We’ve loved being at Great Barrier. The sheltered harbour of Port Fitzroy has lots of nooks and crannies to explore. We had a great time ashore walking on Kaikoura island, going back a couple of times. Its easy to leave the dinghy attached to the pontoon there whilst doing a 16km lap of the island…

Then the story was all about the storm. We had know it was coming, and opted to stay in a little bay just south of Kaikoura. This would give us plenty of shelter from both the wind and the swell. This worked well, but was not without issue…

Though we were sheltered from the worst, we were seeing gusts from wide angles which caused us to chafe through a couple of bridles. We also ripped the cover in the boom (not unexpected, it sits exposed to UV all the time so they do perish). We’ll replace these, make up some new bridles and treat Duplicat to some new mooring ropes next time we get to a chandlery!

We spent a day at Smokehouse Bay, which has facilities ashore for the visiting yachts including a smoker, pizza oven, bath (!) and old-fashioned mangles to wring our laundry. The walk to the lookout was quite good too!

Today we moved on, to just outside Port Fitzroy. Tomorrow - Waiheke…