[password] bob244

[status]
position: 40 55.546s 173 54.830e
date: 27/12/2013
image: Arrived in the nice sunshine - looking north towards wellington.
image: Our next destination, straight west from kapiti island on the map.
image: Its even warm enough to swim over here - - - JUST!
Arrived camp bay just opposite Catherine's cove on D'Urville. Gusty
southerly winds so stayed in the shelter of this bay for two nights.
Trip out of the harbor was slow into the 30knots of southerly winds with
speeds as low as 2knots at times. We tacked our way through barretts
reef in the darkness with just radar and gps and once around red rocks
we dropped the motor and sailed the rest. The sun rose as we headed past
the brothers islands and we weighed anchor at midday or just before. We
stayed in camp bay two nights and went for a kayak southwest for a 5 or
so miles and saw lots of eagle rays.

[status]
position: 40 55.546s 173 54.830e
date: 28/12/2013
image: Birds just hanging out and a cool vein of rock.
image: The vista we were given that night.
image: Reading with that amazing view in the background made me sleepy.
image: Where we were the night before.

Arrived Puangiangi Island in the Rangitoto islands just east of
D'Urville. We circumnavigated the island looking for an anchorage that
was not going to shipwreck us. We ended up in this nice little gap
between the two islands and parked up. There were a couple of submerged
rocks in the middle that we nearly wandered over as our maps are not the
best around here. We watched another couple of yachts steam through and
one anchor right in close to the shore, clearly locals!
We kayaked around the middle island island and saw seals, penguins,
shags, oyster catchers, and ventured into some deep caves on the eastern
side. The caves seemed to have swarms of man eating flies or mossies
that you disturbed as you went in and had to fight through on the way
back out! Going between the northern island and the middle there was a
large current running into some very surging swell and a rock in the
middle of the passage, I took the left and Dani the right and naturally
I nearly fell out!

[status]
position: 40 55.546s 173 54.830e
date: 26/12/2013
Left wellington for D'Urville island at 9:30pm.
[END]