New Zealand

28th November 2009

35 18 S 174 07 E

The passage from Tonga to New Zealand took 10 days. The wind was light and the sea flat to begin with, so much so that we were actually able to barbeque on the way! As we got closer to land the wind went round to the nose and the final part of the trip was quite frustrating.......

On arrival we tied up on the Quarantine dock and awaited the officials. New Zealand is very strict about the importation of food and plant products so we were prepared for them to confiscate our remaining fresh supplies, which amounted to half a cabbage and some egg shells. It was a good job the trip wasn’t much longer!

We were excited to go ashore as soon as the official business was done, to catch up with friends and get our first taste of New Zealand. The first taste was sweet....... free food and beer at the local ‘boat show’. When the beer ran out there was wine. It could not have been a better introduction – we never did get round to looking at the exhibitions though.

Sadly, when we contacted home I found my father had been taken ill so I caught the first flight back to UK, leaving Andy to spend Christmas and New Year with his good friend Johnny on Vindil. For me it was a difficult time and I was sorry to say my final farewell to a much loved dad. I miss him greatly.

When I returned, at the end of January, Chinook was in the boatyard and Andy had made great progress on her refit. He gave me a quiet day to recover from the journey and then it was down to work. We both worked from dawn to dusk, welding (Andy), varnishing (me), painting and all manner of jobs on rigging and the like. I just can’t believe that after so much effort Chinook looks much the same as when we started!

At the end of February we had to go into overdrive to get Chinook back into the water. We had friends arriving from UK at the beginning of March and the pressure was on. We ended up anti fouling in the late evening, with flood lighting, ingeniously set up by Andy! We finally managed to ‘splash’ the day after Terry and Sue arrived – they had no time for jet lag as we put them to work as soon as they had stowed their luggage!

We were so happy to have them on board, not least because they got us out of the yard. It was great to be out cruising. After a brief stop in Whangarei to provision and get the boat ready for sea we headed out along the scenic coastline to the Bay of Islands, via Tutukaka and Whangamumu. The weather was perfect with blue skies and sunshine; and the sea, in the well protected bay, was flat making for easy sailing – when the wind deigned to show itself.

The Bay of Islands is gorgeous, with around 150 undeveloped islands breaking up the turquoise waters. It is a place of great historical significance to the Maori and, whilst out walking we came across the remains of some of their ancient settlements. We were only able to visit a handful of the islands in the time we had but it was great to be able to take Terry and Sue to places they could not have accessed any other way. Seeing it through their eyes helped us to appreciate how lucky we are.

We eventually made our way back to civilization and a visit to the genteel town of Russell , once known as the ‘hellhole of the Pacific’ where whalers, escaped convicts and drunken sailors would hang out. It was a pleasant stop on the way back to Opua, where Terry and Sue jumped ship to continue their holiday by campervan. We missed their company when they had gone, particularly as we had to go back to doing our own washing up!

Once on our own it was straight back to the jobs we hadn’t managed to complete in the yard and Andy spent a good couple of hours up the mast, every day for a week! He got used to it in the end... and I got some peace and quiet!!!

After Easter we found that the price of a campervan halved and we decided that we should take the opportunity to see something of this wonderful country, after all there is little chance of us getting back here again.

In a month we managed to get from Auckland down to the fjords of South Island and back and saw the most awesome sights on the way, including the spectacular crossing between the islands on the Picton Ferry, a notoriously rough trip but, fortunately, mirror calm when we did it. Driving through New Zealand is amazing; firstly there is very little traffic making it very easy; secondly, the scenery is spectacular and so diverse, it seems like someone changes the backdrop every couple of hours! It is no wander that New Zealand was chosen as the location for Lord of the Rings films. There are mountains and fjords and glaciers and thermal springs and gorges and gold mines and orchards and cute little towns – each one historic or famous for something, however obscure. And New Zealand does it all so well. The Department of Conservation manages the countryside and tourism. They have well marked walks for everyone, from short focused strolls for the infirm to tramps of several days, with huts for overnight stops, for the super fit, each enhanced by well presented information about the flora and fauna on the way.

The DOC also has its own campsites and we used these as often as we could, since they are very cheap or, often, free; particularly the ones located off the beaten track. The sites are very basic, with the only facilities being composting toilets and, sometimes, barbeque pits, and, apart from those at major tourist spots, little used. We often had a campsite to ourselves or in company of only one or two others. The most interesting stops were those where we came across local characters. At a hunting site, several miles up an unmade track, we met a guy in his late 70’s who had been hunting deer for over 60 years. He came over to check on our movements so that he wouldn’t accidentally shoot us! At Goldsborough we met guys who spend every summer ‘fossicking’ for gold in the river. They have special sluices onto which they deposit sediment from the river bed. The fast flowing water takes away the mud leaving behind tiny flakes of glittering gold.


It wasn’t long before we found out why the campervans are so cheap after Easter. We woke one morning to see the first snow of the year blanketing the mountains all around us. We chipped the ice off our noses and hurried out to invest in hot water bottles! The days were mostly warm and sunny but darkness fell and the cold crept in during the late afternoon. The bonus was that we got to see the glorious reds and golds of the trees in their autumn livery, something we have really missed in the tropics. And we so enjoyed the evenings when we were able to warm ourselves on an open fire built to cook our evening meal.

Whilst on a lunch stop one day in South Island we watched with envy as helicopters took off to fly over the glaciers. The price was prohibitive but we decided that had it been just half we would have treated ourselves, after all the following day was my birthday. As we prepared to move on the operator came over and offered us the trip at very close to half price – to make up the numbers! We couldn’t believe our luck and spent the next twenty minutes or so at 2000m amongst snow clad mountain peaks with a first class view of the pack ice and its deep craters. It was breathtaking. We were even more grateful the next day when the heavens opened and torrential rain fell making it impossible for us to do anything. When the rain finally stopped late in the afternoon we set out to visit the terminal face of the glacier but it was closed because of the danger of breaking ice. It was still closed the following morning and huge chunks of ice could be seen more than a mile from the ice face, where they had been dumped by the rivers of rainwater. We had to move on so, but for our good fortune; we would never have seen the glacier.

New Zealand enjoyed one of its best summers in years this year and we had very little rain..... except for the days when we visited the major scenic attractions, such as the glaciers, the fjords and Arthur’s Pass. But since the west coast of South Island has over 7 meters of rain per year it was hardly surprising that we got soaked a few times. However, this perhaps worked in our favour at Milford Sound where the rain created a spectacular deluge of cascading waterfalls and then stopped just long enough for the mist to clear so that Andy could take a million photographs of Mitre Peak!



Mount Cook was one of our favourite stops. The scenery was
spectacular and we could hear the thunderous roar of distant avalanches echoing through the valley. We took some fairly strenuous walks in the area, one of about 3 or 4 miles along a moraine, at the end of which we were rewarded with a stunning view of Mt Cook and the glacier creeping down its side. Further down, in the valley, large icebergs floated in the glacial lake. It seemed odd to stand in burning sunshine looking at an ice block bigger than a house.

It was such an exciting trip with so many memorable experiences, but after 4 weeks in a campervan we were very glad to get back home to the very spacious Chinook!
Within a few days of our return we were making our preparations to leave New Zealand before winter set in. We were sorry to be leaving and a little nervous of the trip ahead having been virtually landlocked for six months.