motorb

I suppose nobody would have a bosuns chair handy at Home Bay, Rotoroa? We had a shroud cover kindly land on deck today and it's a few more days till we get back to westhaven...

So they got rid of the harstand next to their luxury retirement village project and are turning it into eateries and other amenity for their existing development plans while adding another drydock and few berths to add value and probably meet land use zoning requirements. We're still left desperately short on haulout facilities. It's also a weird name....

Please don't give the h&s people any more ideas! What may seem obvious to you doing a job, isn't necessarily obvious to others making rules about the job....

Same here, but I also find bicycles to be far more dangerous than motorbikes when riding in traffic. Ebikes are an improvement in power and stability but the brakes are still sorely lacking... and while pedaling might be hot work, my Ducati has a habit of burning my leg while stopped in traffic.... The fact is cyclists and motorcyclists are exposed to the exact same hazard around town yet only one is expected to be dressed for the event and yet they are the best capable to get out of a tight spot quickly and aside from licensing they often have specific training alongside that too.. One g

Just flew over yesterday and it's not just tinnies and fizz boats...

In the world of offroad dirtbikes there's an interesting thing regarding neck braces. On the "for" side, we have concerned mothers insisting upon them as a condition for their kids to be riding with Dad, and newer riders who get sucked into the marketing. On the "against" is everyone who points out there's no standard or evidence they work on a dirtbike All I know is that when I wear full body armour I take bigger risks than when I ride without, clipping trees, harder into turns etc etc. On balance, I think the old man had the right idea in making sure we "learned how to crash"

I saw this in play while running a large motorcycle club with a disproportionately high number of learners an commuters. ACC and other safety heads were pushing hi-vis jackets on us, yet the rate of incident ong our members wearing the jackets was far higher higher those without! Long story short, the number 1 rule for successful motorcycle commuting is to ALWAYS assume you're invisible. The moment you break that rule, you start to put yourself into harms way. What we saw with the hi vis vest was the divide in psychology of our riders, where the ones who refused the jackets were foll

I think you'll find a lot of that resistance is against the possibility of some bureaucrat - who's never sailed before - making helmets a legal requirement regardless of the situation aboard a boat. Similar to the life jacket rules brought in a few years back after a particularly stupid kayaking fatality, suddenly cruisers are being regulated due to some "lowest common denominator" behavior. Yet, 5 or so years on, any casual observer can see a total lack of compliance of the lifejacket rule in anchorages, marinas and mooring areas, so what is what is the point of the rule? Just so some pe

One can hope.... I too was hoping to have a crack at sailing there for the first time this summer

I still don't trust it....

OK so things got a bit hard to follow towards the end there but it looks like there's potentially the option to investigate a reduced and/or seasonal hardstand at Okahu Bay. Sensible outcome but I wouldn't say it's over yet.

yep - then they'll say how it's just rich old retirees who this affects. meanwhile, us younguns dont have the luxury of leaving work early to slog across town in traffic just to be ignored by self-serving councillors (That said, I'll be trying to make it)

Looks like another pearler this weekend! Maybe we'll even get enough wind to actually sail this Sunday.

I'm still waiting for a response from them.... seems they gave up and ran away once they had to face any scrutiny of their statements....

The GPS seems to have quit too! Not an issue but we've had to be a bit more conservative in our anchoring without any depth sounder .... well aside from the lead one... Still great to be out. Making big plans for sailing tomorrow. Might consider the walk up the hill tonight too depending on how we feel after dinner. (Great idea btw thanks for that; might be the plan for new years!)

Great news! The outboard is a runner again! Mustve been some debris is the float stem seat or a sticky float. Inside the bowl is pristine so must have been from fitting the new fuel pump back in May.

Well station bay is out now as I'm still in our mooring about to pull the carby off the outboard..... let's hope it's just a dirty/sticky float valve but she's not idling; flooding and overflows. Also overflows when priming if that means anything. Wind seems to have gone NE, too.....

Looking at tonight's forecast, what's the best bet for calm anchorage tonight to make a good "first of the season" overnighter? Leaving westhaven at about 4 or 5 knots at 3pm isn't leaving us a huge range of options, but I reckon station bay would be a good spot to shelter from the wind going from North to South if we can get there... Oh, and the missus wants to be able to see some fireworks.... any good ideas out there?

Given the reverse sensitivities around Western Springs, Panuku shutting down Mt Wellington via a backroom deal, and Pukekohe raceway being torn up for terraced housing I'm not sure Motorsport is going to fare any better. Really best to just walk around your neighborhood and join a Golf club, because that's all that will be left before long.

Just don't eat the dolphins and you'll be fine. The water down in westhaven was actually looking pretty good yestersay (as compared to the usual green murk after a weekend of rain)

Closing the ports is a developers wet dream and not in the interest of the wider city at all, which is pretty clear to everyone with half a brain. I'd hardly call that a good example of why we shouldn't be saving the hardstand. Where do you get the idea the hardstand is subsidized? My understanding was that the council set the rates and could have increased them at any time, and that despite that it was a net profit on the books. As for the rest of your post - much of the initial protest to the Orakei Board decision was precisely that a regional asset wasn't theirs to decide o

Ahhhh bugger I can't believe I missed that! Nothing on FB, no emails from various parties I've supported or interacted with, and only a 4 week window. What a shame.

Sounds like Orams is going to have a lot of issues with reverse sensitivity in the very near future. The whole concept of high end apartments and retirement villages alongside heavy marine industrial sites is just ridiculous. Auckland Council is steadily dismantling the Auckland Marine industry and making no efforts to safeguard it or provide any alternative sites. Just like the nonsense idea of shutting down the port, only property developers are benefitting from this while aucklanders are paying the price, and places to work and earn good money continue to move offshore.

Just an update on this topic: I'm still at Westhaven, and as of this morning, I'm the third boat (that I know of) in the last 12 months to have a rotten mooring pole snap off. Westhaven aren't 100% sure where to put me, as they dont know which poles are sound or not. Further updates to be made once this is resolved, but long term plan is to go on the Weiti waitlist, and see whether I get a mooring before I eventually give up and sell. At the very least I'll need to be using their hardstand given the lack of capacity remaining anywhere else so at least the membership fees wont be wast

One would think that the coastguard app could include an anchor watch function..... but that can barely give updated nowcasting data when required so maybe I'm asking too much.