Yesterday we started sailing north!

As the company, I contacted for help with the new GA200 antennae for my Raymarine system didn’t even call me back on Friday and the weather window is good only for Saturday and Sunday, I decide to sail to Wangharei. The marina reserved a berth for us. Being there I can walk to all shops I need for provisioning of food, things to build in the GA200 antennae myself, and other staff I still want for the boat.

On the Friday I activated the water maker, which produces now again its 180 l water/h, thus this is fine and ready for sailing. I also did a bunch of other preparatory work.

In the evening Ljubica and Jeff came with a roasted duck, roasted potatoes with vegetables, and for desert her famous and irresistible tiramisu for a farewell dinner. Terry arrived just in time for the desert. We had a wonderful time. Then there was the good bye and all we know is that we will meet again but where and when is still unclear as a distant horizon.

Next morning, at 0700 Terry became active. At 0755 we moved out of berth and marina to sail with engines through the long access channel for Auckland. The weather was just beautifully sunny. What a great start!

To not “sail” often over land on the track and to enable Ljubica and Jeff to see us passing their house, I changed the Garmin InReach device to tracking every 10 min. When we passed the fairway light house at the end of the channel I set it back to hourly updates.

Via Signal I learned they saw us passing by with their eyes and also at the Garmin link https://share.garmin.com/P435
(Use this link when you want to see where we are. My OBM sent me a screenshot and the display is nice.)

Shortly after being out of the channel we set the gennaker and MaRe started running. Unfortunately the wind increased faster then anticipated and we had to replace it with the genoa. Still MaRe was running fine on her way north. With the wind turning from S to ENE we could have hoisted the main as well but we kept just sailing with genoa pulled open with a barber hauler.

I knew from the beginning that we won’t reach the entrance of the Hatea river (I called it sometimes wrongly the bay of Whangarei) at daylight. However I have a track in the river up to Marsden Cove marina, and Terry knows the bay in which we can drop the hook safely, I went in this bay in the dark. At about 2100 the anchor was securely in the ground. To my surprise we had more wind then I expected. The wind comes down the valley and blowed around 13 – 18 KN for the night and still now in the morning. I like such constant winds. They keep MaRe in small range of movements and my SuperWind 350 wind turbine charges the batteries.

For Joe it was the first day sailing and she did well. Terry is an old sailor, thus knows what needs to be done with a few MaRe specific hints. All in all we had a nice day sailing north.

Today at noon, with the end of the low tide, we will lift the hook and sail with the engines and the incoming tide up the Hatea river to Whangarei. There we have a reserved berth in the marina, about 300 m away from the Hundertwasser museum. I mention this museum as it’s a know landmark in Whangarei and, as mentioned before, all shops are in walking distance.

With the strong northerly wind during the night the temperature increased and it’s not freaking cold as before. I hope it stays like this until we are ready for the last sail north in NZ to Opua where we will make outbound clearance and depart for the Minerva Reef.

Please keep fingers crossed for the right weather window at the right time to continue north to Opua and then to the Minerva Reef, Vava’u in Tonga, Fiji….