Gisborne to Tauranga We keep looking at each other in wonder and saying, “We are doing it!”.
We’ve had this dream for so long, and now it is actually happening. Most of you know that our trip was delayed a year, for me a long uncomfortable year of being largely unemployed despite endless, and somewhat soul-destroying, job hunting.
But now after only one week away I’m totally immersed in this journey of ours, and the last 12 months of angst has fallen away. After months, nay years, of trip planning, the very nature of sailing is forcing me into being present. When I am at sea that’s all there is. My natural compulsion to plan (OCD some may call it)– What’s next? Where are we going? What do we need to do – largely evaporates. Our new life is starting to emerge.
Two nights previously we’d left Gisborne, after more wonderful hospitality and delicious BBQ food, this time from Doug, a former VUW colleague of David’s. We cast off at the crack of dawn with the prospect of a fairly windy day. As almost always the weather dictates our movements. If we’d left leaving till the next day, a calmer one, we would have encountered headwinds all the way across the Bay of Plenty on day two. We tacked up the East Coast, the boisterous wind making the sea lumpy and uncomfortable. Tiredness, wetness, and my nemesis, sea-sickness, set in by the end of the day.
On David’s watch he turned the corner taking us around East Cape and into Bay of Plenty. To my delight I woke for my watch at 3am feeling normal. After having lost the will to live on my last watch, I felt revitalised. The full moon lit up the sea, casting its shimmering path northward. I remembered again the joys of night watch under the stars, the solitude, the connection with my environment, the privilege of getting to experience this rare moment, and the adventure of it all.
As the moon set a golden dawn filled the sky behind us and a gentle northerly breeze came up. I set the sails and turned off the engine which had pushed us through the night after the wind died out. I love a night watch when I’m feeling well, none else is up, no other boats around, nothing to do except keep lookout and keep on course.
On the way across the Bay of Plenty we were treated to the spectacular site of White Island in full flow, billowing out tons of steam.
Wearily after two days at sea we encountered the narrow channel at the entrance to Tauranga Harbour that has a tidal flow of four knots. Given our wee vessel only does about six knots, that didn't give us much manoeuvrability. So our second night at sea saw us hoved-to outside the harbour entrance (reefed mainsail and tiller set in opposite directions, the boat drifting at 1.5 knots). We had to do this because the marina, just inside the harbour, due to the speed of the tide in there, only allows boats to enter at slack tide, an hour at either high or low tide, and that also has to coincide with their office hours. They send out a man in a red inflatable dinghy to guide you to your berth At 6am on arrival day, having barely slept, I rolled out of bed for my watch. I stared bleary-eyed at the chart and calculated how much we had drifted throughout the night while hoved-to. Bugger, more miles than I’d calculated, and I hadn’t allowed any contingency time. Engine on, untie the tiller, sails up, get her on course and up to speed, engine off and let the sails pull us into Tauranga in order to get into our berth at slack tide. The man in the red dinghy was there.
“Welcome to Tauranga” he called and motored on ahead to our berth.

We nearly didn’t get away that day a week ago. Our umbilical chords were firmly fixed to our home pier. Firstly I couldn’t even unplug the mains power chord, the gales of the last two weeks having thoroughly encrusted the connections with salt. Next we attempted to detach our mooring lines from the jetty and mooring post, to take away with us. After four years in situ the knots were as unmoving as gnarly old arthritic hands. I borrowed a neighbour’s kayak and attacked them with our largest screwdriver. Several yachtie friends amassed and hung onto our lines as we attempted to maneuver out of the berth in frequent 30-knot gusts. Ten out of ten to David for getting us clear intact.
We motored onto the choppy harbour and rigged a double-reefed main, and there the reefs stayed till we dispensed with the main altogether out in stormy Hawke Bay. We screamed down the harbour at seven to eight knots and around Baring Head with nearly 30 knots of Northerly on our tail. Four dolphins saw us out of town.
The seasickness drugs worked for me right across Palliser Bay, even when I had to go down and rig up my Mac for electronic charts, our new notebook not yet playing the game.
Alas the mal de mer set in around Cape Palliser and I spent much of the next 12 hours below, emerging only to do my watch and to regularly regurgitate the morsels I’d persuaded myself to eat.
“I’ll cope with a couple of cold southerly days just to get out of here.” I’d bravely postulated at yet another round of farewell drinks a couple of weeks ago. That week being yet another of Wellington’s howling best, threatening to see us still in town for Christmas. On our first night at sea I remembered those rash words.
It was cold. It was wet at times. The sea joined the party, dumping into the cockpit from time to time. I was coping with all this while trying to stay awake. I’d been brutally ripped from my sleeping bag an hour before my watch time to help put up a storm sail.
We watched for ships, seeing one or two each watch, and for the beacons of lighthouses coming through the gloom, reassuring us our electronic charts were indeed correct. All such a lot to think about when we hadn’t done any coastal sailing for nigh on four years. The next morning dawned grey and cold. We sailed up past Cape Turnagain and Cape Kidnappers, the sun occasionally shining through.
A note about the Wairarapa Coast; It’s one of the most inhospitable coasts around the North Island. There is nowhere to go for 36 hours, no stops between Wellington and Napier, and the weather is often adverse. And of course we have the Coastwatch experience in these waters etched into our psyches.
But now we are tied up in sunny Gisborne, being completely looked after by family members. Half a dozen of them descended upon us last night for the first drinks of the trip. One of them came first thing this morning and whisked us away for a tour of Gisborne and its surrounds, venturing as far north as Tolaga Bay, where we walked out to the end of the newly restored wharf. I saw my first brilliant red East Coast Pohutukawa of the season. I took it as a good omen.
Tonight we are to be collected and treated to family BBQ. We are underway and its all good.