Category: Uncategorized

December 12, 2015

We always have our radar running. On the trip today, I noticed a radar return on our Simrad 4G radar and I couldn’t find the responsible boat. It turns out it was a kayak.

I’ve enlarged the part of the photo with the kayak – see insert. Here’s what his radar return looked like…

I don’t hesitate to make mention of a product when it doesn’t perform as I expect. I am trying to do the same when it does. This radar sees boats much better than we can, in the distance, up close, small, large, and in calm and rough seas. It also does an excellent job of spotting squalls (and birds, plastic oyster floats, breaching whales, helicopters, and New Zealand’s Orion aircraft, for that matter).

They call this radar “Broadband” but please ignore the marketing terms. Marketers love to use words like “High-Def” or “Digital” or even “Broadband” but it is usually just the same old thing with a new label. For instance, “Digital” simply means that the signal is translated into ones and zeros at some point. Not only is that unimportant, but it’s not always desirable. It really doesn’t make it any better.  “High-Def” is totally meaningless. High as compared to what? “It worked for televisions, heck, it ought to work for radar” says the marketing brain trust.

In the case of the 4G radar, “Broadband” might be appropriate in that the radar outputs a wave that sweeps from a lower frequency to a higher frequency, or a broad band of frequencies. By doing this, they are able to get amazing resolution at a fraction of the power used by conventional radar.

Also, most conventional radars have a watch mode or guard zone mode. In this mode, the radar usually comes on every few minutes and does a few sweeps, looking for targets. That was how our old Furuno unit worked. Since the 4G radar uses so little power, it can run continuously, always looking for targets to enter the  alarmed area. I like this. Sometimes, especially in big seas, targets only appear every few scans.

I am continually impressed by the Simrad 4G radar. -Rich

(Not paid for by Navico, Simrad, B&G, nor any other affiliate company 😉

December 10, 2015… A Three Bay Day

We started at Bland Bay, toured Poor Knights, drove the dinghy through three amazing caves/archways, and ended the day at a perfect little no-name bay in Tutukaka Harbor.

---

These islands are stunning. I think they’re as pretty as anything I’ve ever seen from our boat. There are jagged cliffs, caves and arches, stunning blue water, and it’s all covered with what Cyndi called pohutukawa sauce (pohutukawas are New Zealand’s Christmas tree, blooming with vibrant red flowers in December). See for yourself…

You say Archways, I say Caves
After anchoring, we launched the dinghy to drive through a few of the many nearby caves. Wow! One, we think, was high enough to take Legacy through, mast and all. Another was smaller, dark, colorful with crystal clear water beneath us.

All the while, ghosting through these caves, “Dead men tell no tales!” was bouncing around in my head. We were on a Disneyland ride!

And below us, these must have been workers, cleaning the tracks…

We had to put up the dinghy engine and paddle through this cave using our yelling sticks so we wouldn’t run over divers from one of the three dive boats anchored nearby.

Below is a photosphere of one of the caves. Click on its title bar and then drag to pan left, right, up and down. -Rich

---

Comment from Cyndi: Poor Knights is famous for being a dive destination, which is a shame because it’s so much more than that. You don’t have to brave the cold water to enjoy it; all it takes is a dinghy, a kayak, a paddle board, or even just your own boat. The wind picked up and the skies were gray as we arrived, and we wondered if it had been a mistake to make this trip. But as soon as we saw the masses of pohutukawa trees dripping off the top and down the slopes of these islands, we decided it had been worth it just to see that. When we went around the east side, the wind instantly dropped and it was calm, proving that contrary to what we’d been told, there is some protection here. When the sun popped out,  it made for a great afternoon for running around in the dinghy.

We thought about spending the night, generally thought of as a no-no, but with the winds due to shift north, we decided to play it safe and make the 12-mile trip back to the mainland. We ended up spending the night at a bay in Tutukaka Harbour which turned out to be a very comfortable stop for the night. If it has a name, we couldn’t find it; so we called it No Name Bay.

Anchor Waypoints:

Bland Bay: 35° 20.62′ S, 174° 21.56′ E in sand and mud about 15′ deep

Poor Knights: 35° 29.047′ S, 174° 44.637′ E in ROCKS! This was close to shore and still 55′ deep. We wouldn’t spend the night here unless it was pretty windless.

No Name Bay, Tutukaka Harbour: 35° 36.807′ S, 174° 32.272′ E in muddy sand about 15′ deep. There room for about one boat in this bay (or eight Kiwis!). We had it to ourselves. There are some rocks on the bottom.

December 10, 2015

We’re on the move again. After a change in plans, we’re going to harbor-hop down the east coast of New Zealand’s North Island until we get to Wellington. From there, it’s a short trip across the Cook Straight to the South Island.

Our first stop surprised both of us – Bland Bay.

---

We didn’t think we’d make it this far, having left the dock at 1PM. If we did make it this far, we’d planned to anchor in one of the usual spots: Whangamumu or Whangaruru. The wind came up. The seas got rough. The tiny ship was tossed. Oh wait, that’s Gilligan’s Island. We weren’t tossed much at all, but it would be more comfortable if we could stop before Whangaruru.

Bland Bay? Anchoring here saved us at least an hour over winding up into Whangaruru. David Thatcher, author of popular NZ cruising guides says this isn’t a good overnight spot. We disagree. We had a great night, not quite out of the wind but there was no fetch from the southerly wind we had. There was also very little east swell running. We could see how that might be a problem if there were. David Thatcher must have been here during an east swell. (Click to enlarge and scroll through pictures below.)

Below is a photosphere of Bland Bay. Click on it and after it loads, you can pan up, down, and all around. You can also zoom in. It’s not perfect. I have a hard time taking these on a moving boat, but it should give you a feeling for the place.

Anchor Waypoint:
We anchored at about 35°, 20.62′ South, 174°, 21.56′ East in about 16 feet of water. There’s tons of room here and the bottom feels like sand or mud. We felt no rocks where we anchored.

-Rich

December 1, 2015

We ran across this picture that we took earlier in the year and it was strange seeing it out of context…

We have a little slide show that runs on our computer desktop and randomly selects a picture to display from all the pictures we’ve taken on this almost four year cruise. This one was from May of this year, taken in Australia at the Sydney Aquarium.

Not so strange when you see the entire sawfish, but we were momentarily sure we’d snapped a pretty good photo of an alien. -Rich

November 2015

Thoughts about this…

The amount of time we ran the engine came as a surprise to me. It didn’t feel like we motored that much. Actually, we motored for a full day or more at the beginning of the trip in very light winds. When the wind came up strong and headed us, we continued to motor through the boisterous conditions because we were able to point higher into the wind and it also made it more comfortable as we could use less sail (with a more slack trim) to make way. We motored another day at the end of the passage when the wind died.

We didn’t motor much to charge. Our new solar panel is amazing! We did motor a couple of times during the night when the wind dropped below ten knots. We wanted the speed and the electricity didn’t hurt either.

There were a couple of times during the light wind times mentioned above when we’d have been very happy sailing in light winds and making 3.5 to 4 knots but as usual, we were racing a front in to New Zealand. That always seems to be the case!

The other thing that surprised me was our fuel consumption. I’ve seen it just above a half a gallon an hour but never below. I guess the wind was just helpful enough that we could run the engine slower than usual. It doesn’t take much wind-assist to really up the mileage.
-Rich

Our track (crooked line) versus the rhumb line, displayed on openCPN on my android phone.