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.

A Couple of Characters David

Great Barrier Island is known for its characters, past and present. There'€™s a novel and at least three other publications devoted to Barrier characters and their stories. While on the island we were regaled with stories of others yet to make it into print. Life on the island often turns ordinary people into characters.

Not all are made on the island, however. Some arrive fully formed. Here are a couple we encountered.

George and Yevgeny

Our food arrived at the same time as Yevgeny, large and sweaty, clutching his scrawny toddler, trying to introduce him to Jonesy. Under the pressure Jonesy withdrew but then had a change of mind and advanced with the friendly confidence for which Golden Retrievers are so well known.

'I met one of your local characters yesterday,'€™ said Yevgeny, crouching for the boy and dog to eye one another. '€˜I was spear-fishing in the bay just around from the ferry wharf. Really shallow. You could stand up. I had a Red Moki on the spear, looked up and saw a 250 pound Bronze Whaler coming right at me, his mouth wide open. I jabbed at him with the spear and he turned away but came straight back, mouth like a cave with teeth, so I jabbed him again. The third time panic finally registered on me. My heart pounded, sweating to bust, even under water. I hurled the spear at the fish along with my catch bag and splashed and scrabbled my way out of the water. Over my shoulder I saw the shark rear up in a cauldron of foam, tearing my bag to shreds.

"What'€™s with that shark?"€ I spluttered at a man pulling his dinghy to the water. '"œIt tried to take a piece out of me."

'€œAh, that'€™ll be George. He lives here. We feed him. Don'€™t recommend swimmin'," '€ €˜

By now Yevgeny'€™s wife, petite, black hair and anxiously stern, had settled at our table, regarding Jonesy suspiciously.

When he heard we were sailing for Fiji Yevgeny launched into his own recent dramas with a sail boat. '€˜I bought this beautiful fifty six foot, all wood yacht that I got cheap because it was part of a complicated legal dispute. Used to be owned by that guy from Perth who won the America'€™s Cup. Famous boat called Valenta but I renamed her Sofia after my daughter. I set out for Auckland from Picton but too many things broke and we had to be towed into Wellington by the Police Launch.'

'€˜We know all about being towed into Wellington on a maiden voyage.'€™ Janet and I said in unison.

'€˜I'm an off-shore tax minimisation consultant,'€™ Yevgeny continued. '€˜I'm relocating my business to Vanuatu. Soon as I find a boat builder to repair her I'€™ll sail up to Vila with a hired skipper. I'm not a sailor.' He shrugged.

A few days later, over a beer, we asked Peter, Tryphena's Harbour Warden, about George.

'€˜Aw that'€™s just bullshit. There'™s no shark attacks anybody in this bay.'€™ Peter took another swig of his beer. '€˜There's locals talk about one, might be called George, but there'€™s nothing in it.'

€™The Dutchman

We are moored at Smokehouse Bay where we'll stay for another week or so. I have a large boat painting project to complete. Great place for it. Very sheltered and breathtakingly beautiful. Ruined somewhat this morning by very loud electronica issuing from a launch anchored nearby. The owner, an ageing barrel of a Dutchman, in shorts and singlet and very drunk, vacillated between boorish argument and reluctant compliance when I rowed over to ask that his stereo be turned down.

Remarkably the stereo stayed down all day but the drinking continued. He had three young men aboard -“ a son and his friends perhaps. These three took the dinghy ashore around midday. Not long after there was a prolonged series of horn blasts from the launch. A few minutes later our Dutchman was standing at the stern of his boat bellowing to the anchorage. '€˜Fuck you.
Fuck you and your family. Fuck you and your country.'™ He said this maybe a half dozen times, addressing invisible audiences on both sides of his boat.

A neighbouring boatie rowed over. '€˜Keep this up mate and I'€™ll call the police.'€™

'€˜Call the police then. Call the fucking police.'€™ He was holding a white cloth to his arm, blood oozing around it. '€˜I just sent a fucking SOS and no one'€™s fucking answered. No one'€™s coming to help me.'

One of the young men left the beach in the launch'€™s dinghy. He stopped to talk to the retreating boatie and then carried on to where the Dutchman was still letting the anchorage know what they could do with their families and country. He quietened as the young man approached. The two conversed apparently amicably although the young man kept his dinghy at a distance.

When I next looked across the Dutchman was teetering on the boarding platform, clutching the stern rail and attempting to get into the inflatable which the young man was holding for him. This is a drowning waiting to happen, I thought. The Dutchman dropped one leg into the dinghy and, in one fluid motion, his body, pivoting on that leg, rolled across the dinghy into the sea and disappeared. The young man looked on, helpless.

Amazingly the Dutchman bobbed to the surface and dog paddled to the back of the boat. More remarkably, after some time, he hauled himself onto the boarding platform.

His second attempt was more successful. Perhaps the dunking had sobered him a little. He could be heard joking with his companion, beer in hand, as they motored to the beach. No more was seen or heard until late in the afternoon when the two men returned to the launch, hoisted anchor and left the bay.

The anchorage breathed a collective sigh of relief, not least I suspect, because we had been spared all the inconvenience of a drowning inquest.