Labour W/E Cruise

[Guest]

Well, after the CC coverage Fri we took off for three glorious days, the weatehr wasw arm and sunny, light airs in the mornings but sea breezes in the pm's gave us some great sailing. Lots of fish just south of Kawau. Couldn't have been better.

 

So here's a story. While in the Caribbean we learned the trick of pouring a capful of rum over the fises gills when caught - they would calm down immediately and I'd chop them up and they would wake up dead (and rum was omly $1.50 per Gallon).

So we were at the top of the tide and not many bites, and part of my cunning plan involved a wee afternoon nap, so I snuck off to a quarter berth, leaving the girls fishing. I was awakened a short while later by excited squeals and "it's still wriggling, give it more rum". That woke me up and I went on deck to find three snapper face down in a bucket marinating in nearly quarter of a bottle of precious Mount Gay.

 

So who else went where and did what?

[wheels 543]

We are off this weekend. Marlborough Ann. Normally Dawn and I take Labour and Marl Ann off and head out for 10 days. But with her sailing the week leading up, we had too much to do at home.

I am surprised the Rum doesn't make it worse for the fish as I expected it would have burnt them. But interesting. Too darn expensive though.

 

So is Snapper the only thing you guys catch up in the Auckland area???

[John B 106]

I can't remember a labour weekend having such good weather. We met up with 5 or six boats ....had a night at Waikalabubu, sat at Bosticky, sun at Motuketekete. Even managed a really nice reach home on mon after a visit to Gulf harbour and fresh ( relatively ) sail up harbour to westhaven in the afternoon.

A lot of Dolphin out on sat between tiri and flat rock , and a pod playing around in the bay beside bosticky.

[Guest]

Got a couple of other things that looked like a Spanish Mackerel.

 

The girls were disappointed we didn't see dolphins, we were just a bit inshore of that. Yep, light winds but if you timed it right a couple of great sails as well.

[John B 106]

Sunday morning we were offered an early start fishing trip so we hopped my friends launch at 4.30 and fished flat rock. Nothing much happened until we hit bite time and hooked up about 30 fish( of which we kept 18 for the six boats)

What surprised me were the barracouta... we hooked up 3 of the mothers, one scorpion fish and one red cod, one we think was a small blue cod.

The dolphin were either 2 or 3 different varieties. Tons of the small common dolphin, one pod of about 10 9 foot long big mofo dolphiny things and the pod in the bay jumping ( which were also big) seemed to have very short snouts.

[wheels 543]

I was going to ask about Dolphin. Great to hear they are up there. The big ones I imagine would be Bottlenose. They Will swim with a boat for ages.

The common one most likely Dusky. Playfull little fellows and will do summersaults and so on. Although both these species will do either as well.

I am not sure if you guys get the Hectors Dolphin up there. I think they are Banks P only. Very shy and on the endangered list.

[Grinna 2]

Hauraki Gulf has the common or bottlenose dolphin which are the darker coloured stripey kinda patterned ones. The larger grey beast is the porpoise. We get Hectors and/or Maui Dolphin in the Auckland region but only on the west coast around Manukau and Kaipara .... and then only in small numbers.

[BelowPAR 0]

Boat broke. So had to go skiing. missed a cracker weekend by the sounds, but managed fresh tracks on every run for sat, and climbed it on sun and skied the crater, and across to the other side.

All done shirtless or less, and with the assistance of Mt Gay so it felt a bit like a real holiday.

 

3 weeks of exams, then 4 months off, so will be making up for lost time...!!

[wheels 543]

The bottlenose is big and grey

[wheels 543]

The Dusky is very vivid black and white.

[wheels 543]

The Maui Dolphin is found on the North West Coast of the North Island and only that area, now where else. They are endagered and very rare. Not the Dorsal fin. That is the easiest way to identify the Maui.

[wheels 543]

The Hectors Dolphin is found only around the South Island and no where else. They look very similar to the Maui, because the Maui is actually a subspecies of the Hector. They are hard to tell apart for most people, so location is about the only way for most of us to be able to determin what they are. They are also endagered, but not so rare to find.

[wheels 543]

We only have one Porpoise in NZ. Generally they are very hard to tell apart and you have to really see the nose and Teeth to really identify between Dolphin and Porpoise. But the NZ one is fairly easy. it is called the Specticled Porpoise and is very dark over most all of it's upper body and very light on the underside. I have seen them from looking very verty dark brown, but mostly they should be Black. Infact if you didn't know what it was, you could accidently call it an Orca.

[Guest]

The Maui dolphin apparently has an STD in the population that affects fertility, so is in deep doodoo's.

They only discovered this a couple of years ago.

[Guest]

Wheels, stop posting those photos, you are making my Japanese blood get very hungry

 

Built a deck on the micro-eco-dwelling, from plantation pine obviously. Tried to go for a yacht but ran into mates, never left the marina but did win a hangover.

 

Had a 10 year over due lie-in Sunday and watched 2 old school Steve McQueen movies. Watched the Wa pull out a tree. Tried to give 4 15yo girlies a sailing lesson in preparation to their entry into the Ladies Series. Got a suspiciously and unusually large amount of drive-by by boats full of dudes. I suppose bikinis probably weren't the best attire for that sail. Kept thinking of how JH would have been going if he was aboard at the time :) Made mental note: next time take ear muffs and paintball shotgun.

 

Went an sussed the 60, all good. Sussed a couple of other boats, work related. Tried to go for a yacht to suss a new weapon but the harbour was a mass of wakes and no wind. Came home and fiddled with other new weapons that arrived by jet plane on Thursday. And pondered over a nicely chilled rum and the sunset, just how and when I could get everything to come together nicely, never got to the answer but after the arrival of a wayward Pommie visitor we did finish the rum bottle on the new sexy deck, much to D1's displeasure. Hey bitch I paid for it so shut the F Up!

[shanson 0]

Sailing past the BOI the other day we had a family of black and white dolphins play around the boat for about 45 minutes.

 

Quite obviously (to me) a pregnant mother, two reasonably old calves (?) and a very suspicious large father that kept a very close eye on us!

 

They did the usual bow surfing thing but what was interesting was that they took turns, under dad's watchful eye, at swimming alongside side the boat and giving each of the crew a REALLY good long look over.

 

Daddy dolphin also took an interest in our prop of all things, swimming up behind it quite closely. we were under motor the whole time.

 

It was the longest we've ever have them stick around.

 

SHANE

[Guest]

We had a family bowriding coming back into Wellington in a coastal race last summer.

The baby one obviously couldn't quite keep up, as mum was hooking it's dorsal fin with her flipper and was pushing it along, very cool.

The parent was always between the youngsters and the yacht.

[Guest]

They used to love Black Fun for some reason and if they were around would flock around her , chase the bulb and give the rudder a nudge from time to time which was a little disconcerting because they gave a fair nudge.

 

Now with the E7.4 best I have had was have a large ray try and mount the jandal while on anchor

 

I suspect some yachts 'sound' better than others and its almost magnetic to dolphins.

 

Back on topic - did a singlehanded mission to Hooks Bay on Saturday which was fun, scallops and and a few rums with a mate on a 1220 then a very light motorsail home on Sunday would have liked a bit more breeze though.

[John B 106]

We had the usual common dolphin( the little stripey ones), and we had the big bottlenose units but these ones in the bay seemed to have shorter snouts and were quite bulky looking things. Maybe its just a big fat mature bottlenose .. I dunno.

Porpoise? It was big .. 8 to 10 ft .

 

Anyway they seem to love our boat and come around a lot or there are more out there these days... we had some incredible pods of what seemed like hundreds of common dolphin at the mercs/ coro last summer and a spectacular display from bottlenose for a couple of hours at heretaunga and then another one at medlands. 5 of the little ones cruised across the firth the whole way with us on a long weekend in july.

[wheels 543]

Hey KM, if I ever start to be as Bad as a certain member on another Sailing site we both know, (His two sylable handle starting with G & M), Either let me know and I will tone back, or just shoot me with no warning, which could be more benicficial to all of us.

 

The porpoise has spade like teeth and very small Beak or nose. But like most wild animals, no matter how friendly they appear to be, I don't tend to go near the sharp end.