M/Y Iron Lady

From Great Mercury, it was off to the north thru Colville Channel into the Hauraki Gulf – and prime time Kiwi cruising territory. Home to Auckalnd where half of new Zealand’s 4,000,000 people live, it is an area bounded by the Coramandel Peninsula to the east and Great Barrier Island to the north.

In between there are so many islands and bays that it would take a lifetime to explore them all – and many Kiwi’s do. Our first stop was Waiheke Island – a wonderful mixture of wine estates, luxury homes for those who work in Auckland and country side. Our anchorage was in Putaki Bay not far from Oneroa.

The ferries to Auckland run from this location and it takes around 30 minutes to get to the city. In the distance is the top of Rangitoto – a perfectly symmetrical volcano (presently inactive).

We rented a car and did a tour of the island and it incorporated more wineries – which Waiheke is famous for.

A beautiful Kauri furniture piece at Man O War.

If you go, my recommendation is to try them all!

Next day, out journey took us to Stony Batter – an enormous underground complex built during WW2 by the Brits and NZ to house gun emplacements in the event of a Japanese attack. The site was chosen because it overlooks all of the approaches to Auckland Harbor.

The large guns it is said had an accuracy of 2 to 3 meters at distances as far as Great Barrier. The guns were never fired in an act of war. In fact, there is but a rumor that the Japanese ever approached Auckland and that rumor invokes a quick reconnoiter by a Japanese submarine.

Strangely, this enormous project was not even completed until 4 years after the war ended and then it was abandoned.

But some wag thought this was a reminder of the ferocity of days gone by.

Perhaps prehistoric.

I have never really done much long line fishing before, but Joe, John and I went out for a bit of the recreational version before dinner. I will try to explain the drill.

First, there is a frame.

The frame is criss crossed with short lengths of leaders with a hook on one end and a clip on the other.

Here is a picture of John at the helm.

Underway, the hooks are baited and the clip end is hooked to a long line that is fed out as the boat moves forward.

As the line is fed out, weights are hooked to the long line to hold the line down.

Floats are positioned at the beginning, end and along the line to mark its position.

Once the line was in the water, we went on to position our fish trap in the hopes a a lobster or fish by the next day.

Then it was back to the long line to see what we had caught. No pictures here, but the catch included a bunch of small snapper.

Back at the dock, John showed us his labstah holding pen from prior catches.

That evening, John and Amie hosted us at their house with a wonderful local wine and a fresh New Zealand leg of lamb roast from the farm. Not to to mention that Amie is a gourmet chef – now how good is that.

From the White Island volcano, it was off across the Bay of Plenty to Great Mercury Island off the Coromandel Peninsula. The island is part of a group of islands only one of which, Great Mercury, is inhabited. Great Mercury is a private island owned by Sir Michael Fay – it is available for rent (at a very lofty price). We were most fortunate in that Joe knew John and Amie who were caretakers on the island.

Great Mercury is so named as a result of Captain Cook who stopped here in 1769 both to seek shelter and measure the transit of the planet mercury across the sun. Measuring the transit time from various locations was an important step in determining earth’s distance from the sun.

As for us, we were happy to arrive in the sheltered bay off the compound shortly before another blow was due. First a few pictures of our approach. The first is a picture of the cliffs on Great Mercury – over 1000 feet high.

The sun was setting as we dropped anchor.

And the next weather system was approaching.

The next morning, John and Amie were on the dock to greet us.

And this nice fellow stopped by with a fresh snapper.

A shot of Iron lady sitting at anchor – you can get a sense of the wind from the angle of the anchor rode.

From there, it was off on a day of exploration about the island.

This is a view of an area they have nicknamed Stonehenge.

Some nice views from around the island.

Our mode of transport – 4 wheel drive required.

Some happy campers.

And some shots from the top of the cliffs. The young folks here are troubled teens who were participating in an outward bound type experience camping out on the island for about a week. Part of the drill was to repel down the cliff face around 10 meters to a ledge to get the full sensation. We were offered a chance – no thanks!

After a long day of exploring, John, Joe and I went out for a bit of fishing – more on that next time. I’ll close with a shot of some cows who, for reasons unknown, seemed to like the top of this hill.

Last time I threw in some pictures of our White Volcano adventure. More pictures this time.

In the early 1900’s, there was a sulphur processing operation on White Island. Some 14 people lived and worked there to extract sulphur which was used for a variety of purposes – mostly medicinal. I can’t imagine living on the island for lots of reasons, but a big one is the unpredictability of the volcanic action. On an ill-fated day in 1914, 14 people died and the sulphur processing facility were destroyed by a lahar.

Here are some shots of the ruins.

There is very little living on the island as a result of the sulfurous gasses emanating from the central lake and caldera. There is, however, a thriving colony of birds on one of the upland slopes. All of the slopes exposed to the gasses, however, are barren.

A few pictures of Iron Lady sitting (albeit uncomfortably in my mind) just offshore.

And our trusty dink, Beer Can, waiting for our departure.

Some more shots from around the island.

We wanted to get to the caldera, but things got a bit too “active” so we retreated to Iron Lady. As we departed, there were a few large bursts of steam and gasses. Glad that we saw it from a distance.

We covered some of this ground in an earlier post about New Zealand weather (Weather or Not to Go), but I’ll throw some more pictures in here. The journey from Picton to White Island took us back out of Queen Charlotte Sound, across Cook Straight to Cape Palliser, along the coat to Castle Point and then around East Cape to the Bay of Plenty where White Island is located – a distance of some 500 nautical miles – just over 2 days at our normal cruising speed. You can get to that post by clicking here.

We took a pretty significant beating with gale force winds and opposing seas on the way up the coast – fortunately it didn’t last long and most of the trip was benign.

Leaving Queen Charlotte.

Cape Palliser.

Some views along the coast.

Sunrise the morning after the blow.

Deb enjoying a nice day on the flybridge reading (OMG) Fifty Shades of Grey.

The aftermath in the dink – those fuel tanks were full and they were tossed around like ping pong balls – we are now adding stops to keep them in place.

A few sunsets.

And dawn as we approached White Island.

Now I am actually going to break White Island in to a few posts as it was unlike anything I have ever experienced.

Yup – White Island is an active volcano out in the middle of the Bay of Plenty.

White is an andesite stratovolcano – which for us lay folks translates to a tall, conical volcano composed of many layers of igneous rock. White Island rises some 1000 feet above sea level but that is just the above water portion. The volcano actually rises some 5300 feet from the surrounding sea bed.

The volcano has produced both ash and lava flows but during our visit, the activity was primarily steam, sulfurous gasses, fumaroles and boiling mud. As recently as July and August of 2012 (we were on the island in April) there were signs of increased activity and minor eruptions of ash. In point of fact, we noted sudden changes in the behavior of the volcano and it did make us uneasy. The central crater is presently a boiling lake of mud, water and sulphur.

To give some perspective to the scale of things, that is Deb slightly below the center of this picture.

More on White in the next post, but I’ll leave you with a few more shots.

OK – I said I wasn’t going to do it – I lied – more winery stuff in Marlborough.

If I look bad it is because I was (overly) happy. Easy to do in wine country.

Anyway – more wine places (even thought I said I wouldn’t do it again).

Relax and Indulge – who would do such a thing?

And for those of you who have never seen kiwi’s actually growing – here they are just about ripe. PSA (nothing to do with prostate cancer) is a canker that is threatening the kiwi industry in New Zealand.

And parting shots of Picton – we are now north bound to the North Island.