Maitai Bay / Waikato Bay

[Kyle]It was flat calm the first morning we awoke after arriving in Maitai Bay. Maryanne inflated the kayak and went out to explore the rocks and islets in the bay while I took advantage of calm winds and no wakes to go up the mast. Our hailer (which acts as both a horn and a loud speaker) had irritatingly quit again, after just being repaired in Dunedin. I was determined to solve the problem. While I was up there, I also took a good close-up tour of the rigging because it helps me sleep better at night to do so.

So enjoying sunshine and scenery in North Island!

I found a bad stretch of wire and was just finishing up redoing the horn’s connections when Maryanne arrived back home. I asked her to test it and... Nothing!

Aw, c’mon!!

She poked around at her end of the mast (the bottom) and found another corroded section where it comes out of the mast. Unfortunately, I had fed some more wire up to do the connections at the top, so there was barely enough left on her end to do a splice.

Many, many, many swear words later, we got the thing connected back up and sealed from the salt air as well as we could. It works now, but I’ve lost faith in the quality of the wire, so we’re going to have to thread a better one in for me to feel good about it again.

Afterward, we were pretty fed up with maintenance, so we went ashore to look for a trail that was supposed to be nearby.

We didn’t find it, despite looking pretty hard. I forgot the machete again, so we just decided to settle for a long walk on the pretty beach. There is little about a long walk on a beach that won’t make things seem better. Soon, our frustrations at the hailer wiring and our inability to find a trail faded and we were back to pointing out interesting rocks or plants or birds to each other.