New Zealand – First Days

[Kyle]At the appointed hour, three officials from Customs, Immigration, and Biosecurity arrived at the temporary Marsden Cove Customs Dock. Two boarded, the other stayed behind setting up the underwater camera. Here we go...

About the time we showed the first two in and finished introductions, the third guy relayed a thumbs up through the second, who announced to us that we had we had passed the biofouling inspection. What?! This surprised us somewhat because, just two days before, Maryanne had finally received a rejection in response to her latest tranche of supporting evidence following her last comprehensive dive/photo shoot in Tonga. Apparently, there was some crevice they couldn't quite make out, we had re-checked and cleaned the hulls since then, but they didn't know that. Now we were given the all-clear, just like that.

Maryanne had worked so hard to jump through all the necessary hoops toward compliance (I helped with some of the actual cleaning, but she did all the photography and paperwork). I got a brief flashback to our interview for her green card in the U.S. The guy looked at us and after about a minute, declared us a Real Couple. No, there would be no need for Maryanne to crack open the veritable filing cabinet of carefully curated evidence she had brought along in support of our case. Have a nice day. Next!

I had to pull her away to keep her from using this particular opportunity to show off her advanced administrative skills, thus giving the guy a chance to rethink his decision. Today, even though it must have rankled her a bit, she took the news with an appropriate sigh of relief and then directed her attention to fulfilling the requests of the officials before her. I, as always, tried my best to stay out of the way, be helpful when asked to do things, like show someone to an engine compartment, and sign my name where directed so that I will be the one to blame when it all goes wrong. We have a system...

Once we were declared to be fully admitted into the country, we were finally allowed to breech the chain-link fence by pushing a gap in the end, and then step into the world at large.

We are officially cleared into New Zealand

Marsden Cove is nice, in a curated sort of way. When we first saw it in 2017, it was still fairly new, with spindly trees and plots of damp dirt where sod would soon be put down. Now it has a bit more of a filled-in look, but it still has the feel of being somewhat remote, at least by road. It is less like a village or a town than a mini outlet-mall surrounded by custom homes. There's a couple of nice restaurants, a couple of cafes, a boating store, a gas station, a liquor store, and a medium-sized grocery store, all spread out amongst enough big patches of grass to make doing the rounds between them seem a little less than convenient if that's your goal. Otherwise, the many meandering walking/jogging paths make it a nice place for a stroll to those not trying to be engaged in commerce. Even the quiet streets past the big houses make for nice, de facto places for a sunset amble.

Stingrays swim in the shallows of the network of new-build waterfront properties where most of the homes have private docks so they don't need to worry over any marina dues

We saw all we could see and then even supplemented our exploration with a longish walk to the nearest beach through a zone of what appeared to be baches that were a bit more modest than the jillion-dollar homes surrounding the marina basin.

The nearby beach (Marsden Cove Reserve) was nice to visit, especially at low tide (a chance to stretch our legs after our passage)

Having seen pretty much all that Marsden has to offer, tourist-wise, and feeling it a little too remote to be useful (without a car), we moved all way up to the head of navigation for the Hatea river, right in the middle of the city of Whangārei.

A calm motor up the river to the Town Basin Marina (right in the center of things so all is an easy walk)

We really like Whangārei. It's not amazing, per se, but it's quiet and pleasant and peaceful and walkable. It has just enough bustle to feel interesting on evening walks along the river near the marina. It's the first real place we ever saw in New Zealand and was a great introduction to the country's laid-back civility, friendliness, and comeliness. It has all the major stores we're likely to need (giant hardware stores, supermarkets, etc). It's New Zealand's most northerly city (a city being any community with a population of over 50,000, Whangarei has 56,000). It's kind of an average town by New Zealand standards, but their average is higher than most. With the Hatea River waterfront it is picturesque and the local council have filled it with walkable loop-trails and fun art works; its main shopping area has a good pedestrian only section too.

Alas, we weren't here entirely, or even predominantly, for the fun. With the big haulout looming in our near future, we were primarily in the center of town for the purpose of starting several of those job balls rolling. We bought flooring and yard supplies and had tradies come over to look at the work and give estimates. Jobs were scheduled and coordinated until we at least had a preliminary plan for our first few days out of the water, and (of course) replenishing our provisions.

Between, we made a point of enjoying the local pubs and restaurants at an above-average frequency, just in case we don't make it through the coming haul-out, I guess. There are no restaurants within easy walking distance from the boatyard. We even made it to the newly-opened Hundertwasser Art Center/Museum. It was in the late planning stages when we last left. Now it's a full-scale, multistory building that looks like something Dr. Seuss drew into a scene of the Hatea waterfront.

Friedrich Hundertwasser was an interesting and indisputably strange guy, with more than a few strange ideas. One of his most notable ones was that straight lines and flat spaces were bad, "cowardly drawn with a rule, without thought or feeling". This from a man who has never apparently tripped on a ruck in a rug or been anywhere near the Great Plains.

I must say that I like his designs, with their curving lines and their bold uses of bright colors. He does, however, seem like someone who might have been annoying to his acolytes. He refused to use plans to build anything. If something was mid-construction and he didn't like it, he would have it torn down and redo it all over. That may at least partly explain why the three-story museum in Whangārei, which was built after his death, but with the same philosophy, ultimately cost twenty million dollars to complete. In archived films shown in the museum, he seems to me to be trying way too hard to project an image of the eccentric genius artist, whose every whim must be accommodated in the name of artistic posterity. Like I said, he designed some neat stuff and he had some good ideas about conservation and sustainability, but I'm not sure I would want to be buying a plot of land adjacent to his. That said, the café in the museum is an amazing restaurant in its own right and well worth a visit. He made New Zealand his second home (originally coming from Austria), and they happily adopted him as one of their own.

After one last bike ride through the pretty parkland of the Hatea River Loop, we loaded them aboard and made a short trip down the river to Norsand Boatyard, where we plan to spend the next few weeks.

A mix of chores, fun and fresh provisions at last; we got to eat out, and made a point to take a tour of the Hundertwasser Art Centre/Museum (which hadn't been open when we last were here)

---

Anchorage location >> On google maps

Passage to New Zealand (Post # 1500!)

[Kyle]As we tend to do for passages, we left our anchorage at South Minerva Reef's pass just as soon as it was light enough out for us to be confident that we could spot any hazards in the southern channel of the exit, through which we had never been.

It went fine, with only a couple of easily avoided coral heads that were probably deep enough to not present an actual hazard to us. Once we were clear and in water too deep for our sounder to measure, we deployed our spinnaker and headed south, following the western edge of the south lagoon. There, we enjoyed the flat water in the lee of the reef for what we expected may be the last time for days.

Departing South Minerva Island we were soon able to get the spinnaker up. Take a look at the colours in the spinnaker, it's relevant for later.

Once we reached the southern corner and turned away for New Zealand, conditions remained pretty nice. We were going just under two knots, with a long one-meter to one-and-a-half-meter swell rolling under us from our port stern, making for a nice, gentle motion. We left behind four other boats, whose occupants likely didn't even realize we had left until well after we were completely over the horizon.

In the middle of our second day, a predicted wind shift arrived by dying completely for a couple of hours, and then returning in earnest from the east-southeast. With the wind now from the side, and predicted to be so for the rest of the passage, we doused our spinnaker, packed it up, and returned it to its somewhat hard-to-get-to hidey hole down below. The new wind was strong enough to double our speed, but not enough for us to need to worry about full sail being too much canvas. For the next two days, all the sails needed from us was a little tweaking to keep them pulling optimally, plus one easy gybe in the middle, when the southeast trades inexplicably started coming from the northwest quarter.

This was when our Iridium GO! stopped working. After not being able to receive any new weather data at all, I spent a whole frustrating watch troubleshooting the problem and rebooting each device several times in different orders, all to no avail. We were less than halfway to the zone of westerlies, with its frontal systems and harder to predict weather, where all we were going to be left with was all of that meteorology stuff in my head, plus a very careful study of the needle on our barometer. Great!

When Maryanne came on watch, I mentioned my frustrations while explaining why I had no updated sailing plan for her watch, other than, "Keep trying to head in the general direction of New Zealand for now".

To this, she casually guessed that my problems may have been because she had changed all the passwords on our devices in a sudden bout of mid-ocean security-mindedness. You need the passwords to change the passwords, which is why my attempts at that had failed as well. She asked why I didn't wake her up to ask about it.

"Because the purpose of the off-watch is for you to get some sleep, not keep yourself awake the whole time trying to troubleshoot my computer problems."

"But I could have solved your problem really quickly."

I suppose that's true, but who changes passwords on wifi that peters out fifty miles before it can get to anybody else? Just sayin' {Maryanne:Oops!}

Anyway, on the beginning of the fifth day, the wind backed around the compass until reaching its regular east-southeast direction and then started getting stronger. Since I was now entrusted with the new passwords, we totally knew this was coming. We reduced sail over and over until, thirty hours later, we were making nine knots in thirty knots of wind and three-meter seas while being pulled by minimum storm canvas. That day was not particularly comfortable, but it was at least a fast one, logging over two hundred miles. The heavy associated overcast had been previously making charging our batteries with the solar panels a real struggle. With the new wind, our wind turbine took up the slack and had them fully charged by morning. It doesn't put out as much charge as the solar panels, generally, but in conditions like these, it will put in a slow, steady charge twenty-four hours a day. That really adds up.

The odd storm and the odd visitor on passage

The next day, Day Seven, the wind and seas finally started to abate. As we got slower and slower on my night watch, I looked at our ten-knot tailwind and decided it would be worth it after all for me to go to the trouble of retrieving and then deploying our spinnaker. I just had to do it quietly so as not to disturb Maryanne during the last few minutes of her night off-watch.

My plan worked great! I awoke her for her watch to the background hiss of the water zinging by the other side of the hull from our bunk. As I was climbing the steps back to the helm, the noise changed. It didn't decrease, just changed. I popped my head out from under the bimini to find us slowing down and a sky full of multi-colored string where the spinnaker was supposed to be, gently streaming in the building breeze. Damn! That's not going to be repairable…

The spinnaker failed on us... Later research/realization showed that the yellow in the original spinnaker was not intended for cruising conditions (too much sun exposure) and had faded, weakened, and eventually disintergrated; missed by the sailmaker (and us), selecting the wrong colour options. Pictures are from our first sail (May 6 2014), and later (April 19 2015). By October it completely failed on us on our passage to New Zealand; one more thing for the to-do list.

After switching to our boring, but much beefier jib, we had ninety percent of our speed back. That would still be enough to get us safely tied to the dock in Marsden Cove before the next blast of headwinds arrive tomorrow.

On route to Minerva we reached 99,999 nm on our log (which we'd installed when we initally refit Begonia after our purchase). It can't be reset and now perpetually shows 99,999!

Before arriving we converted our almonds into sliced almonds so they wouldn't need to be confiscated. We use sliced almonds on our morning oatmeal so they would be put to good use.

At 3am, we transited the narrow channel and entered the perfect flat calm of the marina basin. The Customs dock was full. We would encroach too much on the fairway if we rafted up to one of the boats there, so we were sent instead to the overflow dock for super yachts. It was empty, apart from a temporary chain-link fence covered liberally with signs warning of the consequences of trying to get to the opposite side without authorization. No worries, what we most wanted was a little nap before all the officials start arriving after sunrise.

[Maryanne]It turns out this blog post is number 1500! We've been posting about our adventures and travels since Feb 2008 (when was at my last week of my job at AutoTrader Magazine in Norfolk, and we were ready to start our serious cruising adventures). The blog is really for a handful of family and close friends, but it works as a wonderful diary for our own memory-banks and I'm so glad we have this record of our time with Footprint and Begonia.

---

Anchorage location >> On google maps

Ten Days at South Minerva Reef

[Kyle]Early in the morning, we set off from Tonga on a close reach through the Vava'u Group as it slowly thinned out to the south. Since the winds were forecast to be a little forward of what I consider ideal for a long passage, my plan was sail even further upwind to hug the western edges of Tonga's three main island groups in the hopes of receiving some protection from them against the larger, open ocean swell. That went pretty much as planned, with only a few hours of lumpy, confused seas in the gaps between island groups.

Once we cleared the main island of Tongatapu, we bore off on a slowly curving track that would put us more and more downwind with time. The wind then backed, which was not in any of the forecasts, and then died down a lot. We spent nearly the next twenty-four hours just trying to keep the boat moving while being pointed in roughly the right direction.

An overcast passage to South Minerva Reef

When the wind finally did start to move forward and strengthen, we were relieved to be finally able to clock up some real miles before the waves could build to a height that would be uncomfortable.

That didn't really happen. Over the course of about twenty minutes in the middle of the night, our light headwind stopped completely and was then subsequently replaced by moderate tailwinds. The new seas overwhelmed the first batch and after about an hour of confused chop, a gentle, following swell rolled us towards Minerva.

Our slow day had really messed with our ETA. Normally on passages, even ideally, I like to arrive early enough that we have to slow down at the end to wait for daylight. This time, with our spinnaker pulling us faster than predicted, we were right on track for an eight o'clock arrival by sailing just as we were. By the time we rounded the atoll and entered the pass, the sun was just high enough for us to be able to sight our way in past the widely-spaced bommies. We dropped anchor just a hundred meters or so from the spot we used our first time here in 2018.

South Minerva Reef is clearly visible from satellite imagry, not so much as you approach by boat (just a few bits of coral are above the water at low tide)

In many ways, Minerva Reef is a lot like Beveridge Reef. It's a lagoon surrounded with coral and with sand in the middle, they can both be a bit choppy at high water and pretty smooth at low water. Minerva is, of course, divided into North Minerva and South Minerva, which are separated by about twenty nautical miles of deep ocean. In this particular instance, we were in South Minerva. South Minerva Reef is only about a quarter of the size of Beveridge Reef and forms a figure-eight shape, only one lobe of which is accessible for anchoring (although some brave souls have been kown to squeeze into the other lobe in perfect conditions). Because of this, there is lots and lots of interesting coral to see, particularly in the middle belt of the figure eight. Also, South Minerva is twenty miles closer to New Zealand. In theory at least, that should fractionally reduce one's chances of encountering unpredicted severe weather on the passage between the two.

South Minerva also has a narrower, shallower, and less well-charted entrance through its pass than North Minerva. Because of this, most boats opt for the "easy" stop at North Minerva en route. I'm sure this won't be the case for much longer as more and more boats have drones and high-speed internet with which they can email pictures of their successful inbound track to their friends behind them, but for now, South Minerva offers the best chance of solitude by far. Sharing a remote spot in the ocean that is two hundred miles from land with a hundred other people makes it feel less like the rare gem that it is than an anchorage outside of Fort Lauderdale. I realize many of the others that come may never have that experience because the whole way there, they were in constant contact with the whole rest of the group via text and social media, so they never got the feeling of being far from anywhere or anyone. I, however, have come to enjoy the solitude of being the only boat in sight, or the only boat I have seen for days. We can get plenty of time with the crowds in the big city anchorages when we land. For now, I like that way out in the ocean still feels like way out in the ocean.

Still, we were surprised when we closed on South Minerva reef that we could see no mast tops breaking the horizon. Eventually, the only candidate turned out to be the tower for the current navigation beacon. On our once-a-day email download, Maryanne got a message from another boater that there were already more than a dozen boats in North Minerva, with lots more on the way. It was hard to believe no one opted for the South Minerva overflow lot to ease the pressure.

Snorkelling the nearby reef is our main entertainment

It wasn't until our fourth day in South Minerva, while we were out snorkeling the inside of the reef to the northeast of Begonia, that we finally spotted a triangle of sail approaching from the north. We expected more to follow, since banana boats usually travel in bunches. By the time it was close enough to sunset for us to be assured that no one else was coming today, it was just Begonia and the new boat, Goose, anchored about half a mile south of us. Goose told us that when they left North Minerva for a change of venue, they had left behind thirty-two others.

Over the next three days, two more boats arrived and anchored widely apart. I'm so surprised they were the only ones. We entertained ourselves by thinking up jobs for our upcoming haulout. This is less like shopping for fun, new furniture than signing up for Boot Camp.

When we couldn't take it anymore, we would take a break to go snorkeling. The water temperature in South Minerva is colder than it was back in Tonga. We noticed that there is a definite time limit before, even with wetsuits, we get too cold to be able to enjoy any scenery. Usually, we get to that point while still at the reef. Swimming hard in a beeline across the flats to Begonia helps to decrease the rate of heat loss, but by the time we finally climb out, we are usually both shivering pretty energetically.

For our last day at this part of the reef, we decided to do another last, last big clean of the bottom before setting off for the fun part. Afterwards, I had just made it to the reef and only been sightseeing for a few minutes before I had to give up and head back. Maryanne toughed it out another hour before she returned. I was just getting ready to put the kettle on for her when she informed me that she wanted to do another whole series of photos in case she needs to prove to New Zealand biosecurity that Begonia was even cleaner than it was when we left Tonga. The list of what they want to see is extensive. By the time Maryanne finally left the water, she had been in for over another hour and was REALLY cold now. Fortunately, it was objectively hot outside, so a fifteen-minute rest on the settee was all she needed to feel back to normal.

We had a spell of calmer weather over the next few days as we waited for the next weather window to New Zealand to open in earnest. We took the opportunity to anchor in a less protected spot by the pass, right by the middle of the 8 connecting the two lagoons. The snorkeling is really good there, with lots of deep holes, steep, but narrow chasms, and plenty of interesting sea life. There are even a few shallow, warmer spots that allowed us to extend our thermal endurance somewhat. By the second day, we had managed to scout a long, sinuous path clear across the 8 and into the deep water of the southwest lagoon, where Begonia was so far away that she could be blocked entirely from view with a pinky finger at arm's length. We were cold again when we finally climbed aboard after the long journey home, but both agreed that the swim was totally worth it and a nice way to spend what may end up being our last day in South Minerva Reef for a while.

Snorkelling across the middle bar of the 8 we especially enjoyed; and (not pictured) more cleaning of the hulls in preparation for our New Zealand arrival

---

For those planning a visit to Minerva (north and/or south) - here is a really great report from another boater we know:Pogeyan

NE Anchorage location >> 23° 55.52'S, 179° 05.91'W see google

Due South of Pass (closer to access the other lagoon) 23° 56.56'S, 179° 07.72'W see google