We packed up the boat, and trailered it up to Opua, Bay of islands on the 28th December. We arrived in the evening around 6pm after battling holiday traffic, and taking the less hilly route, via Mangawhai and Waipu cove. Approx 260km, with a fuel economy of a miserable 15mpg !!
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| Opua Marina, in the early evening |
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| Looking across Opua from the Opua cruising club. |
We refuelled at Piahia, filled up both our petrol tanks for the outboard, and then headed back to Opua for a fantastically huge meal at the Opua cruising club, overlooking the water, and then slept on the boat, while on the trailer. Next morning was a super sunny day, and we wasted no time finishing rigging up and getting going. The tide was dropping, and the forecast was for a stormy night..
We motored over to Piahia, then after studying our map, set sail, in increasing rain, for Motuarohia island (Robertson island). The rain soon cleared, and then it was super sunny and humid again. We checked out Lagoon bay, but motored back to stay in Cooks cove for the afternoon, but it was very wavey, and had frequent visits by tour boats. Not recommended as an anchorage ! We stayed in Cook cove till after dark, and just about asleep, but rocking around, possibly due to swell refracting around the island. I took the brave/stupid move of pulling anchor, and motoring around to Lagoon bay navigating by GPS in the darkness. What followed was a drama which started at midnight, with us dragging our anchor, and drifting out of the bay at almost 3 knots towing our anchor. Made a VHF call to the coast guard to discuss our dilemma, (not a mayday but a securite call) and I pulled the anchor up and motored back into the bay, with very poor visibility, trying not to hit any boats. My fears relayed to the coastguard came true, after reanchoring, we dragged again, this time out the other side of the bay. We had plenty of scope but the anchor would not bite. After another call to the coastguard, and listening on channel 16 and hearing of another yacht that had broke anchor and hit another boat, we realised we were not the only ones in trouble. Another call to Coastguard reported a ferry had broken away from it mooring too ! The final suggestion from the coastguard was to beach our boat, which we tried, motoring at 5 knots on to the beach with the keel and rudder up, but the wind blew us straight back out into the water, and almost quicker than I could let out the anchor and tie it off. On the second attempt to beach the boat, I noticed a rock wedged in the flukes of our danforth anchor. This was stopping it from opening and biting properly ! Finally, after a tense half hour, we held, and I fell asleep with exhaustion. Coastguard showed up at 3am, to check on us, in howling wind, and rain. We woke in the morning to a perfect sunny day, anchored 3m off the beach, as seen in the photo below.
The learnings from this were : a 8S danforth anchor even with 6m of chain and heaps of rode was not suitable for 30 knots of wind with a 6m boat. It is only a 4kg anchor, and as discussed in this article , the catenary effect drops away in strong wind, and you rely completely of the angle of the scope, and the anchor design. The danforth anchor is only effective when the angle is low, and once the chain is tight, it can pull out, and does not reset like newer designs like the Rocna. In hindsight, a 6kg Rocna or Sarca type anchor would have given us a much better hold.
The learnings from this were : a 8S danforth anchor even with 6m of chain and heaps of rode was not suitable for 30 knots of wind with a 6m boat. It is only a 4kg anchor, and as discussed in this article , the catenary effect drops away in strong wind, and you rely completely of the angle of the scope, and the anchor design. The danforth anchor is only effective when the angle is low, and once the chain is tight, it can pull out, and does not reset like newer designs like the Rocna. In hindsight, a 6kg Rocna or Sarca type anchor would have given us a much better hold.
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