Port Fitzroy to Whangarei

Hi everyone,

We spent six nights in Port Fitzroy at Great Barrier Island, staying at Wairahi, Smokehouse and Oneura Bays.  We briefly visited Port Fitzroy village to fill water jerries.  Port Fitzroy is a great place with at least half a dozen good anchorages.  It's similar to Whangaroa in providing all round protection.

Tracks in Port Fitzroy

On arrival we headed to Wairahi Bay.  This offered good protection in the coming strong S winds.  It is relatively shallow at 5m which suits us (and our manual windlass).  We stayed there for two nights as the winds blew through.

Wairahi Bay

Waitrahi Bay dawn

The next day we moved to Smokehouse Bay, anchoring in 8m.  This is a favourite spot for cruisers with a pizza oven, toilet and hot shower building.  We spent one evening ashore with sv Lady Annabelle.  The pizza oven works well.  We also went for a walk along one of the trails. 

Smokehouse Bay landing

View over Smokehouse Bay

Into the woods

Amongst the ferns

Smokehouse Bay facilities

Pizza Oven

One morning we spent an hour in the water again cleaning the hull.  Pretty good visibility.  That afternoon a 2-3m bronze whaler swam by.  Apparently it is a regular visitor.

Bronze Whaler Shark

Smokehouse Bay dawn

On Friday we motored over to Rarohara Bay  We had planned to spend the night there but the anchorage E of Quoin Island was full of moorings and deep.  And the anchorage off Port Fitzroy village didn't feel like good holding.  So we anchored only long enough to dink ashore and fill some water jerries.  We then motored out of Port Fitzroy through Governor's Cut to nearby Oneura Bay.

Leaving Rarohara Bay

Oneura Bay

On Saturday we motor-sailed to Urquharts Bay at the entrance to Whangarei Harbour.  It was a very pleasant day but there was very little wind.  We motored at 1500rpm to keep the noise down.

Track

Arrival

Urquharts Bay was quite crowded when we arrived.  We passed most of the boats to get to a spot in 5m where we anchored.  It's a nice anchorage spoilt only by occasional wash from vessels passing by in the main channel.

Departing Great Barrier Island

Passing the Pinnacles

Anchored in Urquharts Bay

We expect to move into Marsden Cove Marina later today.  We're looking forward to some rubbish disposal, shopping, laundry and socialising!

Our 'circuit' of the Hauraki Gulf from Whangarei was wonderful.  Lots of nice anchorages.  Some great wineries and breweries on Waiheke Island.  It's a shame we didn't make it to Auckland or Tauranga.  We reckon we saw many of the best spots.

Trust all's well where you are!

Te Kouma Harbour to Port Fitzroy

Hi everyone,

Yesterday we had a great sail from Te Kouma Harbour on the Coromandel Peninsula to Wairahi Bay in Port Fitzroy on Great Barrier Island.  It was a 44nm passage in a 10-20 knot ENE-E wind.  Nice and flat in the lee of the peninsula and 1.5m seas in the Colville Channel.

Approaching Great Barrier Island

Here are the usual screenshots...

Track

Arrival

Graphs

We spent four nights in Squadron Bay in Te Kouma Harbour.  Tis a very nice spot.  We spent three afternoons thoroughly cleaning the hull.  Visibility in the water was at least 2m.

Evening light in Squadron Bay

The passage up the peninsula to Cape Colville was very pleasant in an 8G12 knot breeze on the beam.  In Colville Channel the wind was more ENE and 15G20.  The seas were a little lumpy but Zen Again powered across comfortably.  It was a close reach due to a W tidal current.

Te Kouma Harbour astern

Passing Coromandel Harbour

North along the peninsula

Passing Cape Colville

Into Colville Channel with Channel Island ahead

As we crossed the Colville Channel the Kiwi sail training ship Spirit of New Zealand was sailing parallel to us a couple of miles away.  She reminded us of WA's STS Leeuwin - a pretty sight.  She had anchored in Te Kouma Harbour one night while we were there.

We entered Port Fitzroy through Man'o'War Channel.  The channel has a narrow 'neck' - Governor's Cut - which is about 50m wide.  Happily there was only a little current against us and from there it was a short motor to Wairahi Bay where we anchored.

In Man'o'War Channel

Approaching the 'neck'

Anchored in Wairahi Bay

We had another piece published in this month's Yachting Monthly.  This one's relatively long and describes how we've kept Zen Again ocean-ready over the years.

Ocean Ready

We've finally given up on our South Island ambitions.  Only two boats in Island Cruising's South Island Rally have made it to Fiordland so far.  Both started in South Island.  Popular cruiser's web site Noonsite said recently:

"New Zealand: Unsettled Summer Weather

Unusually warm ocean temperatures around and NE of New Zealand have contributed to a run of unsettled summer weather, helping passing low-pressure systems deliver frequent heavy rain and strong winds. National climate outlooks from NIWA note that warm seas combined with weak La Niña conditions have helped sustain a humid northeast airflow and repeated rain-bearing systems affecting the country. For sailors and offshore cruisers, this has translated into fewer stable weather windows, making cruising around the country tricky this summer."

So we've now turned northwards.  We'll sail from Great Barrier Island towards the Bay of Islands via Whangarei.

We've also decided - for the time being at least - to forego our SouthWest Pacific cruise this year.  Instead we hope to sail direct to Australia.  This will complete our circumnavigation and allow us to return to work.  If we don't secure work we'll cruise Queensland over the winter.  Hopefully a weather window will come along!

We expect to spend this week exploring Port Fitzroy.  Like Whangaroa Harbour the port provides all-round protection with many anchorages.  Most of the island is a nature reserve.

Trust all's well where you are.

Australian, New Zealand and SouthWest Pacific Anchorages

Hi everyone,

This is a technical post.  It follows on from previous posts on Western Australian and New Zealand anchorages.  We've now compiled additional anchorage, mooring and marina waypoints to cover Australia, New Zealand, Fiji, Vanuatu and New Caledonia.

Overview of waypoints in OpenCPN

The new waypoints were compiled from Terry's Topics GPX files and our own research.  Terry's appear to have been provided mainly by SVs Banyandah, Black Duck, Matilda, Olena and SuAn.  Many thanks to them!  We removed most of the many duplicates in Terry's files.  Useful comments and links were retained.  The MinScale parameter was set on most waypoints to avoid obscuring underlying charts - so zoom in to find them all.  And the symbols used were modified to follow our convention.

Our waypoints are also available as KMZ files for GoogleEarth.  The latter are useful for exploring anchorages and marinas in the Google Earth Pro app.  This is especially helpful if you don't have satellite 'charts' installed in OpenCPN.  This of course presumes you have Starlink aboard since Google Earth Pro needs a high-speed internet connection.

With correct setup Google Earth Pro can show your current location via a serial NMEA013 data feed from your boat network.

Our Australian waypoints from Cocos-Keeling to Norfolk Island

Our SouthWest Pacific waypoints for Fiji, Vanuatu & New Caledonia

The screenshot below shows how we arrange our OpenCPN persistent layers.  Each is read from one of our GPX files.  The number of waypoints in each file is shown.  Loading the GPX files as layers avoids inadvertent moving/editing of waypoints.

In addition to our GPX and KML libraries we also have a KAP library.  The KAP library contains satellite 'charts' for use in OpenCPN.

Here are links to the three folders holding this data on our Dropbox site:

• GPXlibrary
• KAPlibrary
• KMLlibrary

None of this information is for use in navigation!

If you find these waypoints useful consider donating using the button at the top of this page.

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Trust all's well where you are.