M/Y Iron Lady

Another day another bay – one is better then the next. Whangaparapara is about 3 hours south of Port Fitzroy (a port in name only). Home to an old whaling station, there are also nice bush walks.

The picture is of the old boiler used to boil down the what oil. Over a period of a few years in the late 1700’s over 20,000 whales were taken by net or harpoon just offshore and processed here.

Iron Lady and our dink are waiting just off shore.

NZ has an enormous number of walking trails. Deb and I went for another 3 hour walk about.

Picture of a swing bridge over a small stream with Deb trying to make the bridge rock while I was taking a picture.

NZ has very steep terrain. The pictures really don’t convey just how steep it is, but you can see the boat below. Hopefully we are losing weight.

Finally a shot of Deb in her galley with the mobile herb garden in the back. While on some sea trials, they tried to make an unauthorized escape from the galley.

More to come on that.

We have all gotten used to the “noise” of modern life. Sometimes louder, sometimes just in the background – but it is always there. Iron Lady is a quiet boat. Her systems in temperate climates allow her to run at anchor on battery power and inverters for up to 2 days before turning on the generator or running the main engine. Our first night at anchor was VERY quiet and it took some getting used to Iron Lady’s various noises while at anchor. Amazingly, the servos in the sat phone were an irritant until we tracked it down and turned it off.

When we got up the next morning, the world was totally quiet and still. No noise – not a whisper. We found ourselves whispering to each other so as not to break the total silence. The morning mist shrouded the anchorage and hills, and when looking out to sea, the sea and sky blended into one scene. I drifted away from the boat in the dink and shot the following picture.

We almost seemed to be drifting in air.

As the world started to wake up, we decided that the first order of business was to collect dinner. Guess you know where are minds are. In New Zealand, there is a substantial commercial greenlip mussel aquaculture industry. Just down the bay was a mussel fram.

In New Zealand, you are entitled to stop buy and collect your own bucket of mussels free of charge. the procedure is simple.

I hold Steve by the ankles with his head down in the water. When he has thrown a sufficient quantity of mussels back on board, I let him surface for air ;). The result is mussels with linguini for dinner.

With dinner secured, Deb and went off for a trek thru the bush for a three hours.

Back at the boat, Steve was cleaning the mussels. With time short, we moved on late in the day to another bay and anchored before last light. The bay was home to a whaling station in the 1700’s where over a period of a few years, over 20,000 whales were netted and processed.

More later.

CHeers to all.

WIth the long busy days Training completed, spares on board and enough supplies to carry us for a few weeks, we are off to Great Barrier Island off the eastern coast of New Zealand – about a 7 hour run. Its good to see Whangarei behind in our wake.

We are running Iron Lady a bit hard to break in “Big John” – her 6 cylinder John Deere engine. With a bit of help from the tide, we are doing over 11 knots down the harbor.

Passing the Whangarei Heads, we are now at sea and the day is perfect and the seas are flat.

The time passes quickly as we continue to check out systems, work with all of the electronics, perform engine room checks and get comfortable with the boat. It isn’t long before Great Barrier appears in the distance.

We navigate in to a small cove which we have basically to ourselves and drop the hook. The first order of business is to get the dink in the water.

On the way out, we stopped to get a quick picture of Iron Lady at anchor.

A few of the locals were interested and stopped by as well. A little Blue Penquin was just a bit too shy to capture on camera, but the ducks were more friendly.

We dragged a line just for fun and caught our first fish – a Kawa (not spelled correctly but that’s how it sounds phonetically). He was the first to grace the back deck barbee for dinner.

A big day – a great day and we were all off to bed early. More shortly.

Cheers – Pete, Deb and Steve

The big day has finally come. Finally moved most of the “stuff” onboard. I was really concerned about the amount of storage space, but hte boat just seems to ‘swallow it” without issue.

Departure is tomorrow AM to Great Barrier Island. Then to the Poor Knights and then the Bay of Islands.

More as we go.

Cheers!

Pete and Deb

I was up at 4 AM today watching the warning sites about the Tsunami and it’s impact on NZ. If things had gotten dicey, our best strategy was to put to sea.

At around 5 AM our time, most of the alerts were downgraded. We did see some tidal flow variations but they weren’t much. Normal tides in Whangarei Harbor run around 6 to 7 feet (the closer you get to the poles, the higher the tides).

We did see some strange tidal flows but they were innocuous.

Had a great dinner at Vinyl in town (Whangarei is quite small by our standards but large by NZ standards).

NZ has about 4 million people – half live in Auckland. Only 1 million on the whole of the South Island. Whangarie in the Northland has about 100,000 including the surroundings.

Best to All

I started out with the intent of shooting some pictures of Iron Lady, but as I was going out, the Brigantine Soren Larsen came sailing up the harbor and tied up at New Zealand Ship Repair where we are located.

Soren Larsen was built in 1949 in Denmark and served originally as a Baltic timber trader. Later she was converted to a brigantine.

At 145 feet, she is crewed by a crew of 12 and currently hires out on adventure trips for tourists. No standing around on this boat – everyone works – paid or paying voyagers alike.

She is currently here for a two month refit. Its a small world – our Captain, Steve Parsons served as a deckhand on Soren Larsen for 6 moths early in his career.

Then she will be off to the South Pacific islands.

Which is where we hope to be headed about mid April as well. Finally, a shot of Iron lady who sits across the way.