"Good water, good life; poor water, poor life; no water, no life" Sir Peter Blake


Saturday, February 23, 2013

A Well Deserved Break!

A combination of a 4 day break for the workers at Emirates Team New Zealand and a huge high coming over the country, we planned a well deserved escape from the dock!  We also had Paul, Craig's dad along with us which was his first time away on the boat since we launched 1 year ago in the Bay of Islands! (Yes it has been 1 year already on the 10th February!)

Leaving Auckland City - yeeeha!

Craig's Dad Paul, enjoying being out on the water

Spot the wrinkles!


Leaving on Thursday evening we headed down the harbour and had a lovely sail to Islington Bay, Rangitoto  It was nice to leave when everyone else was on the motorway heading home - it meant we had a good parking spot for the night without having 200 other boats too!  A mini muffin with a candle was a birthday cake for Craig.

Happy birthday Daddy!

The next morning was spent splashing around in the water, and Freya being the mermaid she is, swam around the entire boat by HERSELF! And believe me, it is a loooong way around a catamaran!  After seeing a big 'splash' in the water not far from the boat, it was me who wanted her to get out, she was fine with it and couldn't wait to jump back in again!

 


  Miss 'Mermaid Freya'

A lazy morning in Islington Bay, we decided to head out to catch up with friends around Rakino Island.  We've always loved this island and would often venture there in our previous yachts from the Weiti River.  It has no mains power so everyone on the island has either solar or wind generation.  There is a postal ferry service that sometimes takes passengers, but getting to and from the island by ferry is limited, so other modes of transport are required, i.e. like your own boat.


The blokes!

We spotted an amazing 'ball' of bait fish just around the entrance of Woody Bay, and after trying to catch a kahawai for around 45 minutes (we were going backwards and forwards for ages trolling 2 lures!), we finally hooked up and caught dinner!  It was a great relief to have a fish on board!  So it was scallops (thanks to our friends), and fish on the bbq - real kiwi summer food!  After dinner, just before bed Freya was wanting to do fishing and ended up catching 4 parore fish for breakfast!! (they are a very dense fish, but great tasting!)


Dinner!

Mmmmm...smells good!!

Kids playing at Woody Bay, Rakino Island

Saturday morning brought more light winds so we headed out in search for the scallop patch - I managed to get two (free-diving in 4.7m of water), and Craig spent a bit more time in the water and got 10 - enough for a wee taste.  They were hard to find and scarce, as it seems to be a popular spot!

After seeing the sea breeze come up we decided that a sail was in order and headed over to Oneroa, Waiheke where it seemed the other half of Auckland had arrived already!  We had a great sail across, only 45minutes.  Flat water and a sea breeze are perfect sailing conditions.

I still remember how to shell scallops!

Anchoring out the back (away from the mass of white vessels scattered in further) we anchored in 16m of water, having to put all but 3m of our chain out.  It meant that the ground swell that was coming in the bay didn't really affect us as much as in further which was a positive thing.

After a relaxing evening watching 'Auckland' in front of us, we headed to bed early, then woke up trying to catch breakfast.  We had a lovely morning with a visits from friends who I used to work with in town and  another catamaran owner, Stephen Prinselaar and his kids, Saskia & Luka and a toddler friend of theirs, Ruby - our kids had met Ruby at Coromandel on our Xmas break so it was great to see her again!  Stephen also had use of their friends dinghy with a 50hp motor on the back!!


Happy Birthday Stephen! (50hp and 50 years!)

 When the bay emptied, we got ourselves a 'spot' closer to the beach and took the kids ashore for a bit of sand and a collection of pipis.  We caught up with Rex & Anne McCamish (who used to own McMoggy, another catamaran), who had been on the sculpture walk at Waiheke.  They also moved their powercat Waikhaya in beside us and we had a great afternoon/evening together.  After returning to Mazuran, we decided to run the engines to charge the batteries, only to find that one of the engines wasn't pumping water through.  After inspection of the inlet and water trap we found not only 1 piece of seaweed but a whole bowl full!  We spent close to a hour and a half retrieving it!

Oneroa Bay, Waiheke Island

 Blake and his oar!

 
 The mermaids drying out....

Scallop shell skimming

Mazuran seems so small from a gin palace!

Pulling out a bowl full of seaweed from our engine intake!  (the bowl actually got full by the time we had finished!

Monday morning was another lovely morning and we spent it doing as little as possible.  The kids helped with making pipi fritters for morning tea - yum!  We also had a visit from a mother duck and her one duckling.  It was so cute!  We then saw a large kingfish not far from the boat - much to the kids delight,  it wasn't interested in ducklings.

Kids making pipi fritters (note there are more shells and not many pipis in the mixture!)

Our neighbours from the viaduct, Thalia, coming out to Oneroa for the day.

We made our way slowly back to Auckland, stopping off at Motuihe channel for a fish. Poppa rigged up Blake's fishing rod with a softbait, and being in the water for approximately 1 minute, I heard the excitement of Craig saying "Blake's got one..."  Blake feeling the load (we didn't think it was heavy, really!), said he couldn't reel it up, but with bribery of a chocolate biscuit, he managed to haul in this HUGE snapper!! Seriously, I didn't think it was going to be larger than the piddly ones that I was catching so I was SO surprised when this rather large pink fish was landed!!! Cameras and videos and lots of excitement as Blake tried to lift his prize!  A well earned chocolate biscuit!



Blake's whoppa snapper!

After trying to fish for it's partner and not succeeding, we decided that we had better head back to the Viaduct.  The breeze was a nice SW12-15knots with puffs up to 20 so it was a lovely sail back, on one tack.



After we tied up at the Viaduct, we got out the oven and had a lovely fresh snapper for tea!  Thanks Blake!! And certainly it was a well deserved break!



2 comments:

  1. Stephen looks like Billy Connolly :DD and congrats to Blake for the snapper - indeed a nice one.

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    1. Yes he does!! (I shall tell him that too) We just got given 2 snapper this evening also from guys who went on a fishing charter today! Yum. Hope you are well. It's been amazing skating weather! (lots of people too!)

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