February 8, 2014
The wind switched to the west more quickly than we thought; by the time we pulled anchor it was blowing into the bay. It wasn’t very strong, but it felt good to turn right and put it on our beam. Now we were headed north, motor-sailing up Waiheke Island’s east coast. We passed some small but appealing-looking bays, and I made note of them for possible future visits. Today, though, nothing would sway us from visiting one of our favorite places: Man O’ War Vineyard in Man o’ War Bay.
What a shock to pull into the bay and find it empty, although this didn’t last long as people soon started arriving in droves. This time no one anchored too close, but we were horrified to see how many people didn’t bother to set their anchor! This anchorage was silty, and when we anchored it took us three tries to make it set. If any wind picked up in here there would be a lot of boats dragging. Thankfully we’d gone close enough to shore that it was too shallow for boats to anchor in front of us.
We went ashore to check on the winery’s hours and to see what sort of food they might serve as we hoped to have dinner there. It turned out they had wonderful-looking platters; so we made a plan to come back this evening. For now, we took a walk down the road to admire the scenery. All around us were people swimming, playing ball on the lawn, and looking very happy. This place just had that effect on people.
Below, photos of the beach, the winery, and our walk around the area. (Click to to enlarge any photo.)
After we got back to the boat we decided to get in the water and do some bottom cleaning. It had enough growth that we had a noticeable drop in speed since leaving Auckland. I worried it might be too cold to swim, but it turned out to be pretty nice. We ended up spending an hour or so cleaning and got a good amount of the bottom done, enough to make a difference.
That evening, we went ashore to find quite a few people at the winery. We went in and ordered a bottle of wine and a platter to share and were lucky enough to get the last available picnic table on the lawn, our wine brought out to us in an ice bucket. Soon we were sipping wine and enjoying the festive sunny summer evening atmosphere. Kids played on the lawn, and every picnic table had a bottle of wine and people holding wine glasses. Everyone just seemed so happy; this place had a glow. Soon our platter came; and not surprisingly the food was wonderful. There are just some places that are heaven on Earth, and this is certainly one of them.
The bay was peaceful when we went to sleep, but at 2am we awoke to the sound of strong gusting wind (we later heard it was gusting to 30 knots). We felt securely anchored but wondered about all those boats we saw earlier who hadn’t set their anchors. It was then we started to see flashlight beams; so we went outside to look and sure enough, all those boats were now having quite a time of it! In particular there was quite a lot of commotion going on by the cliff. It seemed the people were dragging into each other, and there was lots of re-anchoring going on. Thankfully the people around us were doing well. I dubbed this event The Anchorage Follies of 2014.
The next morning the wind switched again, going back to an easterly direction. It was only a breeze, but we decided it was a good time to head to our next anchorage.–Cyndi
