Boat Sweet Boat: Back to Terikah

Back to boat late after helping a friend on SV Linnaea with a haul-out in Whangarei. Home sweet boat – the distinct smell of our boat greeting us, the comfort of the warm wood interior, and a cozy cabin in which to sleep. We all slept great.

Next day, busy with work for me and unpacking for all, starting to make lists for the next cruising season, getting ready to head north to “the Islands” – Fiji, Vanuatu, and New Caledonia – where we will spend our next 6 months. Chris fixed our port head so it is functioning and put protective plates in the chain locker.

Calder cleaned and waxed the boat. Back to “normal” boat life routine, Calder going for a run, Cora having a sleepover, regular school mornings. Friends who are no longer cruising have me sift through their medical bags and I spent a full day re-organizing ours. Excited to see tinned butter at the local general store, an essential provision.We had a professional boat rigger who climbed the mast and inspected all rigging. He said the boat looked great but did make a preventative adjustment on a shroud that was close to rubbing.

I organized all our food, printed off our provisioning list, and set to creating a list for 6 months in the islands. I have to say that I did an overall excellent job with our 8 months of food crossing the Pacific, balancing out buying too much (too much weight and cans rust, items expire) and too little (we finished off the last of our food on our final passage days before arriving in New Zealand). There will be food in the Islands, but certain items (whole wheat flour, almond milk, pasta sauce, peanut butter) are not readily available. I picked up a yogurt maker, as this has become our staple breakfast food and we hope to mix it with fresh tropical fruits for smoothies. The kids vacuum-packed our brown rice and whole wheat flour.

It’s also been 1.5 years since we left the US and we are needing to seek out medical care while nomadic. Health care is quite affordable here out of pocket and we all had dental cleanings. Chris had labs done (can self-order from a large menu here and just walk in for a time slot). I had an ophthalmology follow up on my posterior vitreous detachment, all good. And we even are doing “nomadic orthodontistry” for Cora, finding an awesome orthodontist willing to work with our lifestyle – within a week she had two teeth pulled and a brace made to straighten her front teeth that have become crowded and painful. We’ll get it tightened along the way. It’s not braces, but will do the trick for now! We do have international health insurance, but it only kicks in after a very large deductible (for emergencies).

Nights are getting cold…it’s definitely time to go the tropics! More boat jobs. Chris changed out the exhaust elbows on the engines. Calder cleaned the bilges.

The guys drafted and built a paddle board/fish cooler rack off our transom.

Chris replaced our windlass motor. Calder is fixing up and organizing his fishing gear.

With all the time our boat lived at the dock, we practically became attached with a full ecosystem of growth on the bottom. We left the dock for a hull cleaning out at anchor in Matauwhi Bay, our boat trudging through the water with all the resistance of growth. I showed off my mad skill at darts at the Russell Yacht Club (pure luck), but we only spent two nights out before running back to dock for the Tasman Easter Low, which turned into what I’m calling our “half cyclone.”

Here’s my play by play:

Tuesday morning: Pulled up anchor and headed toward the dock. If we needed to, we could have stayed in the anchorage, but it would have involved two nights of all-night watch in order to ensure we were staying put, but more importantly all the other boats surrounding us become liabilities if they drag and hit us. Into our slip at the marina, extra lines and fenders set up, code zero sail down.

More boats moving in and lots of activity, as others do the same. Marina is full and handing out extra storm lines to people. Intermittent rain, got a walk in before rain fully settled in. The calm is a bit eerie knowing what is coming.

Tuesday evening: This system has evolved to a cyclone in Fiji, unsure if they’ll name it. Thursday is supposed to be the worst of it, when we are in a squash zone between a low and high system. Overnight, winds slowly building, dock lines creaking, sleeping well.

Wednesday morning: They named it – A severe storm, forecasted in the upper North Island of NZ, has been upgraded to a category one tropical cyclone named “Tam” by the Fiji Meteorological Services. According to NEWA weather, Cyclone Tam’s centre is expected to remain west of Cape Reinga and will bring significant weather to the upper North Island, including strong winds reaching up to 100-120 km/h and heavy rainfall.

Huge waves (up to 6 metres!) are expected. It is expected to lose tropical cyclone status Wednesday prior to reaching Aotearoa. So…As predicted, NZ was expected to get 0-1 cyclones this season: this is our 0.5 of a cyclone! Hit gust of 40 knots at 9:30am here in the marina and building. We are cozy and safe.

Overnight: Huge gusts and thunderous rain, top 58.6 knots but sustained 50’s. So much noise. Bouy data at mouth of Bay of Islands showed top gust of 74 knots and seas 12m at 2am. The water has turned from turquoise waters to brown soup from all the runoff.

Over the next days the winds calmed and we moved to Matauwhi Bay near Russell, where we woke up Easter morning to a chocolate egg hunt on the boat and my teen kids humored me by enjoying my bunny shaped pancakes.

The sun came out and people emerged from their boats. Followed a somewhat mysterious sign to “The Big Chair,” up a hill on a trail through the forest; we found “the Big Chair.”

Noticed silk pods floating in the breeze, landing on our rigging – these were spiders ballooning, often after large rain events where they need to get out of their flooded homes and find new ones. Our rigging was coated in gossamer silk strands with tiny spiders taking over Terikah.

Next anchorage, Urupukapuka Island, well protected from NE winds with many hiking trails that we enjoyed between rain squalls. I love the native bush here. Aotearoa, the land of giants – birds, bugs, and trees. On isolate islands, evolution can take unexpected turns – some things get bigger than normal, even enormous. Half of the wildlife here is found nowhere else in the world. NZ’s long isolation from other lands has led to new species evolving. The longer you live here, the weirder you get. We’ve been here 6 months, better move on or we’ll get weirder. We had a good “shake-down” of our sails on the way back to Opua, seas choppy and winds high, challenging Calder to use all his arm muscles to bring in the Code Zero.

Chris and I turned a provisioning trip to Costco in Auckland into a fun overnight adventure, enjoying a quirky lunch stop and a tiny house AirBnB in the woods with a hot tub outside, breakfast brought to our front step in a basket.

The kids enjoyed hanging out with their friends on the boat by themselves.

Tonight we are anchored off the Opua marina, no room at the inn and this is cheaper anyway. We all have our pre-tropics haircuts, cutting off quite a bit of length for convenience of saltwater washes and temperature. Chris did the oil changes on both engines, teaching Calder.

Boats are starting to trickle north to Fiji, but we are staying put in the Bay of Islands until a better weather window forms. The trip is do-able right now (though not recommended by our weather router), but it would be highly challenging and uncomfortable. Our 6 month Visa is coming due on May 10 and we will be applying for an extension with Immigration due to weather. We are back at checking and analyzing the weather 2-3 times daily, talking about it, again and again. Then meeting up with other boats, talking about the weather again. It’s a theme.

Filling out the 13 pages of forms for Fiji, I ran across a new question: “Has plague occurred or been suspected among the rats or mice during the voyage or has there been an unusual rate of mortality among them?”  

Until next time, we await a weather window, tucked into our plague free boat.