Mahurangi January 2 Janet Posted from Great Barrier Island Mahurangi Weather: Variable 10, fine, huge slow moving high over us, barometer 1023, sea state: calm - day after day after day At last we stop for a while. No wind, no travel. We are at Otarawao Bay, Lower Mahurangi Harbour, near Warkworth. It is early morning and nothing is moving, no gusts, no swell, no traffic.
Anchored nearby is Obsession, sailing vessel of Lisa and Lester. We borrowed their car in Auckland, and spent some time with them at Coppermine Bay at Kawau last week. We first met them in Tonga in 2010. They'd sailed from Whangarei around about the time we did, but with a cruising rally. We met them briefly at Vavau in northern Tonga and liked them immediately, but didn't get to know them till we reached Samoa.
Arriving in Apia, after two nights at sea, feeling hot and tired, and we experienced the usual stress from entering a reef-bound harbour peppered with coral bombies and debatable markers. Coming into a marina we didn't know is always an anxious moment, (especially this one, we later saw a berth near ours filled with a bombie that came right to the surface), then having to find customs and immigration and fill in all the forms, and jump through the inevitable hoops of officialdom to enter a country with a boat.
As we inched our way into the marina a cry went up: "It's Navire!" We looked up. There were Distracted, the only other Wellington boat up here, and Obsession. As soon as we ticked all the boxes and signed our lives away in triplicate, a beer on Obsession was in order, despite it not yet being midday. This set the tone for our next three weeks in the country, and cemented what is now a lifetime friendship with Obsession.
"I feel like David Livingstone," I yelled to be heard above the drone of the outboard motor. We were zooming up the Mahurangi River in Obsession's bright yellow inflatable dinghy powered with a 15 hp engine. (ours is a mere 3hp). I looked around, not a sign of civilization, no power wires, roads, or fences. The edges of the river were lined with banks of mangrove roots, and several meters back, forests of mangrove trees.
Early that morning we'd upped anchor and followed Obsession up the river to catch the right tide to make an excursion upriver to Warkworth for an outing. As we sailed around each corner I thought surely this must be where we anchor and leave the yachts, but then we'd come around a bed and there would be another bay full of yachts moored and anchored. We motored on and on till there were no more anchored boats and the depth sounder was reading three metres. We draw two.
Obsession dropped their pick and we followed suit. We sat in the cockpit and supped coffee while we waited to see if the anchor had taken. When you leave the boat for a day there is always the worry it will drag while you aren't looking.
Navire had settled and Lisa and Lester buzzed over to pick us up. I felt excited, like a kid going to town.
The river estuary took on a different perspective down in the dingy, it looked vast, its banks miles apart. We settled in with our shopping bags, rubbish bags ready to stuff in city sidewalk bins, and spare fuel can. We headed up with the ingoing tide, calculated to arrive at before high tide so we could shop and leave on an outgoing tide to get the flow, and get out of the river before it became too shallow.
What would take about 10 minutes by car took us an hour. We all looked out for markers to prevent us running aground. The river was surprising well marked.
We were soon to see why.
The first yacht we saw was well up river, a forty footer, moored against its own small jetty. Must have a lifting keel we thought. Around the next corner we saw two launches tucked into their own channels, completely high and dry. All the way to town the sides of the river were littered with stranded boats.
Forty five minutes after we'd entered the river I looked up and saw a sea of masts. What could this be? As we rounded the next bend we saw a full on boat yard, travel lift and all, with maybe a dozen yachts up on the hard in various stages of repair. We'd never even considered bringing Navire up a river like this, but obviously it is a navigable river for keel boats.
The river narrowed, now occasionally invaded by little private jetties, but still no sign of any houses. We saw another stand of masts over the mangroves and came round the corner into a town with a wharf and boats tied up to it. All quite unexpected. We quickly tied up and clambered over another boat to reach shore and went separate ways to do our errands, ours to get fuel for the dinghy, and fuel for us from the supermarket.
"Its going to be difficult to consider living back in Wellington after this," David pondered idly, as we strolled along the main street.
"That's easy," I said, "we're not." This last year or two we'd spent many a night huddled in Navire, Wellington storms raging outside, discussing where we might fetch up after all these travels. We don't know the location yet but the abode will be a small cottage with a sleep-out for all of you to stay when you visit. The grounds will have an established orchard, a vege garden, and a long outside table for endless feasts. It will be warm. Warm at night too. So that counts out Wellington.
We checked out a fishing shop, got a small bag of fresh crunchy stuff, and met the others in a garden bar for an ice-cold beer and hot salty chips with aoli.
Finishing off the day out with an icecream we headed back to the wharf. Lester untied the dinghy kicked the outboard into life, and headed back to the sea. We could have been on an entirely different river. The tide was in and the mangrove root banks had disappeared and all the dried out gaps in the trees we'd passed on the way up had become tributaries. The high and dry boats of the morning were now bobbing contentedly on their moorings.
As we came out into the estuary an afternoon breeze had settled in and stirred up what would have been inconsequential wavelets for Navire but for the dinghy they were more significant. The inflatable plowed through them, its tired crew getting soaked with spray and invading waves. Fortunately the water was bathwater temperature.
We climbed aboard Navire, soaked and salty, tired and grateful for another adventure.