Winter Cruising in New Zealand

“When are you coming home?” was initially the question The First Mate heard from family and friends as the impact of Covid-19 spread around the world, but by early June, as word of New Zealand’s success with Covid-19 became known, she no longer received that question. Instead, friends and family were telling her “Don’t come home. Stay where you are!”

The program to contain Covid-19 that was implemented effectively here in New Zealand is not the solution for every country. The United States is far larger than New Zealand with 60 times the number of people. Still, the contrast between what we saw done here and what we saw being done or, more to the point, not being done back home in the States could not have been more extreme. Here in New Zealand, both the government and the people have acted sensibly and continue to act so. As a result, life is back to normal here. On the other hand, the disjointed and haphazard federal response by the United States to Covid-19 has led to disheartening results. The many pronouncements and tweets by President Trump are appalling and embarrassing. The actions taken at the state level by many of the governors make us shake our heads. The fact that there was even an argument that gun shops were essential businesses was beyond belief. The reactions to Covid-19 by many of our fellow countrymen are so dumb that, were they not so harmful, they would be comical. In fact, it is often treated by the international news as such. The image of the United States as a country to be envied is long gone, and we find that our international friends grieve for our country as much as we do.

Initially, The Captain had thought that we could go home around the end of June, but as we monitored the Covid-19 statistics for the United States on a daily basis, he kept pushing out the projected return date. We just saw no improvement. When people started talking about the country’s numbers starting to level out, he commented that if you take the improvement in New York, Connecticut and New Jersey out of the equation, it shows that the rest of the country is just getting worse. His hoped for return date slipped to the end of July.

When we finally do go home, we will need a place to store Avante. and it will most likely need to be a long-term one, for with the way New Zealand is conscientiously keeping its borders closed, we suspect it will be quite a while before Americans are allowed into their country again. With most of the South Pacific tropical islands still not welcoming cruisers, there are more than the usual number of international boats here, and marina space is at a premium. With both those facts in mind, we decided to secure our berth in the marina by booking it for the next year.

After our first trip out of the Bay of Islands in mid-May to Whangaroa Harbour and the Cavalli Islands, we spent a week back in the bay, hiding from bad weather in the form of rain and heavy winds most of that time. Then, we moved into our berth in the Bay of Islands Marina for the first time in 2 1/2 months. We provisioned the boat and took care of some maintenance and repairs. At that time, New Zealand was under Alert Level 2, and restaurants were open with social distancing restrictions. We were able to enjoy our first restaurant dinners since March.

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Tuesday, June 9th – New Zealand moves to Covid-19 Alert Level 1. After a period of time with no new cases and no community transfer, New Zealand has further eased restrictions. At Level 1, all life is back to normal except for the country’s borders which remain closed. Everything can open again, and there are no social distancing restrictions or limits on group sizes. Regarding borders, anyone can leave the country, but the only ones who can enter are New Zealand citizens and residents, and they must undergo a mandatory 14-day supervised quarantine in a hotel room.

Despite the fact that we are paying for a marina berth, we decide that since we are going to be in New Zealand for at least another month, we should get out and do some winter cruising. We are fueled and provisioned for over 3 weeks. The diver has just cleaned our boat’s bottom. Weather looks fine for the next couple of days, and in two days, winds should be good for sailing out to Great Barrier Island. Leaving the marina, we head out to a favorite anchorage in Urupukapuka Bay, and arriving there with afternoon time to spare, we set out for a hike in the green hills.

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Sunday, June 14th – 0800 – Within 10 minutes of leaving the narrow rocky harbor entrance to Tutukaka, sails are up, engine is off, and we are on a hard port tack sailing toward Great Barrier Island which is 55nm away.

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Port Fitzroy is a great place for winter cruising in New Zealand because it is relatively small and almost totally enclosed. You can find good shelter from almost any wind direction in one of its many bays. Normally, we could easily stay here for over a week, but with limited hiking, we quickly exhaust our shore activities, and, of course, with the cool water temperature, we are not interested in swimming or any other water activities. Soon, we are ready to move on. The Captain would like to head north and circumnavigate Great Barrier Island like we did several years ago, but the wind forecasts are not looking good to allow us comfortable anchorage on the eastern side of the island. Instead, we decide to move down the west coast of the island to Whangaparapara Harbour, stopping at Bowling Alley Bay for a night.

Saturday June 20th – We arrive in Whangaparapara Harbour. This is another one of our favorite anchorages. A popular spot, there are usually lots of other boats here, but now in winter, there are no other boats in the bay other than some local boats on moorings. Several of the hiking trails here are more gradual than those in Port Fitzroy. They run along old tramlines which were small railroads built by the lumber industry to haul Kauri logs out of the bush.

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Sunday, June 21st – Rain, again! We hunker in for another very quiet day on the boat. By late morning, however, the wind starts blowing from SE rather than the forecasted E to NE. Blowing right into the bay, we are now uncomfortably anchored on a lee shore and being buffeted by waves. In rain and wind, we raise anchor and move to nearby Rapid Bay. It proves to be much more comfortable here since we are not being blown into land, but the swell remains annoying.

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Tuesday June 23rd – The latest forecast shows that weather will be really nasty in two days with heavy rain and gale force winds from NE. We definitely need to find a very secure anchorage to just hunker down for that, so it’s back north to Port Fitzroy. The good news is that we get a nice sail on the way there. This time in Port Fitzroy we anchor in Kiwiriki Bay where we spend 3 days sheltering from the weather and never leave the boat.

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We are experiencing winter cruising in New Zealand. Weather is cool, wet and windy with a few fine spells. Cruising is nice during these fine spells, but they only last for a couple of days. Winds tend to be strong, and we have had gale force winds more than once a week. This time of year, our anchorages are being chosen more by wind direction than by where we want to travel. Often, we go to a sheltered location to hunker down for several days while bad weather moves through. There is a lot happening on the typical New Zealand weather map at this time of year, and the forecasts change regularly. Every morning, The Captain reviews the latest ones to try to plan our next few days, though often it can only be for the day ahead.

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Avante was not designed as a cold weather sailing vessel. It does not have a hard dodger, an enclosed steering station or diesel heat. On our first trip to Alaska, we bought two little electric heaters to warm up the cabin on that trip. Fortunately, they are still on the boat. However, they require a fair amount of electricity, and we can only turn them on when the generator is running. In the morning when The Captain gets up, he turns on the generator and one heater. The hot water heater senses the generator running and automatically turns on drawing more current. Next on is the espresso machine to make our cappuccinos, and that puts us near the maximum generator output. Only when the cappuccinos are made and the espresso machine turned off can we turn on the second heater.

Saturday, June 27th – The real severe weather is over for a while, but we are not planning on leaving Port Fitzroy, because forecasts are predicting 20 – 30 knot winds from NW for several days. Nearby Smokehouse Bay would be better in NW winds than Kiwiriki Bay, so we move over there. Smokehouse Bay has several rustic facilities on shore for boaters. There is a small cabin where you can heat water to take a bath or do your laundry. There is even a wood fired pizza oven. We are not interested in using these facilities, but we go ashore to see the place again and to stretch our legs. This time we find a small trail to one side that leads up the hill. We have been sitting on the boat for several days and have not had any exercise, so we follow it up. To our delight, this trail connects with a series of old forest roads made by a former cattle and sheep rancher.

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Tuesday, June 30th – The Captain had been hoping to head south from Great Barrier Island during the next settled weather period to either the Mercury Islands or the Coromandel Peninsula. It looked like we would have a few nice days ahead of us, but the wind has shifted to SW making it more difficult to head south and seriously limiting our anchorage choices in the Mercury Islands. Unhappily, another change in our plans is forced due to the weather. We will sail west to Kawau Island. Because Kawau Island is just off the coast and not far north of Auckland, it is a very popular place during the summer season. We have been there before but only very briefly. There should not be many people around at this time of year, and it will be a good time to explore. Most importantly, the island has several secure anchorages for when the weather deteriorates, as we are learning it does frequently. We sail on a hard port tack the entire way to Kawau Island. It’s a good thing that Avante sails to weather well, because the wind always seems to be forward of the beam.

Avante has given us a relatively trouble-free time, but halfway across the Hauraki Gulf on this 30nm trip, our jib halyard chafes through. Fortunately, the jib does not slide down very far, and we are able to furl it. We then raise the staysail for the rest of our trip. The bad news is that when the jib halyard chafed through, that halyard slid down inside of the mast, and The Captain is going to have to go up the mast at some point to re-rig it. Reaching Kawau Island, we drop anchor in Vivian Bay. It’s a pretty bay, but the land around it is privately owned, and there is little to do ashore other than walk the beach in front of a lot of houses that are boarded up for the winter.

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This is an issue that necessitates cutting our cruise short, for we will need the services of a rigger to repair this problem. Since we are already paying for a berth in the Opua Marina and know the rigger there, that is where we will head as soon as we get favorable weather for the trip.

Meanwhile, more rain and gale force winds from N to NW are forecast for Sunday. We would be better sheltered from that wind direction if we just move across to the other side of Bon Accord Harbour, but it looks like nearby North Cove might be even better, especially if the wind backs to W. We raise anchor and move 2nm to North Cove. This bay is filled with moorings, but since there is only one other boat on an anchor, we are able to tuck in and anchor just outside the mooring field.

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Finally, it is looking like the end of the week might bring some settled weather and be a good time to make the 100nm trip north to Opua. With strong winds from the west forecast right now, we cannot leave just yet. We are, however, starting to run out of some basic provisions, and the best place to grocery shop is in the town of Warkworth which is accessible by dinghy from Mahurangi Harbour. Coincidentally, Mahurangi Harbour also has several anchorages that provide good shelter from the west, so we raise anchor and move, in the rain, 8nm south. Mahurangi Harbour is a big bay but it gets shallow quickly forcing us to anchor not far from the mouth of the bay.

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As we climb out of the dinghy onto the Warkworth dock, the rain starts. The First Mate laughs at how disreputable we look. She wants to take a photo of us, but The Captain refuses. Walking into town, we find a nice restaurant for lunch while a shower passes.

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The next day is also windy, rainy and cold with a high temperature for the day of only 52 degrees Fahrenheit. The good news is that the barometer is rising, and it looks like we will have decent weather over the next several days for our trip north to Opua.

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The next morning, we get started early for we have over 50nm to our destination of Tutukaka. Normally, that distance is not a long day for us, but with light wind, we will have to motor which is slower than sailing. The days, too, are short at this time of year, and we want to be in Tutukaka Harbour and anchored well before dark. The Captain is not unhappy to have to motor all day, for given the problem with our inner forestay, motoring on calm seas is much better than bouncing around on waves.

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By Sunday evening, we are back in our berth in Opua Marina. Rob, our rigger, is at the boat first thing on Monday. The repair is not difficult, but parts will have to be ordered and the repair will require a special machine. Rob and The Captain remove the inner forestay and furler and take it over to the shop. Rob receives the necessary parts, makes the repairs, and has things ready to reinstall by Friday morning, but with rain showers moving in, we defer the installation until Monday.

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The one big positive benefit we have with marina life is that we can stay warm and dry on Avante. We have borrowed a small 220v electric heater which runs on shore power, so we can keep it running whenever we want. (“24/7,” says The First Mate!) There is a restaurant in the marina that serves great dinners, and there are good restaurants in nearby Pahia and Kerikeri. As much as we prefer to be out on the boat, living on shore in the marina does have its benefits, and given fact that everything is totally normal with no social distancing or masks, life is good.

Such is winter cruising in New Zealand for us in the Year of Covid-19. We get out on the water for a few fine days and then find somewhere to hide when bad weather moves through. If it is only for a short while or not that bad, we’ll stay out an anchor, but after this last bout of heavy weather, we have decided to move into the marina when the forecast is for really heavy rain and winds. There we can stay warm, dry and securely tied to the dock. Although we can sail anywhere in New Zealand that we want, we have decided to stay north until the weather gets warmer.

When are we coming home? That is a good question. We have not missed a summer in Telluride in the twenty years that we have lived there and are totally frustrated to be missing this one. Now, as this is being written, The Captain no longer holds out hope of returning any time soon. The First Mate had been less hopeful than The Captain, but she still clung to some hope. When The Captain acknowledged that he no longer saw a window of opportunity to return to the States, the impact of that filled her with sadness and anger. We are deeply appreciative for the way we have been welcomed by New Zealand and for the ability to live without fear of Coronavirus. The First Mate views the refuge that New Zealand has given us as a gift, and though some may say she is making too strong a point, she feels that it would be morally wrong to squander such a gift. Therefore, together we plan to remain here until things improve back home. Sad we are to be forced to do so, but so very grateful. The First Mate titled their first blog in 2010 upon entering New Zealand after crossing the vast Pacific Ocean “Ah, New Zealand! We Made It!” Today, she can say, “Ah, New Zealand! We Love You!”