On the move

After a few delays we have finally left our home port for an extended holiday on Kabuki. Our start was not auspicious as it was a Friday (apparently bad luck to start a voyage on a Friday) and raining, but hey we like to buck the trend. We only motored sailed out to Monroe Bay in the Whangarei harbour, where we anchored up and got our sea legs for a few days. We then sailed out to Taurikura Bay in the outer harbour ready for the wind to change to south west, a favourable breeze for heading north. Friends of ours also were heading north at the same time, and we were in a quandary over the weather, as there was a cyclone predicted to drop down out of the tropics and head for NZ. But that was a nearly a week out, so we decided to head north and take our chances.

We headed north on Tuesday the 7th of February with an expected South Wester, but this did not fill in so we motorsailed all the way to the Bay of Islands, ending up beating into a North West wind in the afternoon. Luckily we met some friendly dolphins on the way to welcome us north.

Our first few days were lovely, but then it was time to prepare for that dreaded cyclone that was going to hit on Sunday 12th. We motored up to our mooring in Opua thinking that we would stay up there for the storm, but things had changed and a bigger boat was on the mooring next door, this was swinging way to close to our boat and would only get worse in a storm, so we left to anchor out. We found a spot in Uruti Bay near Russell and set our Spade anchor with 120 feet of chain on a snubber through a block on the bowsprit. We pulled out a bigger Spade anchor to deploy if required in the blow. We took down all our covers, but left the dodger up, and then hoisted our dinghy up on deck in her usual spot in front of the dodger. We were set for the big blow.