Tuesday, January 26, 2016

Report from the Bay.

Sunday and the Bay has been a hive of boats, boats and more boats over the weekend. Mind you it has been hiving the whole time we have been here. In the past we have tried to avoid the area at Christmas time as it is notorious for being busy, but this time we thought we would brave the madding crowd. 
If their is anyone out there worried about the economic climate of our lovely Little Country, don't worry, we must be doing very well indeed, if you can go by all the Launches and new yachts that are wending their way around the bay. We have been anchored in Entico Bay with 9 modern launches, each probably worth between $600,000 to over $1 Million. A handful of modern yachts were present, as well as the usual collection of smaller yachts and launches owned by the less wealthy of us. In some bays over night there can be up to 20 of these boats, the money floating around out here is unbelievable.

But back to our trip. We left Parekura Bay and decided to try out Paroa Bay, a haunt of Pauls from many years ago. Paroa Bay was full of memories for Paul, his mother used to sail up here from Tauranga years ago and Paul joined her on a few of those trips. So we toasted his Mum with a rum and reminisced about old times.
We then sailed around Tapeka Point and into Russell, anchoring at Uruti Bay a favourite of ours. Paul went into Russell for some fresh fruit etc and to make an appointment with a Physio. Paul hurt his back about three weeks ago and it had not got better, a trip to the Physio was called for. Friday Paul was up early to row into the Russell Cruising Club jetty, then walk to Russell and catch the ferry over to Paihia for his appointment. All was good with his back and he has now embarked on a new sitting and sleeping regime. The next day we motored up to Opua and anchored up amongst the moored boats and rowed in to do washing, have showers and enjoy a lovely dinner at the Opua Yacht Club. The wind piped up the next day so we topped up our water and buggered off out of there. Back to Uruti we went for one more visit to the Physio and a trip into Russell for lunch.

Wednesday saw us out a Paradise Bay, Urupukapuka Island, again a crowded anchorage. We caught up with our friends John and Sue from Sir Francis, and also with Paul and Karen from Toroti, lovely to catch up with them. We moved over to Dougs Bay, a new anchorage for us, on Saturday and visited my friend Lynley and her husband Murray. John and Sue came over for tea on Sunday and we had another enjoyable evening, this sailing around can be a very sociable lifestyle. Monday saw us sail off the anchor and around past the Lady D, a 55 metre ex oil industry ship converted to luxury expedition ship. We sailed onto the anchor at Dicks Bay and dived over for a swim, the Crescendo showed up, a 30 metre charter launch, some of the quests were whisked away via helicopter to Auckland I presume, that may have been because after my swim I stripped off in the cockpit and had a shower. 
So today we have done a modification to the roller reeling gear on the Yankee sail, explored around the shore at Dicks Bay and had an experimental lunch of Samphire/ seawort that we found in at the beach. We tried it lightly cooked with boiled eggs, not bad, tasted of the sea, it is supposed to be good with seafood dishes, but not much chance of that on Kabuki with our fishing record.
Sail Week starts up here tomorrow so we are off over to Russell again to anchor up and watch the yachts racing, should be fun, especially with the super yachts and the Millenium Cup racing.

1 comment:

  1. Loved your update. Makes me miss the BOI. Sending loads of love xxx

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