February 11, 2014
By the time we finished our hike, a breeze had picked up and was coming into our anchorage. As we wondered whether we should move, another boat arrived and made our the decision easy: we’d move.
Naturally, I wanted to head to Squadron Bay, our original destination, but having noticed boats in that anchorage during our walk, Rich figured there wouldn’t be room for us. I urged him to just go take a look, hoping to create a phenomenon I’ll call Manifesting a Spot. Rich does this all the time with car parking spaces. He believes there will be a spot, often right in front of where we’re going, and to my continuing amazement, it works! It doesn’t work for me because, frankly, I never believe there will be a spot nearby and always start urging him to park as soon as I see anything available.
On the other hand, I do tend to have good luck with anchoring spots. This is less for mystical reasons than counting on a uniquely Kiwi boating behavior: their tendency to make multiple stops during any given day. I think the main reason for this is many people like to go out fishing, but they also seem to enjoying having lunch at one spot, dinner at another, and who knows what else.
What this means for us is that often, as we approach an anchorage, at least one boat there will be pulling up their anchor. Today, miraculously, not one but two boats pulled anchor and headed out. Rich was as disbelieving and as impressed by my “anchoring spot manifesting” as I am when he “creates” a parking space right in front of wherever we’re going. Between the two of us we tend to find both places to park cars and anchor our boat.
Right away we liked Squadron Bay. While our last bay had endless green grass and a white beach, this bay had a more mountainous, forested feeling and more animal life including wild turkeys, cows, pukekos, and other critters. It may not have had the blue water and white beach, but Squadron Bay was beautiful and had bucolic, graceful energy to it. It was a very lovely spot, and well protected, too. (Below, a photo gallery of the anchorage–click to enlarge any photo.)
As the sun got lower, the light in the inner bay became more shadowy, giving it a very peaceful feeling. We had a lovely dinner inside the boat.
Come sunset, the outer bay lit up with a golden light. This called for some whiskey outside, in the cockpit, so we could watch the light show. Truly this cruise through the Hauraki Gulf had given us some incredible sunsets, maybe the best we’ve seen in New Zealand! Below, a few panoramas of Squadron Bay at sunset.
Tomorrow, we planned to head north to another harbor, but this evening here at Squadron Bay had been memorable. –Cyndi
