZ’s flightless birds, tramped across lots of wire bridges and caught some great views. We stopped towards the end at the Pools of Venus for a cool down swim and to go down the natural slides. Only Eleanor and I had the nerve to go into the chill but wonderfully refreshing water.

For our last day we had planned to go up into the hills by way of a tortuously steep road. With the engines and gearbox straining hard, we ascended into grey cloud and lots of rain. With visibility no more than a few hundred metres, our hope of great views died and after a short reassessment at one of the viewpoints, we turned tail and headed back to Motueka. We did what Alastair said we had to do on such a day and found a pub. We had to wait for it to open but it turned in to a very civilised afternoon, sampling a few of the local microbrewery produced ales. We shopped in the town, dodging the rain. Eleanor, Hannah and I had an interesting time at the local gun shop, admiring the kids .22 rifles in neon blue and I admiring somewhat bigger calibres. Hunting is a big deal in NZ and gun ownership levels are high. Interestingly, the incidence of gun crime is very low which would suggest that the NZ attitude to their use is a healthier one than the US, where the need for “protection” far outweighs hunting for the pot.

We said our goodbyes to Gill and Alastair as they headed back up towards Auckland to put the boat to bed and fly back to the UK. We had a wonderful time with them and even if there was a requirement to save their bleeding ears from the constant flow of consciousness of our eldest every now and then, they were marvellous with the kids. Of course, grown ups, still travelling with their teddy bears (Pickles and Habitat respectively) suggests that they are both still very much young at heart too! Our grateful thanks for their company throughout our travels of the S island. They helped make NZ special for us all but our friendship goes back to Galapagos. We have heard that they won’t be returning to the boat for perhaps another year whilst they sort a few things out in the UK so we are looking forward to catching up with them on our return in December.