Week 5 Kawau Island & Mahurangi

Bon Accord Harbour at Kawau Island is not particularly great in a NW or SW breeze, but we anchored there for 4 days and checked out the sights. Kawau is famous for the old Copper mine and the Mansion House owned by Governer Grey. Paul and I checked them both out.
Mansion house is beautiful, I could not get photo's of the inside but I got plenty of the grounds etc. Some parts of the island is planted in old pine trees which are all in the process of falling down. There is a real problem with erosion on the foreshore were pines are planted. Walking through the bush was lovely, with some amzing specimen trees planted by Governer Grey over 120 years ago.

We had wonderful weather while we were there, and managed to sample the delights of the Kawau Yacht Club Bar.

On Thursday 11th we left Kawau heading for the Mahurangi Harbour. On the way we stopped at Moturekareka Island, and had a look at the wreck of the Rewa, a three masted steel Barque that was sunk there in the early 1900's. There was not a breath of wind and a beautiful blue sky as we mooched around. We motored into the Mahurangi Harbour and headed right up the estuary, following an ever dwindling channel. We anchored beside the channel in about 6 feet of water a low tide. On Tuesday we put the outboard on the dinghy and motored up to Warkworth, this took us about 1 hour with the ingoing tide. We spent the day in Warkworth, doing washing, having lunch at the RSA and doing some shopping. We headed back with the outgoing tide, uplifting Kabuki's anchor and motoring out to Casnell Island where we anchored for a few days.

Monday morning, Roz and Holga turned up in Melody (another Westsail 32), they did the trek up to Warkworth. That night they came over for dinner and a chin wag.
We left Mahurangi the next morning as the wind was going SW, and it was a good one for getting back to Whangarei. So we upped anchor at 6am and headed for home. It was our most boiterous sail yet, we started with a reefed main because the wind was predicted to go 25knots. By the time we got to Whangarei we had only the double reefed main and staysail and we were still going 6.5 knots. We had winds up to 35knots, but on a beam reach so was pretty comfortable. We even practiced heaving too, while we had our lunch. We got into the Nook at about 4 in the afternoon, the wind was still gusting.

On Thursday morning, we motored onto the mooring at the Town Basin, We have come home for supplies (the wine ballast has run out) and to see the family for Christmas. We will be off again after Boxing Day.

The photo is for you Harry Potter Movie fans, I showed Xavier and He recognized it straight away. This is a Pohutukawa near Mansion House on Kawau Island.