Author: richwest3

March 4, 2014

Road trip time! I love the feeling of heading off in the morning, making our ritual stop at Mc Donald’s for Egg Mc Muffins and coffee drinks, then hitting the road with with our maps and guidebooks. Below, a map of our trip plan so far…

Soon we were winding up and over the Kaimai mountain range that separates the New Zealand’s coastal regions from its large central valley, the Waikato. At times during the drive, we’d find ourselves passing through fairylands of floating thistle downs and white butterflies, one of the enchanting perks of a late-summer countryside drive.

Being Legacy’s tour director, I generally unfold the plan to Rich as we go along instead of overwhelming him with the entire itinerary at once. Today’s first stop would be a thermal park, and I was relieved when Rich, still recovering from the “soap-powder geyser,” was amenable to the idea. We’d been to two thermal parks in New Zealand so far, each a steamy, sulfery, fascinating look at nature balancing the Earth’s inner temperatures.

Today’s park, Orakei Korako, was the most active of the thermal parks, full of boiling and sputtering geysers, pools and mud pits. Here, silica terraces are actively building up while the landscape constantly changes. The park’s key feature is the rainbow array of colors created by the algae and microbes that thrive there. Geothermal parks often appear as a moonscape, but this one, with all its colors, looked more like Jupiter.

This park is sometimes considered part of the Rotorua array but is actually 40 miles south of it, closer to Lake Taupo. It lies an an area of native forest and bush, on the banks of the Waikato River, actually a beautiful setting.

As we pulled our car in, I felt compelled to advise Rich not to park in the area of the parking lot that was steaming, not that he needed my advice on that! Already we could see that this area is indeed, uh, very active. Hopefully this activity stays contained, but already it was infiltrating the parking area. Steam was also coming up out of a vent in the lot. Is this really the best place to park one’s car?

We headed to the Visitor Center, beautifully located on the river, boats waiting to ferry people across to the main park. (We’ll forgive them the bad puns on their restroom signs.) We got our tickets then caught the next ferry. Below, photos of the visitor center area (click on any photo to enlarge).

We were dropped off at the start of the trail through the park. Already we could see this was smaller than other parks we’d visited, but it was impressive. Orakei Korako sprawls down a hillside, its terraces large. We spotted a small geyser bubbling up, not nearly as big as these particular ones get, but without soap powder their eruptions are erratic and unpredictable.

We walked up a combination of boardwalks and stairs to viewing areas over the terraced layers of activity, aptly named the Rainbow Terraces because they are so colorful. We then followed the path along the front of an impressive white terrace, 25 feet high and 80 feet long. Aside from its large size, the most striking feature was its crystalized coating which gave it a wedding-cake look. At its base were numerous spitting, steaming vents, and on top of it where some blue pools and more little geysers. It seems nature is steadily building her next work of art, maybe another “Pink and White Terraces” sort of thing. Will humans still be here when it’s finished, I wondered.

Heading further up the hill we came to what turned out to be my favorite feature of the park, the Rupatu Cave. This cave is one of only two in the world that exist in a geothermal field. It’s a vertical cave with a 60-foot drop, at the bottom of which sits a shallow pool of acid water. The park likes to point out that this pool’s chemical composition gives it the ability to clean jewelry. With all the powerful forces in this park, I’m surprised that the potential to “clean jewelry” warrants a special mention.

While this cave’s uniqueness and jewelry-cleaning abilities were interesting, what grabbed by attention was it’s mystical beauty. It looked like a sinkhole framed with overhanging ferns and greenery, the kind of place it would be cool to rappel to the bottom. I wanted to linger awhile just to take it in, but a group of people showed up and broke the spell.

Below, photos from our visit to the park…

We passed more pools as we headed back towards the river. There were more geysers in this park, 23 in all, but some are in off-limits areas, just too dangerous for people to be near. Sometimes it’s possible to see one of them from the visitor’s center, but it goes off erratically. I’m thinking they need an automatic soap powder dispenser!

In all, our walk through the park took us about an hour. I loved it, and Rich seemed entranced by it. There is something special about a geothermal park, maybe because it’s something so powerful and natural, not controlled by humans. A bit like being near the beating heart of the Earth and being reminded that it is a living entity. And there is a hint of risk. While this walk should be perfectly safe if one sticks to the path, these forces in general are deadly. We saw a few signs like this…

I’m not sure what the sign wanted us to do. Just be in a constant state of low level alarm? Or someone didn’t feel like printing “stick to the path” yet again and just put in the exclamation point? I’m not sure.

We took the boat back across the river to the visitor’s center and retrieved our car from the steamy parking lot. Our next stop would be Lake Taupo. –Cyndi

June 7, 2021

We just got back from a five week cruise here in New Zealand and used our headphones quite a bit. I am so thrilled with them, I’m putting up another post for those who haven’t seen the last one (here – with the details).

We spent a fortune and bought Sena headsets that were TERRIBLE! They only lasted a few months and during the brief time they worked, they were very difficult to use with battery life measured in the tens of minutes. Finally, one set quit charging completely and that was the end of that ill-fated investment.

We really liked the idea of easy communication from the helm to the bow when anchoring, or from the boat to the dock when docking. I set out to find a replacement for Sena’s crap. AliExpress to the rescue. We bought a $100NZ motorcycle helmet intercom and two inexpensive headphones and put it all together to make what has been the perfect wireless intercom system. There are details in the post linked above. -Rich

February 27 – March 3, 2014

Our successful outing to Rotorua set the tone for this era of our lives in Tauranga. I wanted to keep up our momentum on road-tripping through New Zealand, but I needed to time our trips carefully, taking into account work we needed to do on the boat, weekends and school holidays, periods of less-than-ideal weather, and other assorted factors.

Thus began my new routine: Choose a next destination, figure out a good time for us to travel, check the weather forecast, look for good hotel deals, get the final OK from Rich, grab the credit card, then frantically rush to book the hotel deals before they disappeared (great rates go fast online).

We’d go on our trip and then return to rest up and regroup before heading off again days later. This routine went on the rest of the season, right up until we sailed off for the tropics. It was a bit hectic, but in the end we managed to accomplish everything I hoped we would.

Our next travel opportunity came up quickly. The logical destination after Rotorua was an area just south of it called Lake Taupo. From there, it’s not much further to one of New Zealand’s great national parks: Tongariro National Park. (I had hopes to fit in a detour to an area called Taranaki after that, but for the time I’d see how things unfolded with the first two.) I did my travel-planning routine and got a trip booked for the following week.

Between trips, we enjoyed our time in Tauranga. We had fun returning to our favorite eateries and finding new ones, but I also enjoyed cooking while having access to well-stocked grocery stores. We usually do laundry at marina machines, but here one of the tenants was making money doing laundry for others and had the machines filled much of the day. Thankfully we found a terrific laundry service that turned out to be cheaper than using the marina’s machines! We also did boat projects, including the yearly haul out, and pretty much lived a normal liveaboard life.

One place we liked to visit was the Mount, the striking cone mountain perched on the end of Mount Maunganui’s long peninsula. With several beautiful trails of varying difficulties, it’s a terrific place to walk and hike. We have a friend who had his boat anchored in Pilot Bay at the base of the Mount (an option for cruisers who don’t want to stay in a marina). Every morning he’d beach his dinghy and walk to the top of the Mount. As a result he got into the best shape he’d ever been in. (Below, the marina alternative, Pilot Bay).

I wish I could say we were as diligent, but we only went a few times. Still, we enjoyed the fresh air and beautiful scenery. The lucky residents of Tauranga have a wealth of choices for getting out into nature close to home. Below, a few photos of the lower (easiest) walk around the Mount (click any photo to enlarge). –Cyndi

And below are some panoramas – click the images for larger versions.

May 30, 2021

We spent about a week in Whangaroa, hiding from high winds. It was magical!

Most of this was shot while we were anchored in Lane Cove below a rock formation called “The Duke’s Nose.” We had this bay to ourselves all but our last day there.

We chose well as I don’t think we saw even ten knots of wind during our time in Whangaroa, while the rest of the North Island was having a major weather event with gusts to 50 knots and 30 foot seas in places.  It was so calm that we made a bad decision to leave, thinking the weather had passed. The winds were gone but the seas were still really bad – worse than forecast.

We got the idea that something major had happened as we motored through what seemed like entire forests floating in the ocean. We had very uncomfortable bits and pieces of two days getting down to Tutukaka, where we now sit safe and sound in a lovely marina.

This week looks like it’ll be too rough, and have wind from the wrong direction, so we’ll happily sit here until we get better weather. -Rich

May 29, 2021

We were asked an interesting question: Should we go cruising in our Catalina 36 or buy a bluewater sailboat? It turns out we had a lot to say about this subject and we thought we’d copy it here.

OK, our 2 cents worth…

I guess it largely comes down to two beliefs that we have: the boat you have is the best boat and there is no such thing as a “blue water” boat.

When we planned to go cruising, we contacted a naval architect and had a 46 aluminum cutter designed that was everything we believed we wanted. Our lives changed and we never started the build. Instead, we had the opportunity to take six months off and decided to sail Legacy to Hawaii from Los Angeles. We learned so much during that time and after that, we didn’t think much about building “our dream boat.” Instead, we started to think about cruising in Legacy, our Catalina 38.

Is Legacy the perfect cruising boat? Is she the perfect “blue water” boat? No. But then we really don’t believe there is such a thing. All boats suck in their own way. The perfect boat for us was one whose flaws we could live with and that would hopefully hold together through whatever came her way.

You asked about a Hallberg Rassy 45 and the Bluewater 42. I don’t know anything about the Bluewater but I do have an opinion about the Hallberg Rassy and that is they are way overpriced, maybe because of John and Amanda Neal. They’re probably great boats but every time I see one for sale, I suffer extreme sticker shock. There are a lot of boats that are as good or better at much more reasonable prices.

Is Legacy a blue water boat? I know a lot of people would say no but we’ve sailed her about 50,000 miles and the previous owner put on about 20K, including a trip from the US to NZ. While heading from New Zealand to the tropics, he was caught in the famous Queen’s Birthday Storm. Some boats didn’t make it through that, but he had no problem other than complaining about having to hand steer because the wind was so different in the troughs versus the crests of the 50 foot waves. I think that would at least say she’s blue-water proven.

In 9 years of being in the South Pacific and making passages between Australia, New Zealand and the tropics, we actually only recall one boat that didn’t hold up in blue water conditions and that was the Niña – a very old, wooden yacht. No one knows what happened to her but after leaving NZ for Oz: she was never heard from again.

Other boats have gotten into trouble and had failures, but none that we know of have had any kind of catastrophic failures. One boat, Windigo, a Beneteau, was abandoned in a storm leaving Tonga for NZ. Windigo later turned up on a beach in Australia about a year later.

People sail around down here in some pretty rough conditions in all kinds of boats, many I wouldn’t take for a day-sail around a land-locked lake, yet somehow, they all seem to make it (with our without their crew!).

We have two stories about very unlikely boats making successful ocean passages. Gary, our friend from California, used to buy used Catalina 30s in Los Angeles, put in a couple of weeks of work on the boats, sail them to Australia and sell them at a good profit there. He was also caught in the Queen’s Birthday storm in one of those Catalina 30s and made it through fine.

A long time ago, we owned and lived aboard a Catalina 30. We sold it to a man who was desperate to take it to Hawaii where he had a berth waiting (a berth he had only a short time to occupy or lose it). It was the middle of winter when we sold him our boat and not the time for that passage as storms form in the Gulf of Alaska and travel south making for some terrible conditions en route. We thought we’d talked him out of the passage, but (after completing the purchase) he slipped away in the night and headed offshore.

A couple of weeks later, we’d heard a news report of a boat lost on the way to Hawaii with a couple aboard. We called the broker and found out it was our boat. The US Coast Guard never searched as they said the presumed track of the boat led it into a storm that wasn’t survivable. About 4 weeks later, we got a call from our broker telling us that Rudolf made it to Honolulu and that all was well. It turns out they hove to for several days without tightening the wheel brake and the steering quadrant destroyed itself. Once the storm passed, it took him over a week to get the steering working well enough to get him to Hawaii.

So our bottom line answer to your question is that if it were us, we’d take the Catalina 36 you have, make some necessary upgrades like a liferaft and an EPIRB, and go cruising. We used to rent a Catalina 36 in Los Angeles and loved it. It’ll do fine, especially for your planned season in the Great Barrier Reef. From that trip, you’ll learn a lot about the boat you’d like to sail further offshore. Perhaps you’ll learn that the boat you want is the boat you already have.

If that’s not the case, you’ll be in a better position after that experience to decide on your next boat. (We doubt you’ll still want the Hallberg Rassy!) Also, boat prices seem to be very high right now with Covid-19 causing many people to rethink their life choices. Maybe prices will come down when those buyers decide that cruising wasn’t right for them.

Good luck with whichever path you choose. Maybe we’ll get to share a perfect tropical anchorage with you in the near future.

Rich and Cyndi