Cleaning up and on to some Cruising

The day after the Cup was over the village started to be broken down. We got organized to go off cruising for a little over a week. Our first destination was Great Barrier Island. From there we would see where the weather and wind took us.

The stage being dismantled
Media center packing up
Marks all out of the water
Provisioned the Gunboat
All cleaned up and ready to go
Leaving Auckland behind

Great Barrier Island

We left the Viaduct in Auckland Friday, March 19th at 2pm motoring until the wind came in at 4:45. By 5:45 we had a reef in the main and the J2 (Solent, small jib) up. It got a little rough as we passed through the area wide open to the Ocean but the boat handled it well. We pulled into Man of War Passage, Governor’s Pass a bit after 7pm with a beautiful sunset beginning behind us. We were at anchor in Kaiarara Bay in Port Fitzroy at 7:30pm.

Little Barrier Island
Entering Governor’s Pass
sunset looking behind us

The next morning, Saturday, we had a few light passing showers. Phil and I went off for a hike mid-day on the trail towards the highest peak, Mt. Hobson. Our destination was part way to Kauri Dam. It was a steady climb up with many stairs. We saw the old dam that was mostly destroyed in a storm in 2014. The Great Barrier was extensively logged of Kauri trees for years. In the 1920’s three dams were built along the Kaiaraara stream to facilitate the removal of logs from areas too remote and too steep for other methods. The following is a link that will give you a little history about the dams and Kauri trees.

https://www.thebarrier.co.nz/History/kauridam.htm

As with many islands in NZ, it is slowly being restored to it’s original state. We walked another mile or so past the dam to be awarded with amazing views.

Rainbow from a morning shower
our landing spot
Arethusa from the beginning of the trail
one of many fixed bridges
clean and disinfect your boots to be sure you aren’t carrying anything harmful to the plants
one of many staircases
the Kaiaraara Stream
the old Kauri Dam
a slip
another bridge
stairs to a swing bridge

Moving on south to Tryphena Harbour, Great Barrier

After returning from our tramp we decided to move to a new harbor. We pulled up anchor and sailed upwind a couple hours south to Tryphena Harbour. Sunday afternoon Phil and I took a walk to town to an Irish pub for a beer. We met our crew there. We decided to come back for dinner and comedy night. It was quite the excursion coming and going by dinghy to the beach. There are very few dry landing spots in NZ. The tides are up to at least 9 feet so makes storing your dinghy at your landing spot tricky at times. We had a fun evening out.