Opua: powered; sailed
Opua: powered; sailed
April 2
Urupukapuka Island: powered
One of the problems when leaving my mooring is that the engine always needs to be run.
Of necessity over the decades I have learned more about diesel engines than I want to know. That isn’t much; but it includes being aware that it is not good to run diesels at low RPMs while charging batteries, which I seldom do, and that diesel engines need to be run under load. I don’t do that much either. So when I leave the mooring my engine always needs to be run.
In lovely quiet conditions at 9 a.m. this morning in light wind in which I could peacefully have sailed, I turned on the little Yanmar and powered over here in two hours.
I don’t really mind powering over smooth water, and it was. Smooth, sliver and pewter beneath a low layer of coastal cloud that burned off shortly after I anchored at 11 a.m. We rolled from side to side a few times while underway, but only on power boat wakes.
From the water I could see evidence of the lack of rainfall. Thick vegetation is still green, but cleared hills north of Pahia are lion colored.
This Good Friday afternoon is sunny and warm.
As usual I anchored father out than anyone else. I always like to be on the edge, particularly here with no one behind me to interrupt my view of sunset over the islands to the west.
Good Friday is the beginning of a long school holiday in New Zealand, and there are already twenty other boats anchored in this cove and at least that many in Otiao Bay just to the north, with more undoubtedly to arrive before dark. There is plenty of room and, thus far, no one is crowding me.
There is nothing ashore at Paradise Bay,and I was sitting on deck contemplating why people anchor so close in, when three porpoise swam slowly through the anchorage and then back into deep water, and I realized that even on boats most people are still creatures of the land. I am with the porpoise, who long ago climbed ashore with the rest of us, decided it was a mistake, and returned to the sea.
No one is crowding him either.
I have such a lot in common with the super-rich.
April 3
Opua: 7.3
I raised anchor in very light wind at 8:30 this morning, and sailed all but one of the miles back to my mooring.
Mostly it was in light wind. With a clean bottom, THE HAWKE OF TUONELA was generally making one knot less than the true wind--3 knots in 4; 4 in 5--until I made the turn near Russell and the wind picked up to twelve knots and we had some fine sailing, reaching a maximum speed of 7.3 knots. It was lovely, but with only few miles to go didn’t last long.
So many other boats were on the water that I had to disengage the tiller pilot and take the tiller myself.
I had the chartplotter on, not for position, but to have the readout of Speed Over the Ground on my instrument displays. I was surprised and pleased to see that it still showed my inward track at the end of the circumnavigation last October.
Sunday, April 4, 2010