Over the last week we have been quite happy to be stuck in port with strong westerly and north westerly winds and lots of bouts of heavy rain showers. The whole country has been experiencing this horrible weather and the weather maps are quite a sight with isobars packed closely together and weather systems that wont move away.
We have not been bored as we have had a number of visitors. We have enjoyed catching up again with the Gwillam family who we first met in Whakatane and whose family had owned Gunner in her days as a fishing vessel. It has been great to hear of the various stories remembered by Jenny, her sister in law Pam who was Noel’s daughter through to his granddaughter and grandson. Pam used to go out on Gunner on fishing trips with her dad so had very vivid and happy memories of these times. Someone else remembered the story of a flying fish coming in through a porthole and landing up in the frying pan where dinner was being fried up.
We have also been well looked after by the Horns who have lent us a car. We enjoyed a night at their home on Friday along with Ron and Linda.
Sunday 17/07/2011
Eventually we are on our way home after twelve days of atrocious weather which we sat out in Tauranga. We kept ourselves amused with drives around the area thanks to Martins car, visited a museum with a lot of vintage and interesting old airplanes and on Friday drove up to Rotorua for a visit to the Patchell offices.
Saturday was looking good for departure and after going out for breakfast with Ian and Caroline and then dropping the car back to Martin and Cec’s we packed all the loose stuff away that gets scattered around in port, filled the water tanks and left the marina at midday.
We could not have picked a better day with a calm sea and light breeze. By the time we were half way up Matakana Island we had the mainsail up and the breeze strengthened to about 20 knots of south westerly which was fine as it was on our stern quarter. We put the anchor down in Boat Harbour just after dark and spent a calm night in this picturesque bay.
We woke up early this morning to a stunning sunrise and a flat sea. Today was even better than yesterday and we didn’t get very far before we decided to do a spot of fishing. The fishing is not as good as Fiordland but we managed to get a couple of snapper for our dinner before moving on. We chugged slowly northwards past Hot Water Beach – an interesting beach where hordes of people bathe in any weather by digging holes in the sand which fill up with hot thermal water.
We tried fishing again around the area known as Hole in the Wall with no luck and then continued up the Coromandel Peninsula as far as Port Charles. As it has been such a stunning day we didn’t feel like rushing back to Auckland and why hurry at this stage!
We are anchored for probably our final night of this seven month voyage in a beautiful spot with magnificent views out to Great Barrier Island. At 8.30pm we tuned in to Bluff Fishermans Radio and spoke to Meri for the last time to thank her for the wonderful attention and service she has provided us, keeping us in touch with the weather and making sure we were safe.
Monday 18/07/2011
1200 - Cape Colville
This is it - the final run to home.
Tune in another day when we will give you some facts and figures from the trip and will load a whole lot more photos when we have a decent broadband connection again.
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