Category: Boating Life

Boating The Bay of Islands

New Zealand’s Bay of Islands is renowned as a summer destination. The North Island’s water wonderland, we spent a month boating The Bay of Islands. We loved anchoring in cozy bays, hiking uninhabited islands, and visiting historic towns. It’s a great place to visit by sailboat.

About New Zealand’s Bay of Islands

New Zealand’s Bay of Islands is both beautiful and an important historical area. Captain Cook stopped here on his South Pacific voyages and gave it it’s name. Also, the Bay of Islands was the first part of the country to be inhabited by Europeans. Maybe more importantly, it’s the site of the signing of the 1840 Treaty of Waitingi between the British and Maoris.

beach, Boating the Bay of islands
Beach at Urupukapuka Island

Currently, The Bay of Islands is known for beautiful beaches, clear water, and gorgeous scenery. The entire region is called “The Winterless North” because the weather never gets freezing like in other parts of the country. It’s New Zealand’s top cruising ground in the summer. We visited in autumn and fell in love with the region.

Continue reading “Boating The Bay of Islands”

Living Aboard in Whangarei

We sailed from Fiji to New Zealand in early November. After checking in at Marsden Cove and completing the formalities, we moved up the river to the Whangarei Town Basin marina. Here’s what it was like spending almost two months living aboard in Whangarei.

About Whangarei

Whangarei is not pronounced how it looks. Unless you speak Maori. In that case you know that the WH is pronounced as F, so it’s pronounced Fang-Ah-Ray.

We enjoyed living aboard in Whangarei. It’s the biggest town in the Northland region of New Zealand, with all the amenities we’ve missed since Tahiti. Whangarei’s population is almost 57,000 and it is 155km north of Auckland, which is said to have almost 1.7mm people.

marina, town basin Whangarei
The marina and town basin in Whangarei

The Town Basin Marina is located on the Hatea river and is walkable to groceries, shops, restaurants and more.

The supermarket across the street is huge and overwhelmingly good. After being in Tonga, where you couldn’t get basic rice, and Fiji, with no cat food or kitty litter, we consider New Zealand the land of plenty. On our first visit to the supermarket, we were overjoyed upon seeing the varieties of lettuce, berries, and yogurt, and the glow hasn’t faded. It doesn’t hurt that we arrived in springtime.

Continue reading “Living Aboard in Whangarei”

Five Years Living On a Sailboat

Five years flies by faster than you realize. Since moving aboard in December 2018, we’ve logged a lot of miles and anchored in many bays. We’ve also spoken – or tried to speak – several languages, and met countless people in the last five years living on a sailboat. As many of you know, we’ve also made changes and mistakes. This year we visited countries we hadn’t visited or even heard of before moving onto a boat. We’re happy to spend the rest of 2024 in New Zealand, over 8000 miles from where we started in 2018. Here’s a small recap of what we learned this year, after five years living on a sailboat.

sailing in Fiji
One of our last sails on board Sava in Fiji

Wind and Weather

We finished our year in French Polynesia this May, and looked forward to heading west to other South Pacific islands. After French Polynesia, we skipped the Cook Islands because of limited anchorages and strong winds. In fact, the weather this winter all throughout the South Pacific was bad. We got battered by storms en route to Niue, shivered through record-breaking cold in Tonga, and were poured on in Fiji. Our friends in French Polynesia dealt with the same conditions. Fortunately, we left Fiji before a cyclone, and are supposedly safe in New Zealand as long as last summer’s storms don’t repeat.

Continue reading “Five Years Living On a Sailboat”