Figure Eight-igator Statistical Roundup

[Kyle]We did it! We were sailing fast on a starboard tack across the entrance to Opua Harbor toward the town of Russell when we finally crossed our outbound track. We have now completed a clockwise circumnavigation of North Island and a counterclockwise circumnavigation of Stewart Island and that one in the middle.

Our track (with a few gaps - we clearly didn't sail over land!)
Track sourced from Cruisers Sat

Here’s the numbers:

We left Russell 156 days and 3,230 nautical miles ago. Of that, our North Island loop took 97 days and 1,550 nautical miles. Our South/Stewart Island loop took 59 days and 1,680 nautical miles.

We have made a total of 60 stops in New Zealand. 34 so far on the North Island, 21 on South Island and 5 at Stewart Island. Of these, we had 15 stops where we did not leave the boat, mostly because of bad weather and my sore back. We had 5 more stops where we left the boat to explore by dinghy/kayak, but didn’t land, mostly because the terrain wouldn’t allow it, but occasionally because there was no way to get inland past "Private Property" signs.

The moment we crossed our incoming track - New Zealand Circumnavigation complete!

Our longest stops were in Dunedin (11days), Norsand Boatyard (10 days) and Napier (6 days). We had 17 stops that were only for one night. The shortest was at Whangaruru on the way between the Bay of Islands and Whangarei in November. Our shortest shore excursion was at Barrier Island, where we climbed the hill behind the beach, realized my back was killing me and then limped home. Our longest time ashore was the 2 ½ day trip off the boat to drive the Southern Scenic Route on South Island.

Our longest sails without stopping were Onetahuti Bay in Abel-Tasman to Milford Sound (462 miles, 3 days), Ship Cove in Marlborough Sound to Ahipara Bay, North Island (397 miles, 3 days) and Napier to Wellington (230 miles, 2 days). Of the 156 days total, 78 of those days were sailing on at least some part of the day.

The longest we spent aboard without leaving the boat was 7 days between Ship Cove, Marlborough Sound and Maitai Bay, North island. Second and third were six-day ties. One in December in the Hauraki Gulf because of my back, the other between Lake Cove in Fiordland and Adventure Cove in Stewart Island. That one was because of weather.

And, finally, the coldest water that we recorded was 8.3°C (47°F) at 46°30’S on the passage between Stewart Island and Dunedin, South Island. We were in the deep ocean far from the coast, which generally had 13°C (55°F) water. The warmest was 29.7°C (85.5°F) at Town Basin marina, Whangarei, North Island. They are at 35°43’S. Mostly, the water at the northern end of North Island is about 21°C (70°F).

So there you have it, one more thing to tick off of the list of random goals. We have been surprised to find that very few people attempt such a trip, even the Kiwis, so I think there’s going to be plenty to talk about at the Opua Boat Club when someone asks, “What did you do all Summer?”

New Zealand Memories - in no particular order

Northward! On to North Island

[Kyle]Our South wind arrived right on schedule in the wee hours of the morning. It blew us closer towards the rocky beach behind us, which is always a little disconcerting. Our plan was to leave as soon as it was light enough for it to do so, so I was up anyway to keep an eye on things until then.

Once twilight started, we left. Once we rounded the corner into Queen Charlotte Sound, the land blanketed the wind and we slowed to a crawl. Our speed was about 2/3rds drift. Had we not known we were in a wind shadow, it would have seemed like perfect conditions to hoist a spinnaker. We weren’t falling for it, though, because we knew the wind would arrive eventually.

Arrive it did. I was lamenting our last two hours’ pathetic progress and wondering if we should have just slept in longer when we sped up - a lot. I rolled a reef into the jib, which was the only sail we had flying. By the time I was done, we already needed another. I hadn’t even had time to leave the winch. By lunchtime, we were down to our third reef mark, which had us down to just over 2m² of sail flying (full working (white) sail is 85m², our spinnaker is 110m²). Even with just that, we were still easily pushing our speed through the water into the teens while surfing down a building sea.

We had hoped that the wind would start to die down in the lee of Cape Egmont, the official end of the Cook Strait, but instead it only increased further. Maryanne set the surfing speed record at 17 knots boat speed on her night watch. With the current, she hit 20.1. I only saw 16 on my night watch, but I had more wind. Our wind instrument recorded a max of 48.7 knots. Luckily, we were going downwind, which reduced the wind flowing over the boat to about “only” gale force (around 33 knots). It did that for three solid hours before it finally started to back off a little.

Not surprisingly, Maryanne had achieved little quality sleep and got out of bed looking more tired than when she went. Things were calming down quickly, though. When I went off watch, the wind was back into the teens and we had the full jib flying with a forecast for further decrease. The big seas dying out made for a sloppy mess though, but I was hoping it would smooth out for her.

Coming back on watch, the first thing I saw out the window was our triple-reefed jib. Huh‽ Maryanne blithely remarked that the wind had been in the thirties again, as if it were a neighbor’s incurably barking dog. Groan.

Another passage - scenes from the calmer moments

One more try. By the end of her next off-watch, during which she reported sleeping much better, I had full sail flying - main and jib. The sun was shining and we were happily romping through a smoothing sea at a respectable seven knots.

Six hours later, she woke me to ask more detail about the forecast. The wind was gone and the remaining swell was rolling the mast back and forth, making the sails slat from one side to the other, driving her nuts. She wanted to know if it was worth starting an engine.

”No.” I said, “The next wave of wind should be here in a couple of hours and we don’t need the speed anymore. Just wait it out.”

When I started at midnight, I furled everything to stop the racket and downloaded the new forecasts, while we just bobbed around, being carried by a weak, north-going current.

There was a change. Wind was coming, but we were in a slightly stronger than previously expected convergence zone. That meant it wasn’t due here for a while. The best solution was to motor twenty miles north to where there was wind. I couldn’t actually hear her teeth grinding when I started the engine, but somehow I just knew they were.

We actually ended up going about thirty miles before the wind flowing back over the deck stopped and then started going forward. That was all the reason I needed. The engine went off and I hoisted the spinnaker. It filled with a satisfying POP!, and we were off! A day and night later, we were furling it and rounding the corner into Ahipara Bay, the last indentation in the North Island’s west coast.

Our wind was great, but I wasn’t relishing the idea of rounding the North Island and then having to bash into it to get south again. We decided to let it blow itself out for a couple of days and go over the top in either light winds or one from the northern semi-circle.

Ahipara is a beautiful bay with a wide sweep that is backed by green hills and sand dunes. Tauroa Point, at its western end, completely blocked the swell and wind. We dropped our anchor onto a mirror, temporarily spoiling it and sending circular ripples away. It fell into fine sand four meters below us. The beach is so shallow that we were still half a mile from shore. In the whole four-mile long bay, it was just us and a fishing boat in the middle distance.

{Maryanne: Apipara Bay is right at the foot of the amazing 90mile beach that runs from the tip of North Island. Beautiful sand dunes and lovely sandy beach - very picturesque, but also prone to the worst of the winds. It was a real charm to be able to stop here as most conditions would not allow for it. To our minds the forecast looked great, but we were reassured when a local commercial fisherman swung by to confirm we'd be OK where we anchored!}

Queen Charlotte Sound

[Kyle]We left Stinking Wind (Onepua) and immediately ran into a bunch of stinking wind. It was a good day to have the protection of the surrounding mountains.

We found ourselves an overnight spot in the lee of one of them, where we could just see the city of Picton in the distance. There was a DOC sign for a trail, so we used that as an excuse to inflate the kayak and go have a look.

Kumutoto Bay - the bird is a Weka

What we found was a well-tended trail that meandered along the mountain slope to a campsite at the next cove. That was it. The DOC does this all over the place. The trail had clearly just been maintained – trimmed leaves and branches on the trail were still green, so they had to land people and equipment to do the job. It seems the entire purpose of the pleasant trail was just to give the people camping there something to do other than fish and wonder how much longer before they can open their next can of beans.

From our spot opposite Picton, we went further up Queen Charlotte Sound to the head of Lochmara Bay where we hoped to find some protection from the coming storm.

Lochmara - the calm before the storm

What we found were two coves at the end that were completely filed with unoccupied mooring balls. Oooh, this bugs me! {Nothing against mooring balls, but when the chart and guidebooks suggest we can find an 'anchorage' that is what we expect to find!}. There was no hope in the western arm, but the one next door had just enough room for us to fit in between them all.

Or so we thought. The high surrounding hills only offered protection from the wind half of the time. As the wind streams overhead, the valley’s calm bubble grows and shrinks as the turbulence at the interface adds or subtracts air, Every now and then, the whole thing gets unstable and collapses completely before refilling again. When it does this, wind comes rushing down into the valley. When this wind comes, it is from random directions and hits the water tumbling and spinning.

At the water’s surface, we would be bobbing next to our anchor, not pulling at all, in about two knots of wind, when we would get hit by a 40-knot gust. We could see the trees shaking as the wind came barreling down the hillside at us. Sometimes it would miss us entirely; sometimes we would get hit with a back eddy. We often would have winds at deck level going the opposite direction from those at the masthead, or none versus lots. It was crazy! At one point we got hit by a whirlwind that very slowly crept up from behind and then engulfed us in flying spray before disintegrating into chaos when it hit our rig. Wind at the helm was from the right, wind at the bows were from the left. I was glad we didn’t have any sail up for that one!

All of this meant our motion was crazy. We would pull really hard on the anchor and then the wind would stop and another gust from behind would come in and start pushing us forward. We would get up to two or three knots before reaching the other side of the anchor, then we would swing around and get snatched to a lurching stop. Then a wind would come in from the side…

During our little tour, we came just a little close to two of the moorings. We weren’t comfortable in the event some big fishing boat comes in and picks-up one of them while we were sleeping, or trying to anyway. We pulled up our anchor and decided to tie to the one of the free balls in the harbor. We picked the one that looked like it had the magic combination of being least likely to be in current use and most recently maintained. We picked one on the edge of the field, tied up to it and pulled HARD. It didn’t budge even a little, so we settled down for the night and hoped we wouldn’t get booted off.

We didn’t. The night was miserable. We lurched and yanked every which way all night long screaming gusts and pouring rain. I left the instruments on overnight. We recorded a maximum gust of 48 knots (55mph, 88kph). We saw LOTS of forties during that.

We stayed another night after the storm ended, all of which was in blissful flat calm. That allowed us to get the sleep we had missed the night before.

We tried going further down the sound after that, but had a really hard time finding suitable anchorages. Almost every place we found that said it was five or ten meters on the chart turned out to be twenty-five and way too close to shore for that depth. All of the others were full of empty mooring balls Grrr…

Time to clean the bottom - and attempt to enjoy a snorkel in the cold waters of Burney's Beach.

We eventually ended up way out at a place called Burney’s Beach on Arapawa Island. Apart from lovely sunset views, there wasn’t much there to see in terms of kayaking or shore diversions, so Maryanne decided she was going to bundle up in neoprene and go for a swim. Then SHE scrubbed the slime off of the bottom, which made me really happy, because that’s usually my job and I really didn’t want to do it. It took her hours and lots of warm drinks go lose the chill after that. That seemed like enough effort for one day.

The next day, she did that thing where she impresses me by sewing.

The sun cover on our jib had a few spots that needed attention, so we unrolled it, pulled it down and wrestled it into the cockpit so she could reach it with the machine. Once she started (and got a better look at the sail) she decided to re-stitch the entire thing. Imagine repairing a pool cover in a walk-in closet. She and her trusty machine were surrounded by clouds of white sail, all of which had to be manhandled in its entirety to get the needle exactly where she wanted it. The job took most of the day and we were both happy to decide that it met our “One Thing” rule when we were done.

We moved a little bit further on to Ship Cove, which is about as close as we dared to the entrance to Queen Charlotte Sound. Another storm like the last was on its way and Ship Cove is pretty much the last spot offering any protection.

Firstly, though, we had a couple of days when it was not blowing like hell. In fact, there was hardly any wind at all, the sky was blue and the temperature was warm. We got the kayak out and headed ashore for a good old-fashioned uphill climb to a viewpoint, where we determined that New Zealand is scenic.

Another catamaran came in called Enola. It was the first we had seen since leaving Abel-Tasman for Fiordland. Aboard were a couple from the Bay of Islands who had just retired (early) and were spending a couple of months in Marlborough. When they found out our plans, they said we would be beating them home and offered us their mooring to use while we are there. We then whiled away much of the morning going back and forth with cruising tips. They had just bought their boat and are planning on leaving in a year or so. It took us back to that time for us.

With what was left of the day, we had another tour in the kayak and took another walk through the forest. Ship cove is the terminus of the 71km Queen Charlotte Walk. It is also where Captain Cook landed four times and so has a nice monument and some pleasant park grounds, including a stretch of mown grass where hikers can lie in the sun (or rain) after their walk.

Exploring the trails & sights of Ship Cove

Just before we started on our much shorter walk, we spotted a guy lying in the grass and went over to say hi. His name was Kenner. When we asked him where he'd come from he replied “Bluff”.

Holey, Moley! It turns out the Queen Charlotte Track meets up with a larger one that traverses the whole length of the island (Te Araroa - The Long Pathway - actually goes the whole length of both North and South Island). He had just a few moments ago finished the 1,300km hike of the length of South Island on his fifty-ninth day. He left Bluff the same day we left for the sail to Milford Sound. He was waiting for the mail boat to pick him up and drinking the two cans of beer he had saved in the bottom of his pack for the occasion. Good on that guy! Our little mile to the waterfall seemed so puny by comparison.

After that, we had to pack it up to get ready to move on.

The storm arrived and it was pretty much a repeat of the last one, except with a slightly more consistent wind direction. The monohull had dragged and re-anchored overnight. Through the pouring rain of the morning, I could just barely make out Enola heading for a safer harbor deeper in. We stuck it out and it started calming down a few hours later. Behind that, the wind will be coming from the south for once, so it’s time for us to go with it.