Homeward Bound, Lyttelton to Kawau Island

 We are now in get-home mode. Sitting on a friend’s mooring in Bon Accord harbor on Kawau Island, we can smell the barn. This is our backyard; it’s in the Hauraki Gulf only forty miles from Whangarei harbor, and we’ve been here many times. The mooring is owned by Ric and Kitty Martini, a couple of ex-pat Americans and dear friends we have known since we first arrived in New Zealand in 2004. The wind is out of the north today and tomorrow, which would be against us, so we’re biding our time waiting for a change to finish that last leg. If the forecast holds true — it actually does on occasion — we’ll have another romping downwind run the day after tomorrow.

These few days here are turning out to be pretty socially active. As I write this, today is Tuesday. We came over from Tryphena on Great Barrier Island on Sunday — I’ll get back to that. Yesterday, some yachtie friends, Lin and David, that live here on Kawau, had us over for dinner. Also there was Alana, a young American woman solo-sailer (another covid-refugee) that has just completed a figure-eight circumnavigation of NZ over the summer, fundraising for a charity serving foster children. We had seen flyers for her project and talks at various places this summer, but had not been at any of them. Lin is a bit of a mover and shaker, so it wasn’t that surprising to encounter Alana there. Two German yachtie friends (also covid-refugees), Dietmar and Marie, who we know from Whangarei, and who we shared several anchorages with this summer on the South Island, are expected here this afternoon. They are moving their boat, Greyhound, down to Auckland to ship her to the UK for various reasons, but also to do the entire adventure all over again. We hope to welcome them back to NZ in a couple of years. Dinner on Greyhound this evening will be a sad-sweet good-bye. Two other ex-pat American yachties, Greg and Gaylene, who we have met at the Martinis’ house a couple of times are expected here tomorrow. Dinner is proposed with them then. We so enjoy this broader yachting community, but we’re anxious to rejoin our closer community in Whangarei.

My last blog post left us arriving in Lyttelton on the South Island. There was a good weather window soon after that for heading north, but we opted to linger a bit. A number of social opportunities had presented themselves. Our Kiwi friends Ian and Carolyn Goodison were coming down to Christchurch for their son, Darcy’s, graduation. They were also booked on the Trans-Alpine train over to Greymouth and back — this is one of those “must-do” tourist items. And even more, two other sets of yachtie friends (all covid-refugees, but two of which had sold their boat and were returning to the States, so we wouldn’t have seen them again, otherwise) were touring the South Island, and would be in Christchurch the night Ian and Carolyn were to return on the train. So, we joined Ian and Carolyn, and Darcy and his partner, Becs, for dinner one night; booked ourselves round-trip on the train, too; and had a great group of friends together for dinner that Saturday. So nice to see Kenny and Betsy before they flew off, as well as Tom and Sylvia. It was well worth the delay.

Central Business District, Christchurch

View from the Trans-Alpine Train

Old Friends from Whangarei in Lyttelton

It’s been a long road from Lyttelton to Kawau, some seven hundred miles or so, but no great misadventures. Just the usual mixed bag of sailing and motoring. Three times we had long, hard beats upwind, once for about twenty hours, but we also had a number of great, romping sails. And, of course, a fair amount of motoring.

Great Sailing

Great Sailing

We had parted company from Daman and Katrin on Kiwi Logic just south of Lyttelton, but we leap-frogged them along the way, and they caught up to us about a week ago in Mercury Bay near Whitianga. We spent an enjoyable few days with them diving for lobsters in the Mercury Islands, then reluctantly left them behind there.

Our last stop before Kawau was in Tryphena harbor on Great Barrier Island where we enjoyed brief visits with Ian’s sister, Robyn, and with a couple of old Kiwi friends, Ron and Helen.

So, there you have it, our “almost” circumnavigation of New Zealand. It’s been a grand adventure. I strongly suspect that we will head south again in a couple of years, maybe then also visiting Fiordland. Maybe.