Wrong way round NZ
Ferocious tides where two seas meet saw Owen Moorhouse and crew lose their bearings
Ferocious tides where two seas meet see a crew lose their bearings
The year 1988 marked 200 years since the British settled the colony of New South Wales, a territory claimed by James Cook during his 1770 voyage of discovery. The First Fleet comprised 11 small square-rigged ships that set sail from Portsmouth on 11 May 1787 with about 1,400 people on board. They included civil officers, naval marines, sailors and a few free settlers, but the large majority were convicts transported from Britain to establish the first penal colony Down Under.
To mark the Australian Bicentenary, a re-enactment of this event was undertaken by seven similar ships in 1987. They set sail on 13 May 1987 and attempted to follow a similar route via Tenerife, Rio de Janeiro,
Cape Town and Mauritius and then across the Indian Ocean to Western Australia.
When the re-enactment fleet grouped in Jervis Bay, some 80 miles south of
Sydney Harbour, my family and I took to our 32ft Manitou ketch Phoenix to welcome them. Along with many others we accompanied the fleet via Botany Bay
for the finale in Sydney Harbour on 26 January 1988 where a flotilla of some 3,000 vessels came out to greet the fleet at the heads and accompany the ships into what was described by Captain Arthur Phillip as ‘the finest harbour in the world’.
We found a mooring for Phoenix at Kirribilli, just opposite Farm Cove – the original site chosen by Captain Phillip to establish the colony. Moored next to us was a 42ft Herreshoff yawl from New Zealand, called Spirit of Howick.
That year, visiting vessels were given a ‘carnet de passage’ for the year of celebrations. However these boats were required to return to their home countries within a given timeframe or pay import duties on the vessel. And so it was in early December of the bicentennial year that the
Spirit of Howick set sail for Auckland.
But the enthusiastic American crew was yet to experience the rigours of the Tasman Sea. To my surprise, I received a phone call from the owner, Colin, just a few days after they set sail, announcing he’d returned to Sydney. Having experienced something of what the Tasman could throw at them, his young crew was no longer willing to make the crossing.
Colin was now in a real bind as he had to clear Australian waters before 30 December to avoid the import duties. He was quick to ask whether I would join him with an experienced crew and two backpackers, for the now urgent voyage to Auckland.
No hesitation
Even with Christmas and my 60th birthday celebrations approaching, I don’t recall pondering long over that decision and promptly joined the scratch crew.
We cleared customs at Watson’s Bay on 20 December and were soon on course to Cape Reinga at the top of New Zealand’s North Island. Weather permitting the passage to Auckland was expected to take about 10 days.
We adjusted our compass with a variation East 11.03 and a heading for The Three Kings, using new satnav technology. By day we steered manually by compass and by night used Venus as our easterly star, on three-hour watches. Fair winds on a beam reach carried us into the Tasman Sea where we were soon becalmed over the peak of an undersea mountain range.
Our depth sounder indicated a depth of just 50ft. As the day was warm, the backpackers – an Englishmen and a Canadian-American – decided to have a mid-sea swim along with the Kiwi crewman. Not keen on the idea, I elected to keep watch with Colin while the three swam untethered alongside. Their presence soon attracted the attention of an enormous manta ray and all three were back on board in a flash, without the use of the Jacob’s ladder! Rays are supposed to be harmless but they didn’t hang around to prove the theory. It was at least 2m across!
A storm is almost guaranteed on any Tasman crossing and after the becalming one soon developed from the south, where storms travel from Antarctica without land interference. We dropped the mainsail and genoa, and left the mizzen to hold us into the wind before battening down for the night.
By morning, we spoke on VHF radio to a Wellington-bound yacht further south that reassured us the storm had now cleared.
Early adopters
The early model satnav we had on board was designed to show our track and provide a position fix every 90 minutes. Chartplotter technology was yet to arrive and in those days satellites were few, and positioned mainly around the equator. As we progressed, the earth’s curvature made their signals weaker and slow, so we relied on the occasional passing freighter to provide us with additional coordinates via VHF.
On our eastward course we were due to make landfall at the Manawatawhi
(Three Kings) Islands, some 30 miles north of New Zealand’s Cape Reinga.
From there it was to be ‘right hand down’ to 100° for the final leg down the east coast.
We needed to clear customs at Bay of Islands and by this stage we could hear them on radio, but were not yet in VHF transmission range. Our new satnav was of little assistance, sometimes providing no position fixes for hours. But as we had made the last course change in daylight, we calculated that Reinga would be on the starboard quarter in about eight hours.
Yet, after 10 hours there was still no sighting. An antiquated
RDF gave us the signature of the lighthouse, which we were anxious to sight. And when we did, the signal was coming from the wrong direction! Puzzled, we first questioned whether our sailing directions were out of date. Had the radio beacon been relocated to Manawatawhi?
At that moment our sharp-eyed English backpacker spotted ‘a spark on the north-east horizon’ and we slowly reasoned that it had to be Reinga. But the lighthouse signal was on port rear-quarter when we had expected to see it to starboard.
We hastily convened a conference and confirmed a course change of 180° had somehow occurred. Without that sighting we’d have unwittingly sailed back into the Tasman Sea.
Turbulence
We had been swept off course by the epic tidal currents near a place known as the ‘Leaping Place of the Spirits’. According to Maori mythology, Te Rerenga Wairu (Cape Reinga) is where the ‘man-sea’ (the Tasman) meets the ‘woman-sea’ (the Pacific) and also where spirits depart to the underworld.
For it’s at Cape Reinga that vectors of waves from the Tasman Current collide with the South Subtropical Current creating a spectacular turbulence – an effect that is compounded each day by differing tidal currents, to say nothing of the weather.
Transiting Cape Reinga is nearly impossible without the correct tidal ebb between the two waterways.
The famed tidal rip meant we were now hopelessly off course on the west side of the North Island. What’s more, we started picking up radio warnings of an easterly cyclone event, broadcast from the Bay of Islands. Finding shelter suddenly became vital.
Although not visible in the creeping darkness, we figured we were somewhere off Ninety Mile Beach, meaning the only shelter was a bay at Cape Maria van Diemen which was mercifully on the leeside of the approaching storm. The bay had been mapped in 1643 by the Dutch navigator, Abel Tasman, but as indicated in Sailing Directions New Zealand some 350 years later it was still to be surveyed.
Backtracking
Fortunately, as we backtracked towards Cape Maria van Diemen, the tidal currents worked in our favour. We motored cautiously towards the bay, keeping Taupiri Island to starboard and with all eyes glued on the depth-sounder, we anchored as close to the beach as seemed prudent. The sandy bottom provided a good hold in the calmer waters before the storm.
By now we could hear Bay of Islands radio calling for us, but our radio was shadowed by high ground and we were unable to reply. We could do nothing more than batten down and sit out the storm.
Hours later as the winds gathered momentum, sand from the adjacent hills blasted the vessel with an industrial intensity. By daybreak the worst of the storm had abated, allowing our Kiwi crewman to launch his surfboard and paddle ashore.
By now we had been out of transmission range for well over 36 hours. Once on land, he ‘borrowed’ 40ft of fence wire that enabled us to extend our radio aerial. With no response to their previous calls the radio base was relieved to finally hear from us, having feared the worst.
Yet no sooner did the calm arrive, than a second storm warning of similar intensity was issued. At first we wondered whether it was a mistake but one thing was for certain – leaving our safe anchorage was totally out of the question, for to be caught on the east coast could have spelt disaster.
By now, food supplies were running low, so again our Kiwi crewman paddled his surfboard ashore but this time to venture further afield. He hitchhiked by tourist bus to the village of Te Kao on the Northland Peninsula, becoming both our messenger and providing a vital supply line for food.
This area was not without its sensitivities at the time, as just three years earlier the French yacht Ouvéa had anchored nearby with three agents of the French foreign intelligence services aboard. From there they made final preparations for the infamous bombing of the Greenpeace ship Rainbow Warrior in Auckland (see panel, right).
As for us, we were all still illegal visitors, having not yet cleared customs. However, with a stash of New Zealand dollars in his pocket, we had confidence that someone who could pronounce Maori village names like a local would attract no special attention. And so it was, with our crewman’s eventual safe return and our
‘The RDF signature of the lighthouse was coming from the wrong direction!’
food shortages alleviated, we turned our attention to continuing our journey and to entering the country – legally.
Official arrival
With a making Tasman Sea tide, it wasn’t long before we were propelled around North Cape. Keeping well seaward, we then set a course for Cape Brett Peninsula, at the entrance to the Bay of Islands.
It was an uneventful overnight sail and on arrival we were instructed to moor at Paihia wharf. As the custom’s inspection got under way, officers were appalled at the quality of our ‘Australian’ potatoes and onions, and ordered their immediate destruction. Of course we didn’t want to explain we’d bought the best local produce on offer! As they worked just five days a week, we were further instructed to remain on board over the weekend because final clearance could not be given until Monday, as was routine for the New Zealand Customs Service in those days.
To our delight we discovered there was a very agreeable restaurant on the wharf. By now we’d been at sea for almost two weeks and with much of our food supply now confiscated, we surmised that a hungry crew had priority over an official passport stamp.
From there it was a short sail to Russell – an old whaling and trading town – where our Kiwi crewman ‘jumped ship’ to rejoin his family at nearby Whangarei. We set an overnight course for the Hauraki Gulf and Auckland’s Waitemata Harbour to moor off the volcanic cone of Rangitoto.
The honour of steering Spirit of Howick into her homeport was given to our Canadian-American crewman. I stood beside him basking in the moment only to hear him remind himself ‘Red, Right, Return’ – an American (Region B) navigational mnemonic where marks to port are green and marks to starboard are red. My reaction was swift and spitting a fleeting lesson in the navigational differences in Region A, we soon had red buoys to port… and continued our triumphant sail into Mechanics Bay, right next to the suburb of Howick.