We sailed north to the Bay of Islands as reported in my last big travelog post, and ended the journey at the Cavalli Islands where a wreck called the Rainbow Warrior has been relocated to create a marine preserve.  The Rainbow Warrior was a Greenpeace vessel sunk in the 1980s in Auckland Harbor by the French Secret Service!  The bombs used to sink it were sneaked into New Zealand aboard yachts and submarines.

Anouk is a licensed PADI Dive Instructor, lucky for us! We have purchased all our necessary dive gear in the town of Kerikeri and so now have tanks, regulators, etc., so this was to be our first big scuba-diving adventure. Anouk gave us, with our new equipment, a refresher course in dive theory and took Mike and me individually on a training dive in clear calm water where we could sink down to the sandy bottom about ten feet deep and practice techniques such as clearing our masks, losing and retrieving our masks, sharing air with our “buddy”, hand signals, and other important skills.

Having passed Anouk’s inspection, it was on to the Cavallis where we were fortunate to be able to anchor for the night. Usually the sea is rough and choppy in this area and not comfortable for anchoring, but this trip it was smooth as glass.  The water was incredibly clear – from the deck of the boat we could look down into 25 feet of water and see individual shells on the bottom.  Diving the wreck was quite an adventure for our first dive, as it lies in 20-25 meters of water.

Anouk and I went first as a pair, and Mike and Rod went second after Anouk and I finished our dive.  The water, as I said, was so incredibly clear and the wreck was beautiful with brightly colored (pinks, purples, blues, oranges, yellows) beds of anemones and thousands of fish.  We saw a moray eel and a scorpion fish in addition to hundreds of more common varieties. Anouk scribbled a note to me underwater on her dive slate – “WOW!”.

The dive was one of the highlights of our entire vacation and has us really looking forwards to diving in Tonga and Fiji where the water is warmer and the fish even more colorful.

Anouk has a digital camera (thanks, Jan!) with an underwater case, so she took all the underwater photos that are included in the album.

After the Cavallis we headed out to sea and cruised 40 or 50 miles south the following day. With no wind we motor along at about eight knots. The water was glassy smooth and as a result we were able to spot schools of tuna nearby…Rod was trolling for one but didn’t catch any. We had to go to the fish market in Auckland to have tuna steaks for dinner.

We anchored overnight back in Tutukaka harbor and the next day motored another 40 miles or so to Kawau Island to spend the night. There is an old governor’s mansion on this island, but it was closed for the evening when we arrived. Instead we went for an hour’s hike (in a drizzle) from the mansion to an old coastal copper mine. On the way we scared up three or four wallabies! Apparently Governor Grey in the 1800’s imported a certain kind of wallaby from Australia. This species of wallaby is now extinct in Australia but is thriving on Kawau Island, so now they are being exported back to Australia to try to reestablish the population. They look like tiny miniature kangaroos.

The next morning we sailed to Waiheke Island for a 2-day visit. Waiheke is a well-developed island not too far from Auckland. Some residents commute daily to work in Auckland via ferry.  There are some twenty plus wineries on the island and it has a pleasant vacation atmosphere. We dinghied ashore and climbed up a hill to the Te Whau Winery where we sampled their red wine. Because it was Good Friday they could sell us wine by the glass but weren’t allowed to see it to us by the bottle! Mike and I then took off for a walk which turned into a 2 1/2 hour partial circumnavigation of the island.

Easter weekend is different in New Zealand from what we’re used to in the US. It is apparently the second biggest holiday after Christmas, and a lot of businesses were closed from Friday through the following Monday. In addition a large percentage of restaurants and cafes were closed as well, and the ones that remained open charge 20% extra on top of their usual prices for the privilege of eating there!

Sunday morning we sailed from Waiheke to Auckland, as the Norah Jones concert was that night. The winds were pleasantly moderate, so we enjoyed sailing the entire way – every time Rod spotted another boat under sail headed in our same general direction, he had a tendency to make a race out of it. We tacked back and forth the whole trip, which is not the norm for a cruising boat but was good practice.

We sailed into Auckland around noon and shortly thereafter Amy Bankoff drove over to visit us for the afternoon and join us at the concert that evening. It was Rod’s birthday so Anouk whipped up a bunch of goodies for a pre-concert party with Rod’s mom and Amy joining us. Then we all hitched a ride in Amy’s car and went to the concert.

The concert was a real pleasure – I’m always amazed at how much better live music seems to sound compared to a CD of the same music. The Aeotea Arena was really nice, not overly big, and even though we had balcony seats, they were arranged to rise up very steeply so everyone had a great view of the stage.

After the concert, back aboard Raven, Amy spent the night in the guest berth and pronounced it (next morning) as wonderfully comfortable (a hint for anyone thinking of visiting us aboard!).

Monday Mike and I walked up and down the big city streets of Auckland shopping and checking out the cosmopolitan sights, which were quite a change from the peaceful islands we had been visiting for nearly three weeks.

Tuesday we headed back to our home port in Gulf Harbour where we are currently parked.  Now it is boat fix-up time, working on an accumulation of projects that we want to complete before the voyage to the islands. Today’s project was a new inverter because the old inverter couldn’t run the new washer/dryer (something about sine waves). Just a few minutes ago we started our first load of laundry in the new machine to cheers all around! The guys spent the day shopping in Auckland for a new dinghy, and tomorrow we are installing a dive compressor so we can refill our own scuba tanks with air in the remote islands.

There is a beautiful park very close to the harbour and Anouk and I went on a three hour hike there today…it wanders through a short stretch of “bush” – very shady with huge trees, ferns and running water and lots of native birds – then climbs up open hills and paddocks of sheep and cattle to Lookout Point from where you can see in nearly a complete full circle and identify all the islands we sailed to in the Hauraki Gulf during the first stage of our sailing trip. Then the trail winds down to a pretty beach lined with Putukawa trees (which bloom with red flowers at Christmas time and are therefore nicknamed the New Zealand Christmas Tree) and a YMCA camp with parklike grounds complete with peacocks.

As we wind down from our successful first cruise, we sent our awesome crew Rod and Anouk off on date night – transportation by dinghy.  And on our very last night we celebrated a successful maiden voyage with a bottle of champagne and toasts all around in Raven’s comfortable cockpit. We leave this coming Sunday evening (New Zealand time) and arrive home in Tucson also on Sunday evening (April 3rd) having regained our one lost day from the trip over.

See you all soon!