(December 6, 2012 – March 6, 2013)
Note: Below, a few photos of our home base, Opua.–Cyndi (Click to enlarge and scroll through any photos.)
Opua is too small to qualify as a town and can be more accurately summed up as a marina and wharf surrounded by businesses that support boating. Houses sit nestled in the tree-covered hills on one side; the the marina, boat moorings, anchorages, islands, and peninsulas of the Bay of Islands sits on the other. Opua sits on a narrow strip of land nestled between the hills and the water, about ½-mile long and less than 1/4-mile wide.
The businesses occupy a few scattered buildings surrounded by parking areas and include everything a boater might need: boat yards, boat part fabricators and engineering, boat mechanics, marine stores, canvas-making, rigging, bathrooms and showers, the marina office, a laundromat, a hair salon, a boat insurance agency, a cafe, a yacht club/restaurant with a bar, a car dealer, a community center, a small market that makes pizzas and bread, and the ferries and tour boats that operate from the large concrete wharf. It’s a very comfortable place to be, and it happens to be quite beautiful, too.
We never planned to stay in Opua very long. We thought we’d get situated here and then go cruise the Bay of Islands before moving on to either Whangarei (a small city about 35 miles south of Opua) or Auckland (about 70 miles beyond Whangarei), and then use that as a base to travel around New Zealand.
But we found we felt very comfortable in Opua, especially once we bought a car and could easily drive to the towns nearby. We found an element that had been missing in our cruising thus far, a feeling of being able to settle in and live a normal life for awhile while still enjoying a foreign place. We had our favorite grocery store, favorite eateries, internet access (and the ability to download our favorite TV shows), showers, a laundromat, and comfortable routines. By January, nearly all of the cruising fleet had dispersed to other places, but we’d gotten to know some of the local people here and felt as much a part of a community as ever, like our own little Mayberry!
Just before Christmas, the marina called us and gave us an offer: if we could rent a slip for the season, we’d be guaranteed a spot here until the end of February. We were taken aback at first: we can’t stay until the end of February, can we? We sat with that for all of five minutes before we decided that maybe we can.
We had been to Auckland and Whangarei by car and they were wonderful, but Opua felt like home. We had decided to do the South Island next year, and while we did hope to see all the north island, there was still so much to see up here in Northland (the area of New Zealand north of Auckland), and Opua would be a great base for that.
It did feel strange not to be out cruising like a lot of the fleet, but we had noticed people were mentioning the crowded anchorages. Silly Season (the Christmas and summer vacation time when boaters come up to the Bay of Islands in droves) lasts until mid-February. If we could be patient, we could go cruising after that and have a lot more room in the anchorages.
With this, we decided to park our butts in Opua until the beginning of March. We took day trips and a couple of road trips, we worked on the boat, we met great people, we shopped and cooked and checked out local eateries, and we made an extensive study on who makes the best fish and chips in Northland.
Aside from moving to the Wharf for a few days in December, our boat did not leave the slip, not even for a weekend cruise. Sometimes we felt a little strange about sitting in the Bay of Islands and not seeing the islands, but we were so happy with our lives here we didn’t care. Opua was a great place for us to be! -Cyndi
