Duplicat had a reach from Great Barrier Island. Our morning was spent tacking directly upwind. We arrived just ahead of them at the agreed rendezvous point at Parapara Bay to find it filling up fast, with several others clearly heading for the same place and not far behind. With that new information, we both decided on our backup plan of anchoring in adjacent Huruhi Harbor.
After three tries in tight quarters, we finally got Begonia's anchor to hold, but we weren't really happy. We reported this to Rick, who suggested we go with Plan C and anchor in the open roadstead off White Beach, to the other side of Parapara. They beat us there and, despite being the last to arrive at Great Mercury, Duplicat had its anchor down first. We then lowered ours as close as prudence would allow.
An initial stroll ashore was hastened due to approaching rain
Then the six of us, me, Maryanne, Rick, Nina, and their two guests, Gert and Cristal, went for what was billed as a walk along the beach. It soon became clear that everybody involved had more energy than what was needed for one pass of the beach, so we joined the nearby road for a few kilometers in either direction to take in the views. Afterwards, they all fancied a swim, so Maryanne and I left them to it while we returned to Begonia for supplies for a subsequent meetup on Duplicat. Oh, what fun! We haven't had a cockpit get-together for months and Rick is a dear friend from way back. He has nice friends, as well, with whom it was a pleasure to spend an evening. I was particularly pleased that Maryanne's homemade hummus went over well with Gert and Nina, the two chefs in attendance. I am one well-fed man.
Duplicat had to keep moving so that Gert and Cristal could make their flight back to Belgium. Maryanne and I had the luxury of time, so we lingered at Great Mercury Island for a couple more days.
On the first of these, we joined up with the familiar road. Then we pushed further than the previous day until we were way on the other side of the island, which was also at the top. We left the deteriorating road at a thin path leading into the trees to our left. A few seconds later, we emerged into the light at the top of a 200m cliff of white sandstone. Wow! The whole climb had been a gradual one though dense forest. We had not expected to break out of it with such a great demonstration of our altitude. That was totally worth the hours spent walking from the beach!
The walk included fine forest filled with tree ferns - so classically New Zealand, and those clifftop views!
On the way back, just where we were about to transition back from forest to farmland, Maryanne spotted a Kaka in the Pohutukawa tree to our left. Kakas are an endemic New Zealand parrot species who regularly top lists of most intelligent birds, alongside Greenwing Macaws and African Greys. I've been lucky enough to share precious time with the latter, my beloved E-bird (a name he gave himself). He was hilarious and kind and endlessly entertaining. Seeing any parrot in the wild is always a thrill for me. I root for them as much as anyone I can think of.
For our next day at Great Mercury Island, we decided to take the main road the other direction, towards Huruhi Harbor. That turned out to be less interesting than we hoped, so we curtailed our walk and opted instead to spend our afternoon kayaking to Ahikopua Piont, at the southern end of White Beach.
The water and beach were filled with the egg chains of some form of sealife
That particular point had some interesting geology, which was fun to poke around. By the time we were done, though, the wind had started to pick up. That made for a pretty long, tough, wet paddle back to the boat. After the preceding walk, we were that kind of multi-muscle tired that made us feel no guilt about hoovering up whatever was on our plates later.
And we had a calm day to explore some of the local cliffs and caves from the kayak (getting in some arm exercise!)
Anchorage location >> On google maps
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