New Zealand
December 2023
After getting settled into our berth, our first task was to give the boat a good wash. She hadn’t seen a high-pressure hose since we’d left Cairns in May and needed a jolly good scrubbing. That took the better part of a day and then we headed off to the little café in the marina complex for a well-deserved coffee.
Look what was waiting for us at the Marina in Opua. Nordhavn keeps a register of their boats and the distances that they have travelled (all the information is volunteered – but we’re an honest bunch). In Vanuatu we clicked over 10 000nm, so we get a little flag that we can fly at the front of the boat, if we want to show off. (We don’t. I have all our national flags, club burgees and distance pennants hanging above the stairs inside). Opal Lady herself, has a total of 32 000 nm under her hull. She is quite a well-travelled little lady.
Opua itself is a very small village, centered around the marina. The marina services the Bay of Islands and is a key entry and departure point for international boats. The marina precinct has a great café, exceptional laundry facilities, two really good chandleries and a short walk away a small shop which carries essential goods (and seriously delicious hot pies). More importantly from Peter’s point of view, the shop opens at 6:30am and has great take away coffee. The Yacht Club is next door and serves good pub food at reasonable prices.
Now this is a serious laundry set up. The washers go from 8kG to 28kg with the matching driers opposite. There is a card vending machine, so there are no coins to worry about or to get stuck in the mechanism. And it is all very clean. [2025 note: I was talking with a delightful German lady in the laundry at Marsden Cove and she was joking about putting out a book discussing her experiences with marina laundries across the Pacific. You wouldn’t think that a marina should consider getting the right laundry facilities to be as big a consideration as putting in the right sized pylons. But if you’re a boater who hasn’t seen land for ages, has a trolley sized pile of personal washing, plus a manky mountain of salty bedding, cushion covers and floor mats to wash, the laundry can make a big first impression].
After looking after the boat, the next thing on the agenda was… nothing. We like to (and need to) just relax after a long trip. We had 12 days before we could pick Taz up from quarantine, but unfortunately, I can only keep Peter relaxing for so long.
Check out the fog over the marina as we headed out for a 2 ½ hr walk around the coast to breakfast. It was quite thick and eerie. Terry said that fog was a not uncommon navigation consideration at this time of year. We are also finding it quite cold, having spent the last 3 years in the tropics. I have put a blanket on the bed and am working towards bravely changing into shorts (from my one pair of trousers) by the afternoon. I fear we will need to do some clothes shopping, as we have only a tropical wardrobe on board.
Breakfast will be in Paihia. It is the nearest town and 6km away by road. Pahia is the central point for tourist activities in the Bay of Islands. It regularly gets swamped by all the passengers from cruise ships. A big tourist attraction here is the Waitangi complex where the Waitangi Treaty between the British settlers and the Māori was signed in 1840. [More on that in a later blog.]
We were walking with Terry and Jenny from AraRoa. Terry was very keen to share with us his knowledge and love for his homeland and moved into the role of tour guide – he told us the name of every type of tree. There was a test later whether we had remembered them. I think it is not intentional, but Peter manages to mispronounce every single name. Terry and Jenny could definitely be proud of New Zealand, the walk was beautiful. Especially with all the Pohutukawa trees flowering a brilliant red. These trees grow to a large size and get all gnarly and twisted – they look very spectacular when in flower.
After a rather huge breakfast it was time to visit the local supermarket and replenish supplies before catching a taxi back to Opua.
While at Opua, Peter was working with Dean and his guys at Marine Electrics to resolve several longer-term problems that we had been unable to sort out while in Vanuatu and New Caledonia. Over a couple of weeks, they problem solved the charging system issues. It turned out to be inside the inverter charger unit itself, so was solved by installing our spare unit (I knew there was a reason we had carried that blue box around with us). They also removed the electric toilet which had failed in Vanuatu and discovered a seized bearing was the cause of the failure. Peter was very impressed with the efforts they made to make sure each issue was resolved properly before we were due to head off again in late December.
The other major work involved bringing the Port stabilizer back on-line. Peter was given the name of a hydraulic company in Whangarei called McRaes Global. Their manager Phil was great to deal with and in short time we not only had two refurbished rams, but Phil supplied a chappie to help with the fitting. The 12th December and we are in the perfect country for viewing the meteor showers this month. Tonight, it’s the Geminids (they come through every year – or we go through them), but there is also expected to be a new lot left by comet 46P/Wirtanen that will possibly only ever be seen tonight and in New Zealand! [It should have been an active sky, but we were heavily overcast allll night – phooey!]
We took the Ferry over to the original capital of New Zealand, Russell. Originally called Kororāreka it was notorious in the 19th century as the ‘Hellhole of the South Pacific’, due to it being a place where sealers, whalers and traders came for rest and recreation, and was known to be very “lively”. There is no trace of the hell hole left, and our lunch at the Duke of Marlborough Hotel was very civilized and yummy. I don’t think that our plan to escape the croissants in New Caledonia by coming to NZ is going to work – The bread for the table was deep fried!! But there are lots of walks in NZ and they all seem to involve hills. So, we can work off the calories (in theory).
There is always something interesting to see at a marina. Here we have what appear to be polar opposites along-side each other. Galena was built in 1973 89’ (27m) for the Danish royal family and has a lot of shiny wood and brass to keep a deck hand busy.
Artifact is a 2020 Nobisbrug (German) built 80m super yacht, built for the family of the clever Canadian chappy who developed the blackberry phones. They make quite the counterpoint to each other, but from an historic viewpoint are actually similar, in that they were both built as the epitome of luxury ocean cruising at the time.
Finally, it was time to rescue Taz from quarantine. We hired a car and headed down to Auckland a day earlier, as Peter had set his mind on getting a scooter to hoon around the marina. I had my doubts on the wisdom of this, but as usual Peter had spent a week researching and knew exactly which model would suit us.
Not this one!! (It can do 110km/hr)
Fortunately, he has decided to be sensible, and has ‘settled’ for the one that only gets up to 35km/hr, with a range of up to 40km. It also only weighs 17kg, so I can handle it on/off the boat. I have invested in a new underwater camera and an additional housing for deeper diving. All we need now is a boat cat and then we can head back up to Opua.
We stayed on the northshore of Auckland close to the beach. The area reminded us of the Gold Coast. Our evening beach walk was delightful and the gnarly Pohutukawa Trees were still impressive – they are everywhere.
The quarantine facility was south of Auckland and after paying a suitably large amount of money, Taz was released to our care.
He is a very happy kitty and is in good condition. His voice box is certainly working; I swear the purring was making the car shake.
With the crew of Opal Lady now complete, we were ready to head off to Whangarei to meet up with our cruising buddies for Christmas and to make plans for our circumnavigation of New Zealand.
Taz Talks:
Where the hell have you been Dad? I’ve been waiting and waiting and waiting!!!
Boat Works:
Rebuild stabilizer rams for spares
Repair Port stabilizer
Repair master toilet (seized bearing)
Replace inverter charger unit (big blue box)
