Oneroa Bay, Waihekle Island - The Bay of a 1000 Boats

We decided to get away for the Easter long weekend.  The weather forecast for Thursday was terrible, and the weather WAS terrible so we decided to leave Friday.  A good thing too!  Thursday afternoon, there seemed to be a endless progression of fronts go through.  The worst of them saw winds to around 40 knots in the marina and a pretty impressive hail storm.  Enough hail came down to cover the decks in ice.  We are NOT amused!  The forecast for the weekend was for sun and light SW winds, perfect for a trip to the north side of Waiheke Island where we were told to check out Oneroa Bay.  We started to leave the dock just before 9 am and usually, that process would not be a problem.  This time however, we managed to screw it up completely.  We backed slowly out of the berth but the stern got pushed onto the finger and the bow swung out towards our neighbours boat.  We fended off and ended up pinned between two pilings, one on the port stern and one of the starboard bow.  They arrange the berths in New Zealand so that there is a piling between the two boats that each can tie off to so that you tie all four corners at dock.  Well we put on a show.  A kind dock mate ran down and helped us off, and we needed the help, and we got out.  No damage to anyone (I think).  The winds that they promised did not appear and we ended up motoring for 3 hours.  No problem, it was a beautiful day, sun, clear blue sky, you get the picture.  On the way out, it was amazing.  I don’t think I have ever seen so many boats heading the same direction.  It kind of reminded me of salmon spawning, everyone jockeying for position to get somewhere known only to them.  We arrived around noon and there were probably 20-30 boats already at anchor.  We took our normal position on the outside.  By the time we had gone to shore for a walk around the township and returned, there were well over 100 boats here.  By suppertime, I would put the number between 150-200 boats all told.  It was incredible.  We only had one boat that decided that they just had to anchor really, really close to us, within boathook length.  They were behind us and did not seem concerned so I said to hell with it, they are insured, if we hit them, they are at faulty as they anchored after us.  We had a nice dinner, watched a movie and were relaxing when we heard “ahoy”.  I stuck my head out and our too close neighbours were hanging onto our stern rail fending off.  There was no wind (an important point).  The female partner of the two declared that we MUST be dragging.  I calmly informed them (really, I was calm) that we had 40 meters of chain out and a 45 pound CQR anchor and were likely NOT dragging.  The male of the partnership wisely did not get involved in the discussion and suggested that the female partner return to the cockpit and, in his words, “just try and follow instructions”.  He proceeded to pull up their anchor, by hand and we (Cathy and I) kept him off Tarun.  He managed to pull in all 15 meters of his rope and chain and I gave him a good shove backwards.  The problem was the tide had come in and they were so short scoped that as they went up they moved forward by about the length of our boathook.  I mentioned this to the female partner and her reply was that surely you would have moved forward as well.  I went below at that point, deciding that I did not want to get into a discussion of physics and anchoring scope etc.  We had a gook night’s sleep.

We are actually not staying out for the weekend as Cathy has a job interview in Takapuna Sunday afternoon at a rather nice Café/Bistro.  We were going to go back Sunday morning but tides are wrong and the weather is not as nice as they said.  We’ll sail back later today.