Tutukaka

Motorsailing against the wind for four hours once we came out of the
river leading to Whangarei we went to a beautiful anchorage here in
Kawhareva Bay near Tutukaka Harbour. New Zealand indeed is a sailor's
paradise and I start to understand, why there are so many sailors here.
Auckland is said to inhibit the largest amount of sailboats in the world
- probably followed by Sydney. I haven't seen it yet, but I will soon.
Just outside of the coast, in a distance of about 2 miles, there are
many little rock-islands and some bigger islands even. THe coast itself
(well, I only know the one of northern island til Whangarei) offers
wuite some shelters in beautiful bays.

This bay here is basically on the other side of the hill from Whangarei,
just about 20km (direct line) to the NE on the coast instead of at the
end of the river. But, to get here we had to travel about 60km, first
going about 28km SE to the exit of the river, then out to the coast line
and back up. So we had an 8hour trip for a distance that you can travel
by car in 20 min. That's a sailor's life.

In this bay here are many beautiful and quite expensive looking houses
here. At least anywhere elst in the civilized world you would pay a
fortune for these pieces of lot, overlooking a bay or being located
directly at the beach in the bay. If I had to choose a place to live, it
would be here indeed. This bay is full of rocks and rocks shore, hills
to climba and sandy beaches, just beautiful nature. Maybe i get to walk
and/or kajak around a bit tomorrow. We'll see what the wind does, if we
can go on tomorrow or not.

Opua to Whangarei

Our last trip with our crew, Anna and Tina, was from Opua to Whangarei. We sailed this trip in 2 days as we wanted to enjoy the beauty of the passage. In the Bay of Islands we found wonderful anchorages well protected from most winds where once Tina and I and once Anna and I wen up the hill to enjoy the most beautiful overview of the Bay. You'll see in the pictures.

Everything went well until we had to go against the wind in the river which carried us to Whangarei. Those 15 nm took us forever, about 4 hrs, with winds of up to 32knots against us. We had the current with us. In one way good, beacuse it kept us going, on the other hand not so good, because it produced steep waves which Alita was pounding in. The last challenge was the bridge right before coming to the Marina. We had to call the guy to open it. WIth the wind on the nose and no working Bow thruster we were not able to wait at the swimming dock but had to manouver in a very small area, which again, was very tricky because of the wind, current and missing bow thruster. But., we managed and finally arrived in the marina in the late afternoon on November 30th. So now, 5 days later, we are leaving here again after having shopped like crazy. Everything here is within walking distance from the harbour, which is nice. But now I can't see one more shop for a while...and I am really looking forward to going back to the calmer, beautiful Bay of Islands. Well, clam for a while. I heard that starting with christmas time this place gets crazy. Of course, it's a holiday paradise and summer vacation starts. Anyway, we'll go to the Marina there and the work on Alita starts. I will do some more touring around New Zealand, so you can hope for some more stories and pictures. What I can say for now: if you go to the Bay of Islands, lucky you, you'll enjoy it!!

Here are the pictures from the trip:
http://sailing.smichah.de/#!album-84

Here are some:

Photos with compliments from Tina:

  My pictutres from the trip

And here the "Vanillekipferl", that I made for our celebration of the 1. Advent (sunday, dec. 1st)

Yummy.