Napier and Gisborne

Thursday 23/06 – Sunday 26/06/2011

Gunner at the Napier Sailing Club

So far we have enjoyed being in Napier again but it looks like we will be stuck for a few more days to come. The forecast is all over the place but with anything from 35 to 50 knots of Southwesterlies we will wait here a little longer.

Having found out that a friend who we had not seen since our days living in Wellington was now living just outside of Napier we made contact and enjoyed catching up on about 10 years of news. Charmayne is an artist and she took us to see her home/studio/workshop where she creates wonderful jewellery as well as holding classes. We enjoyed a drive around the bay towards Cape Kidnappers and lunch of magnificent seafood chowder at the Clifton café on the beach.

Monday 27/06 – Tuesday 27/06/2011


After lunch we fuelled up the boat and headed out of Napier harbour into Hawke Bay. This is an enormous bay and it took about 7 hours to arrive at the northern entrance to the bay. The swells rolling across the bay were large but there was little wind so the sea conditions were fair. We rounded Portland Island off Mahia Peninsula at dark and had an reasonably good trip up the coast to Poverty Bay, Gisborne where we made the decision to go into Gisborne rather than try to reach East Cape before a forecasted Sou-easterly front that would make rounding the Cape unpleasant the next day.

We punched into a 20knot head wind across Poverty Bay and arrived into Gisborne harbour at around 3am and found our way into a vacant berth at the marina for some sleep. We have found that these single overnight legs of the voyage seem to take more out of us, probably because we don’t get into a set watch rhythm and just take snatches of sleep during the night.

Wednesday 28/06 – Friday 01/07/2011

In between bouts of showers and the strong winds that have prevailed over the last few days, we have walked the streets and shops of Gisborne. During a walk along the waterfront where the swells were smashing over the harbour seawall and up the beach, we were glad that we had made the decision to come into the port rather than battle the big seas up the East coast.

We have decided that it is looking okay for leaving tomorrow although there could still be quite large swells evidenced by the fact that a large log carrier ship postponed their departure out of the harbour at the last minute by 24 hours due to high swells still running.

Next stop Tauranga.