Auckland 17 March 2013
The EJ's Voyage
Mike Everton-Jones
Sat 16 Mar 2013 21:48
Sailed yesterday afternoon into Auckland after a 3 days stop on Kawau Island (photos attached). It was a pleasant anchorage well protected from the North Easterly winds. Not a lot happening on the island though. There is a Royal New Zealand Squadron Yacht club which was closed, a Kaway Yacht club which was fairly basic, a few private houses and a disused copper mine, the only public place we could go for a walk. It was very nice though and we enjoyed our walk from the old house to the copper mine chimney.
We knew that rain and heavy gusty winds where forecasted for the weekend so we decided to leave Kawau a day earlier than intended and come to shelter in Auckland harbour. We are in Viaduct Harbour marina. It feels strange to have so much "civilisation" around us after the quiet and peacefulness of the last few months. Our sail down was really nice with quartering winds of 15 to 20 Knots, sunny periods and we managed to get the Spinnaker/MPS up for an hour which was great.We recorded 10.5 knots on a surfing on a wave coming into Auckland which was fun.Two of the Kiwi 12mtr America's Cup sail boats were out and looking impressive.
It is raining very heavily since this morning which all New Zealander are happy about it as both the North and the South islands were facing a drought. The summer has been exceptionally sunny and dry. The farmer are complaining about it but we obviously enjoyed it!
Our friend Wendy is coming to see us this afternoon. We last saw her in December in Wellington so it will be good to catch up with her again.
The watermaker engineer will hopefully come tomorrow to sort the problem out.
If all goes well and the weather improves, we should sail to Great Barrier next weekend to meet up with a few other sailor friends.