35º 18’S  174º07’E:  The Best Mooring In The World

2011


    I awake in darkness and silence, and almost imperceptible motion.  The boat rocks and bobs an inch or two.   On land even such small movement would be cause for alarm, but on a mooring boats are always alive.

    At first light I summon the will to leave my warm cocoon of bedding with a sleeping bag as added quilt for the five steps to my clothes in the main cabin.  HIgh pressure and clear skies have finally followed the worst spring storm in New Zealand for decades caused by a giant low that sat in the Southern Ocean for a week, bringing snow at lambing season that decimated flocks.  Clear nights are cool nights, and the pre-dawn cabin is 41º, which is about as cold as it ever gets in the Bay of Islands.

     Cool air against bare skin burns, but not for long.

    Scandinavians tell me that there is no such thing as bad weather, only improper clothing.   I could add long underwear, but Levis and Polartec are enough until the sun brings warmth, though I do sometimes use a sleeping bag as a lap robe.  Even in mid-winter the temperature usually rises to above 55º, and today in early October springtime it will reach into the 60ºs.

    Dressed I step to the companionway. 

    This morning I am facing the mountain to the east.   Only two thousand feet high, it is small for a mountain, but too big to be a hill in this country of hills.  Sometimes shrouded by fog or cloud, this morning its silhouette is razor sharp.  One of the great pleasures of life on my mooring is watching light and shadow change on hills and water during the day.

    A quarter mile away, silhouetted against the rising sun, is tiny gum-drop shaped Pine Tree island. 

    The story is that early last century a local settler planted seven pine trees on the islet, one for each of his children.  He and they are dead now; but each time I look that way I remember his loving gesture.  And the roots of those trees are all that still holds the eroding island together.

    A quarter mile in the other direction is Opua Marina, from which I bought my mooring six years ago, after sailing across the Tasman following completion of my fourth circumnavigation In Sydney, Australia.  I paid the duty on THE HAWKE OF TUONELA, too, so that I don’t have to take her out of the country every year;  although I have sailed to French Polynesia and back; to Tonga and Fiji and back; and made an eighteen month fifth circumnavigation since then.  Often during that circumnavigation I missed my mooring and wished I were back on it.  I have found unexpected contentment here.  But contentment is not enough, and after a while I find myself thinking of the open ocean again.

    Opua is a place that has improved with development.

    Prior to the opening of the marina in the 1990s, to clear in with officials you had to tie up to the old pier, whose pilings were intended for commercial craft not sailboats.  Although some visiting yachts remained at anchor off the Opua Cruising Club, I didn’t.  As soon as formalities were over, I left and went three miles back north to anchor off Russell.

    Now the marina’s outer breakwater is perhaps the world’s easiest to approach Quarantine Dock; and the marina and shore businesses provide welcomed services, even to those of us on moorings or out at anchor:  showers; laundry; a pleasant cafe; several wireless Internet connections that reach my mooring, albeit with a special antenna.  There is everything you need here, except an ATM machine.

    The Bay of Islands is like a funnel whose seven mile wide mouth is open to the northeast between Cape Wiwiki and Cape Brett and whose spout is bent 60º to the south between the towns of Pahia and Russell.  Opua is at the tip of that spout, and my mooring is, for me who enjoys a bit of distance from land,  perfectly situated near the center of the basin, which usually is as smooth as the landlocked lake it resembles.  Points overlap a mile to the north, so the circle of green hills seems continuous.

    Hills are important to those of us who partly live in the flatlands, as I do in a suburb of Chicago where there isn’t a hill within fifty miles.  In a little while I’ll row ashore and walk up and down those hills the four miles to Pahia to shop and have lunch.  An inexpensive shuttle taxi service  is available during the summer, but I walk because I like the walk over three seriously steep hills and valleys. 

    One can follow a trail  along the water’s edge or the road inland.   My favorite route is the road for the first two hills and, if the tide is out, the water’s edge around the last.  Either way I walk beside fern forests, whose sweet and spicy smells vary so that I could know where I am with my eyes closed, and spectacular views of the bay, from near or on high.

    I like to use my aging body.  Walking, climbing hills, rowing, hauling water, working on the boat:  mooring life is a good life.

    I take the quiet and pure air on my mooring for granted.

    A few hundred people live on the hillsides around Opua.  A couple of thousand in Pahia.  Another thousand across the bay around Russell.  The economy is based on tourism, farming and fishing.  There is no industry within at least fifty miles.  Maybe more than a hundred,  There aren’t even any through roads around the Opua basin.  Only one on each shore leading to the car ferry a half mile north of my mooring.  At night the darkness to the east is broken by the lights of fewer than a dozen homes.


    I stop writing and listen.

    The flag flaps.  Water ripples.  Then a tern screeches like a rusty hinge.

    One of the pleasures of life on my mooring is an evening drink on deck, usually accompanied by music on the cockpit speakers.

    My mooring is on the edge of the mooring field, and on Wednesdays and Fridays during the summer entertainment is provided by Opua Cruising Club races.   The start line is  a hundred yards north of me.

    When I don’t have races to watch, I have birds:  terns, cormorants--shags to New Zealanders--sea gulls, ducks, gannets.   The ducks beg; the gulls squabble and steal;  the gannets hunt honorably.

    The setting sun is often spectacular.  Many evenings it turns the world gold.  The mountain to the east.  The sky.  The water.  THE HAWKE OF TUONELA and all the other boats.

    I would always rather be on a mooring or at anchor than in a marina, and only take HAWKE to the shore when I need work to be done.

    I fill jerry cans with water at the Opua Cruising Club dinghy dock. and row them back out.   I fill the occasional jerry can with diesel at the fuel dock--THE HAWKE OF TUONELA herself has not been to a fuel dock since 2003. 

    I row those jerry cans in the latest of a half dozen Avon Redstart inflatables that I have owned over the decades.  I recall that the very first cost $250 new.  I have no experience of using an outboard on an inflatable, but if you want to row, Avon’s oarlocks are the best.

    This is the first Redstart I’ve bought since Avon was taken over by Zodiac.   Fortunately the basic design has remained little changed.  On the plus side they now include in the base price floorboards, which I like, and the outboard bracket, which to me is irrelevant.  However the quality of the fabric and construction seem to me less strong than before.  The Redstart is still my dinghy of choice; but this one shows more wear after only three years than did previous versions I have owned.

    I also own a small rigid dinghy for the last row in before I fly back to the U.S. and the first row out when I return.  I would say that this vessel rows like a pig, but that would be an insult to pigs.  It’s virtues are that it cost $65, is light enough for me to pick up and carry on my shoulder to and from the marina dinghy rack, and can be locked to that rack as an inflatable cannot.

    In many, if not most harbors, I am the only rower.  Not in Opua.  While those using outboards are in the majority, a good many other people row here, even occasionally another American.

    On a mooring there are fewer insects, better ventilation, unobstructed views, quiet, and a boat swings with wind and tide.

    When I want to change that view, I have only to drop my mooring, dodge the car ferries, and in an hour or two have my choice of anchorages along the mainland of New Zealand’s North Island or the many other small islands for which Captain Cook named this bay.

    I consider the local cruising ground to extend from Whangaroa, a forty mile sail north  and west around Cape Wiwiki, to Whangamumu, a twenty-five mile sail east around Cape Brett and south.  (‘Wh’ at the start of a Maori word is pronounced ‘F’)  Both of these are beautiful and well protected harbors--Whangaroa opening up for three miles after a two hundred yard wide entrance that is obviously best avoided at full tide; and Whangamumu a former whaling station.  But there are almost countless closer choices inside the bay itself.  Depending on wind direction, my favorites are Roberton Island, where I can row ashore and follow a path up through the forest to a spectacular lookout; and Paradise Bay at Urupukapuka Island, which has a wonderful view of the sun setting over islands to the west and a fine sand bottom from which anchors come up clean.

    Roberton is exposed to the south.  Paradise Bay to the west.  If the wind comes from those directions, I have only to move a mile or less to find another cove or bay that is protected.

    In summer I seldom have an anchorage to myself, although only during the Christmas and Easter school holidays are any really crowded; but at other seasons I usually do. 

    These islands and the coast beyond a few enclaves are essentially unpopulated, with only isolated houses.  The scenery is spectacular.  Cliffs and hills dive into the sea.  Parts remind me of California’s Big Sur, and some views inside Whangaroa of Yosemite Valley.

           

    What does access to this version of paradise cost me?

    I paid about $2000 for my mooring.  It is worth more now.

    Tides at Opua are usually in the six foot range, and my mooring  usually sits in 25’ to 30’ of water.

    The base is a three ton chunk of concrete,   To this are attached 16’ of 1½ ” chain; 16’ of ¾” chain; 10’ of ⅝” chain; and 30’ of 1” line. 

    Although sixty knots is the strongest wind I’ve experienced while on the mooring, reportedly more than seventy knots have hit while I’ve been away, and THE HAWKE OF TUONELA, which is not heavy or hard on anchors or moorings, remained safe.

    I pay an annual mooring fee to the Northland Regional Council of about $100.

    And I have to pay for a mooring inspection and necessary replacements every three years.  Last time this was $600.  This time I expect it will be less.

    I also pay for a full membership in the Opua Cruising Club--the only organization of which I am a willing member--whose dinghy dock I use.   This costs about $100 annually.  Temporary memberships for visiting yachts are available for less.


    I do not claim that my mooring is the best in the world or that the Bay of Islands is the world’s best cruising ground.  Only that there are none better.