Navire's blog

We counted ourselves lucky to find a suitable weather window within a week of being ready to leave
Wellington. We've been on this voyage for three weeks and most of our movements have been
determined for us by the weather.

The Wairarapa Coast passage was dominated by two things. Foremost was to put this fickle and
dangerous part of the coast behind us. The other was 'getting our sea legs'. We were all a little clumsy
and unsteady on our feet. Janet, true to form, was unsteady also in her gut.

Tauranga to Tuhua
Janet, December 10
PICS: Tuhua
Xmas cake and tea & decoration
Photo of D with margarita

“Two clicks to starboard,” calls a voice from the cabin.
I cross the cockpit and push twice on the right-hand button of the autopilot, steering the boat two degrees closer to our course.
I look at the sky, vast, unencumbered by land, unlike Wellington Harbour which is surrounded by hills that play havoc with the sky-scape.

Tauranga Janet “How many?” David spluttered into his wine glass.
“Sixty” I said proudly.
This is how many people are following us on our blog.
“Ooh, now I feel self-conscious about writing,” David lamented.
It was day one in Tauranga and we’d got our first blog post up, sending an email to friends and family inviting them to follow us. We were absolutely delighted with the response.
The Tauranga stop was to provision for a ten-day sojourn around Coromandel, and to farewell our friend Barkie, He’d crewed with us up the East Coast. Having him along allowed us to get six precious hours off between watches instead of the barely three we have when its just the two of us. Many thanks for coming along for the ride Barkie, and for the chopping board that fits beautifully into the top of the sink, and for making our electric bilge pump go much better.
Arriving in our berth at 10am, exhausted, we fell into our bunks, grateful to be tied up to a jetty, no more course to keep or sails to set, for a couple of days. However being in port is usually a busy time. It means domestics for me - laundry, shopping, and cleaning. And for David it means tracking down materials and parts, and fixing things. Life on a yacht is very pink and blue at times.
But being in port also means seeing a new place, internet access, and making new friends. Firstly we met the boat next door, Westerly from Nelson, and her crew Al and Kelcey, and Ralph the six month-old Jack Russel, who we immediately wanted to adopt.
“Hi, where are you from?” “Nelson, and you?” “Wellington. What kind of hull is that?” I kid you not, this is virtually always the first thing a male yachtie asks after saying hello, and sometimes they even dispense with that.
But I always like this next bit: “Come for a drink.” It was duly arranged for 5pm.
We’ve had the most amazing hospitality on this trip. Maybe it’s about not having a car. Suddenly people are willing to spend extraordinary amounts of time driving us around.
Today a man we’d met once briefly in Wellington, drove us everywhere we needed to go, for a whole day. He is Kim Price, the best mate of our dear friend Piet. We called Kim just to say hello when we arrived, and we’ve had the full service ever since. He is a fellow yachtie and understands the challenges of being in a foreign port and not knowing your way around. He drove us to all the shops we needed, including a South African cheese and sausage shop. I was in heaven, ordering one of each of all the sausages. Our freezer is now a veritable delicatessen.
However the Gisborne people weren’t even yachties, not even blood relations, being David’s ex-wife’s family. But no, we were family, and we got driven around, laundry done, and were loved and fed. Many thanks to you a With clean bodies, clean laundry, more food and fuel, we departed Tauranga on Wednesday into a stiff breeze that soon died out on us. The iron sail was commissioned. We’ve done an awful lot of motoring on this trip. But, whatever it takes to get to our next destination.
PS we are now at Great Mercury Island. Will catch posts up soon.

Gisborne to Tauranga We keep looking at each other in wonder and saying, “We are doing it!”.
We’ve had this dream for so long, and now it is actually happening. Most of you know that our trip was delayed a year, for me a long uncomfortable year of being largely unemployed despite endless, and somewhat soul-destroying, job hunting.
But now after only one week away I’m totally immersed in this journey of ours, and the last 12 months of angst has fallen away. After months, nay years, of trip planning, the very nature of sailing is forcing me into being present. When I am at sea that’s all there is. My natural compulsion to plan (OCD some may call it)– What’s next? Where are we going? What do we need to do – largely evaporates. Our new life is starting to emerge.
Two nights previously we’d left Gisborne, after more wonderful hospitality and delicious BBQ food, this time from Doug, a former VUW colleague of David’s. We cast off at the crack of dawn with the prospect of a fairly windy day. As almost always the weather dictates our movements. If we’d left leaving till the next day, a calmer one, we would have encountered headwinds all the way across the Bay of Plenty on day two. We tacked up the East Coast, the boisterous wind making the sea lumpy and uncomfortable. Tiredness, wetness, and my nemesis, sea-sickness, set in by the end of the day.
On David’s watch he turned the corner taking us around East Cape and into Bay of Plenty. To my delight I woke for my watch at 3am feeling normal. After having lost the will to live on my last watch, I felt revitalised. The full moon lit up the sea, casting its shimmering path northward. I remembered again the joys of night watch under the stars, the solitude, the connection with my environment, the privilege of getting to experience this rare moment, and the adventure of it all.
As the moon set a golden dawn filled the sky behind us and a gentle northerly breeze came up. I set the sails and turned off the engine which had pushed us through the night after the wind died out. I love a night watch when I’m feeling well, none else is up, no other boats around, nothing to do except keep lookout and keep on course.
On the way across the Bay of Plenty we were treated to the spectacular site of White Island in full flow, billowing out tons of steam.
Wearily after two days at sea we encountered the narrow channel at the entrance to Tauranga Harbour that has a tidal flow of four knots. Given our wee vessel only does about six knots, that didn't give us much manoeuvrability. So our second night at sea saw us hoved-to outside the harbour entrance (reefed mainsail and tiller set in opposite directions, the boat drifting at 1.5 knots). We had to do this because the marina, just inside the harbour, due to the speed of the tide in there, only allows boats to enter at slack tide, an hour at either high or low tide, and that also has to coincide with their office hours. They send out a man in a red inflatable dinghy to guide you to your berth At 6am on arrival day, having barely slept, I rolled out of bed for my watch. I stared bleary-eyed at the chart and calculated how much we had drifted throughout the night while hoved-to. Bugger, more miles than I’d calculated, and I hadn’t allowed any contingency time. Engine on, untie the tiller, sails up, get her on course and up to speed, engine off and let the sails pull us into Tauranga in order to get into our berth at slack tide. The man in the red dinghy was there.
“Welcome to Tauranga” he called and motored on ahead to our berth.