We had to call the Coastguard - twice!

Friday 14 March

It was a loooonnnnng day!  We left Napier at 7.00am and planned to stop in Gisborne as the weather was such that stopping at Mahia, our original plan, was not possible - strong south-easterly winds with quite a large easterly swell meant no shelter on either side of the Mahia peninsula, so we had to carry on to Gisborne.  Then during the afternoon, we noticed the forecast for East Cape for tomorrow was strong northerlies developing from 5.00am Saturday morning, so we elected to miss Gisborne, get around the Cape and into Hicks Bay before the northerlies set in. As you will read later in the blog, this was a fateful decision, and wrong.

Highlight of the day - the blood moon at 7.59pm,  I managed a few photos, but they are not as good as others I have seen from friends who were on terra firma, mind you, it was pretty tricky for me on a moving boat!,  We were sailing well until we got to East Cape, about 2.00am.  The wind then headed us, we dropped the sails, and motored into an increasing north westerly wind, it took us just on 3 hours to motor to Hicks Bay and get anchored there - we finally arrived around 5.00am.

Saturday 15 March

Having only crashed out in bed at 6.00am we slept till 11.30am - we could see the wind blowing around the points and decided we would sit it out in the shelter of Hicks Bay.   A nice relaxing day pottering around, doing a few jobs on the boat and just taking it easy after the mammoth day yesterday.  A lovely calm night too, so we had our  dinner out in the cockpit and watched the still-reddish moon rise into a starry sky.

Sunday 16 March/Monday 17 March

We didn't know it when we cruised out of Hicks Bay enroute to Whakatane, at 9.15am, but if we thought Friday was a long day, Sunday was going to prove to be even longer!   Everything was going so well we had just cruised past White Island with it's active volcano very visible, and then about 4pm when the port engine started making a funny sort of stuttering noise.  Geoff had checked the engines prior to our departure and topped them up with oil and he couldn't understand what was going on.  Down on his hands and knees he unscrewed the 20 screws on the panel on the floor on the port side that houses the diesel.  There looked to be plenty there, although it was a bit of a grim blackish sort of colour, and when he baled some of it out into a bucket, he realised that the tube that feeds it into the engine was actually quite a bit raised from the fuel itself which meant that there was a lot of fuel that could never make it into the engine due to being underneath the tube, and when it started to stutter, it was because the fuel was only slopping in and out of this tube depending on the motion of the boat.  Not good, and eventually it shut down.  This then caused us a bit of concern as we had a long way to go and worried about how much fuel was in the starboard engine.  Having skipped a stay in Gisborne en route on Friday, due to a weather front coming in and us needing to get around East Cape before it did, we missed a chance to top up on fuel, but we thought we had more than enough to get to Tauranga - what we didn't allow for was the motion of the boat and the fuel tube exit height.  This then made us concerned about how long the starboard engine, which showed a similar amount of fuel, would continue to run in these conditions.

Nothing for it.... around 6.30pm we decided we should call the Coastguard and try and get some more fuel.  What an amazing organisation they are.  They got a crew of four together, on a Sunday evening with 100 litres of diesel and came out to us about an hour after our call for assistance.  They were jovial and very helpful and we put 50 litres of diesel in each engine and luckily, the port engine started without the need to bleed the injectors!  Amazing, and very fortunate.  They left us around 8.15pm as darkness fell and we were motoring on happily with both motors.

2.00am - the starboard engine stuttered and stopped!   Thinking again it was a shortage of diesel and to try and keep at least one motor running, we undid the 20 screws on the plates on each of the fuel tanks and the two of us bucketed the diesel from the now stopped starboard motor into the port tank.... sadly (fortunately?!)  you have no photos of the two of us, in our underwear, in quite choppy seas, carrying diesel in open buckets across the boat, as unfortunately there is no pump process linking the two tanks.  Mission accomplished we continued sailing on with the sails and one engine.  

You wouldn't read about it - around 5.10am the port engine then stopped!  Even though there seemed to be plenty of diesel in the tank!  We had noticed when we had the lids off the tanks that there was quite a lot of flakes and scales - rubbish - in the bottom of the tanks which we did our best to remove, but now looking back we think that some of it had already got into the filters which was what eventually caused the engines to die.

So, there we were with a dying wind and no motors and still 25 miles from Tauranga!  The wind was almost on the bow which made us close-hauled into a medium chop in a dying breeze - the worst possible conditions for a catamaran!  As the wind dropped, so did our speed and at one stage we were averaging along at about 2 to 3 knots!  Taurangs is an interesting port to approach with little islands and rocks scattered about and we had to tack on several occasions to clear these, eventually arriving off Tauranga about 9.00am.

Tauranga harbour is also quite tidal, and Geoff could not risk getting in there in a light breeze trying to manoeuvre around it, in quite strong currents.  The pressure was on. “Who ya gonna call” no, not Ghostbusters, but our new best friends…the Coastguard!  We needed help to get into the Marina – and once again they were there for us, in a bigger boat, six helpful friendly faces arrived with a bloody great tow rope, and safely attached, they towed us into Bridge Marina where we had booked berthage, we floated past Mt Maunganoui and a lovely view, and in we went.  Once inside, Cilla in the Marina workboat took over the tow and helped us in.

The Marina recommended a couple of mechanics who arrived later in the afternoon which gave us a chance to get our weary heads down for a few hours and they felt it was likely a problem with the filters, and they would be back again tomorrow.  You won’t be surprised to hear that we didn’t do much else for the rest of the day, except breathe a few sighs of relief and remind ourselves how lucky we are to have the services of a very efficient and friendly Coastguard!

Tuesday 18 March

It was a well-earned day off today - the mechanics were back just after 8.00am and sorted out what parts they needed to get down from Auckland and then we had a free day.  We took ourselves off in an uber to Mt Maunganoui which we had intended to hike up, but before that had a walk along the beachfront and found ourselves a nice table for lunch at Dixie Browns, and very delicious it was too.  Mt Maunganoui beckoned, but to be fair we both thought we'd give it a miss, the lack of sleep and stress over the past week which had included three long overnight sails for Geoff and two for me, had left us feeling a bit sluggish.  And what a good decision that turned out to be.  We headed back to the boat and had just got down the ramp and onto the walking fingers towards Salanjo when the heavens opened and in that short space of time we got absolutely drenched.  Imagine if we'd been half-way up the Mount!

Wednesday 19 March

The weather was a bit ho-hum this morning so we thought we would have a walk around Tauranga city centre today which was pleasant, quite a lot of building going on around the sea front and not a lot to do there, so we had brekkie and then ventured on the bus to Bayfair Mall, I spent a bit of money on things I didn’t need and then we got the bus home and had a buffet of all the leftovers in the fridge for dinner as we’re away for the next two nights!

Thursday 20 March

An early start today firstly to get the boat refuelled - yes right to the brim in both tanks!! - which entailed a short cruise down to Sulphur Point to the fuel dock in the Marina there - and then back to tie up the boat ijn Bridge Marina and we're off.  A bus adventure for us today – we’re off back to Auckland for two nights, we would have driven but it was impossible to rent a car – three cruise ships in Tauranga over three days and all the cars have been prebooked.  I’m writing this sitting on the top of the bus looking at the lovely countryside.  We have a big party tonight – the 20th Anniversary of Britomart where I had the pleasure of having three of my Stores when I had my partnership with Estee Lauder - Jo Malone, MAC and Bobbi Brown, Jo Malone being the first retail store to open in Britomart.  I’m looking forward to reconnecting with all the lovely people I worked with during that time – should be a great night for us.  Tomorrow, we have a family lunch with Geoff’s family which will also be lots of fun, then it’s back on the bus on Saturday and back to the boat. See you soon!