day sail to Rangitoto

7/4/03 - Decided to head over to Rangitoto, forecast was for light southerlies of 10-15 knots.  I had to do a bit of maintenance on the boat first.  I'm guessing years of violent gybes has caused the boom gooseneck track to have some very loose rivets, so nipped in to Burnsco Marine for a couple of large monel rivets. Luckily I already had a heavy duty rivet gun, as these are some tough mothers to set! 

Today it was only one hour off low tide, so launching can be problematic with my boat, needing half my car to be under water, but today I tried a different technique.  Once down the ramp, I slacked off the winch wire, by 2 ft, and then continued reversing most of the way into the water, I braked a little suddenly and it pops the boat down the rollers and floats onto the water, with only half my rear wheel in the water. Much easier!

A different view of Takapuna !

Outboard starts second pull every time, smooth sail out, we had a southerly picking up down the estuary.   Putting up the sail once under way is always a little difficult, we went to the side of the channel, and with the motor still running, pointed the boat into the wind, and put up sail. Not that easy in choppy conditions. Did a big downwinder, to the northshore side of Rangitoto, with the wind coming in puffs.  We were heading for Mckenzie bay, which is sheltered in a S- SE.  Took way longer than we expected as the wind died half way cross.  We have sailed to Waiheke quicker than this! 

It's not that cold Eileen !

Didn't have time to climb Rangitoto, but chilled out on the boat and Eileen made a cuppa and hot cross buns. We shared the bay with 3 motorcruisers, and another yacht. 16 ft of water even close in, but lots of sharp looking volcanic rock around. 
When we decided to head back at 3pm.. lots of motoring as the wind died once we had sailed around to the front of Rangitoto, but the sun was out, and it was becoming a nice evening!
Back near the marina, its always difficult to come in nicely to the jetty, but what worked was :
- Good high tide - 
- pontoon deep enough in water
- coming in very slow, with rudder down
- putting the motor in netural
- measure your drift/speed 
- if the boat stops, put into forward gear again
- neutral again, check drift, angle and distance to pier
- You need a slow parallel drift, once you have this, kill the motor
- have someone forward of the beam, and one person at the back ready to jump off together with dock ropes. 

This worked better to give me a drift that beats the current, but is slower than idle with it in forward gear. Putting it in reverse is definitely a bad thing to do, as the boat stops moving, but the bow starts rotating...  
The source of the problem is the outboard on idle is still able to drive the boat a little too fast for docking. A nice clean retrieval followed.  Got it down to a fine art now !

Looking a bit like Autumn now