December 24 – 31, 2013
As I write this during New Year’s festivities celebrating the arrival of 2020, I can look back over the places we’ve spent New Year’s Eve since setting off in May of 2012. This list includes:
Opua (NZ) 2013, Auckland (NZ) 2014, Mooloolaba (Australia) 2015, Tauranga (NZ) 2016, Gippsland Lakes (Australia) 2017, Opua (NZ) 2018, Opua (NZ) 2019, and Nelson (NZ) 2020.
All of these places have been special, but our favorite has to be the time we were in the Auckland’s Viaduct Basin during the Christmas and New Year’s holidays. It was a magical time in several ways.
First off, our location within the Viaduct Basin in Auckland could not have been better. The Viaduct Basin is a waterfront area filled with a combination of yachts (including the headquarters of Emirates Team New Zealand and their America’s Cup yacht), restaurants and bars, international tourists, and in general is Auckland’s #1 hotspot. As you can imagine it’s festive and busy, but it also has quiet and low-key areas out of the fray, and we were in one of those areas.
This gave us the great combination of being in a comparatively quiet area, yet able to walk about a block to the start of busy, high-energy areas. We could enjoy that for a time, but when we’d had enough we could retreat back to our quiet corner. We had the best of both worlds. Below, a map showing a brief overview of the Viaduct Basin.
Another advantage to being in the Viaduct was that while many places in Auckland close for the holiday season, making it perhaps the only place in New Zealand that actually gets quieter during this time, the eateries in the Viaduct remain open as it’s too profitable a time to be closed. Plus we were next to the Sofitel Hotel which had a wonderful little cafe (21 Viaduct Cafe) that was always open for a quick and delicious breakfast.
Our Viaduct location was also close enough to downtown Auckland that it was easier to walk there than drive; so we got lots of walking in, always a good thing and hardly noticeable as we quickly got used to the distances. By the time we’d get to our destinations then return to the boat, we’d done miles of walking that we hardly noticed, miles that would have been drudgery on a treadmill. And even with many places closed, enough stayed open that there were plenty of things to do downtown.
Being in Auckland also put us in a central location which enabled us to see some friends. Often when we tell people that we’re cruising sailors traveling around the world, they get this impression of us being lone vagabonds, far from family, friends and home, just the two of us adrift on this big planet. They marvel at how we do it, and how we must get along well to spend so much time together. But the reality is we’re part a larger group of people doing the same thing, and Rich and I actually spend more time around other people than we ever did when we lived on land.
This year, we made the drive to Whangarei to spend Christmas with our friends from the sailing yacht Lisa Kay, who had rented a home while having work done on their boat. We were joined by our friend Dean from Local Talent, his son Dylan, who was visiting from the US, and Brad from Kindred Spirit. Aside from the fact that it it was summer instead of winter, this gathering had the same feeling as good holiday gatherings spent with family or friends back home, the kind where you arrive, kick off your shoes, are given a glass of wine, and everyone’s glad to see each other.
Later, we all joined in making the big turkey dinner, drinking more wine, watching a movie, and basically enjoying ourselves. We were supposed to leave the next day, but after breakfast mimosas and a lazy lunch, we all opted to do another dinner (and for us, spend one more night). You know it’s a good gathering when people choose to keep things going rather than looking to make the earliest possible escape from annoying relatives in the group.
Once we returned to Auckland, we had a visit from other cruising friends, Alex and Iris from Aleris. They were staying in Gulf Harbour but visiting Auckland to rent a car. We spent a day together enjoying breakfast at our Viaduct 21 cafe, an afternoon shopping for boating supplies at Auckland’s numerous boat stores, a late lunch at the Urban Turban, and then having them introduce us to to their great find for dessert: Cafe Melba (which Rich and I made a point to later return to later for breakfast). Then they were off to the airport to pick up their rental car, but it had been fun to spend some time together.
Not long after this, we got to spend an evening with Dean and Dylan as they passed through Auckland. We all had dinner and a very nice evening at a great Mexican restaurant in Auckland, a place called Mexico. And not surprisingly, we ran into other cruisers during our time in Auckland as it’s a city so many of us pass through. It was a really nice time of seeing friends and acquaintances.
We also did a few local outings and continued our research into marinas. Talking to Alex and Iris had confirmed our fears that Gulf Harbour’s marina would, for us, feel too remote. We checked out Pier 21,* a small downtown Auckland marina frequented by cruisers, but it didn’t appeal to us at that time. Another little marina, Orakei, was a bit outside of the city but very much appealed to us. Alas, they had no vacancies for the time we needed.
We decided to reconsider Auckland’s big marina, Westhaven. We’d rejected that idea previously, but maybe if we had our car with us we’d enjoy it more? We made the long walk to visit it again, but by the time we arrived at the marina’s office, we’d lost all interest in staying here. It was just too big, too run-down, too noisy, too far from downtown, and from the prices on the door, too expensive!
So, that left us with a marina called Bayswater, which we had checked out earlier. This marina was actually outside of Auckland, across the Auckland Harbour Bridge in a suburban area known as the North Shore. It was nice but driving, not walking, distance from the closest town. If we wanted to stay there we would absolutely need our car, currently with friends in the city of Tauranga. We’d have to take a 3-hour bus ride there to retrieve our car, then drive it back to Auckland. And since we planned to sail our boat to Tauranga before the end of the season we’d subsequently have to take the bus back to Auckland to retrieve our car once again.
Such is the life of having a boat, a car, and a big country to see. Yes, it can be a pain to sail to another area then have to return in order to retrieve our car. And of course it’s a shame to have to rent a car for a quick excursion when we own a perfectly good one that happens to be inconveniently far away. But as problems go, there are worse ones to have.
Rich and I made the decision right off the bat that we would never miss out on things because we didn’t have our car nearby. If there’s something we want to do, such as go to that Christmas gathering or experience a local sight, we’ll rent a car with no regrets. But for anything longer than a few days, we’ll make the trip to retrieve our car. Since it looked inevitable that we’d end up in Bayswater, we made a plan to do so after we made the move there.
The cherry on the sundae of this time was New Year’s Eve. I was thrilled to learn the show would take place from the roof of the Auckland Skytower because we could see that from our boat! It turned out to be a great evening as our usually quiet neighborhood became busy with people walking by and parties spilling out on the apartment balconies. As it turned out, midnight would arrive at low tide so much of our view from the boat would be obscured by buildings. No matter, we could head up to the walkway for a great view.
We went up early so we could walk around the Viaduct and soak up the atmosphere. All the restaurants were packed, the ones with younger groups loud and raucous, the ones with older people more subdued and serene. Going back to the boat we found a lot of people gathering around the Sofitel Hotel as that walkway area had a terrific view.
We first headed to our boat and opened a bottle of champagne to toast what had been an incredible year with hopes that this coming one would be just as good. Then we headed up to the walkway to see the fireworks show. Below, the view before the show started…
As midnight approached there was a countdown, then the fireworks began. There were popping fireworks, raining fireworks, spewing fireworks, and a period of machine-gun like effects with pops of light shooting out. What a show! And all of it surrounded the top of the tower like petals around the center of a flower, giving the show a unique look. Everyone was crying out Happy New Year when the show began, then singing Auld Lang Syne. It was an amazing end to an amazing year. –Cyndi
*Re: Pier 21–it didn’t grab us back then, but we later went there and loved it.
