27. Boat trips & outings

Tarawera revisited

2011-01-19T13:22:00.013+13:00

The Ngaroto Boat Club organized an outing to Lake Tarawera in 2008. Three trailer yachts and six dinghies made the trip. The owners of the trailer yachts slept in sleeping bags on board their yachts. The dinghy sailors lived in tents on site at Linda's batch. Some younger members shared the batch with Linda's mum. It was a 2 nights 3 days outing which included a race to Hot Water Beach on the first day and a combined regatta, on the second day.

with Owen Johnston

We rafted the trailer yachts at the jetty behind Linda's batch, spending the nights on board, using the kitchen and toilet facility of the batch. We enjoyed a barbecue dinner in the evening. Some energetic members tried the jet ski and some others used the kayaks.

trailer yachts

participants

dinghies

dinghy sailors

Nanook

spinaker up

Shane and Jaime

Danny

Murray

Peter is stuck in his kayak!

The Nanook

2010-05-29T09:49:00.039+12:00

My boat name is Nanook, a 22-footer, made by Noelex in NZ.

LOA: 6.5M (21 ft. 7 in)

Beam: 2.18M (7 ft. 2 in)

Draft: 1.2M (4 ft)

Sadly the fibre glass moulds have been sold to Australia and no more trailer yachts of this type will be manufactured any more in Christchurch, NZ. It is quite easy to manage as a single hander. The mast is not too heavy for one man to raise. For recovery, I have a 10:1 hand winch on the trailer. Mostly, I sailed alone and have explored many of the lakes around Rotorua. I have visited Lake Rotoiti, Rotorua and Tarawera; some more than once. On Rotoiti, there are hot pools at Manupira hot springs which are great during the winter time.

In summer, I also participated regularly in regattas on Lake Ngaroto. I have been a member of this sailing club for many years. The other trailer yachts are mainly Jokers, Kestrels, Monachs, Tasmans and Hartleys. We have a fleet of Lasers, Starlings and Optimists which race regularly on Sundays during the summer months, starting at 10.30 a.m.

This is my trade mark: playing the bamboo flute as I steer the boat with my foot. This usually happens when there is no wind during our Sundays regatta at Lake Ngaroto. This photo was captured by Ross Wrenn, a fellow sailor at the Ngaroto Sailing Club, near Te Awamutu.

At 10 knots wind condition, I get the best sailing experience on the Noelex. The boat heels nicely to one side when reaching or close hauled and performs well between 5 and 20 knots. I seldom use my spinnaker, unless I was in the middle of a big lake, like Tarawera or Taupo and have long distances to cover under light winds.

It is common to meet no wind, (calm) conditions on Lake Ngaroto.

This is about 7-10 knots wind. The best condition for a relaxing Sunday cruise.

This is probably the maximum heel angle for this boat with over 10 knots wind. The windows on port side are actually getting wet. I call this [washing the windows]. The sailing becomes very exciting indeed. The rudder begins to come out of the water. Wind start to spill from the main sail. When this happens, the boat stops heeling any further and it cannot be steered properly. It will automatically round up and head towards the wind. The heeling stops and the rudder is in the water again. We continue sailing and steering the boat in the direction we wish to go. I have since learned to use the traveller to prevent the boat from heeling too much or rounding up to face the wind and stopping!

I have furled the jib and main, rigged the boom tent, dropped anchor and secured the boat in preparations for spending the night on board. Yes, I carry a chemical porta-loo on board and I also have a small gas cooker for boiling water and cooking simple meals for short trips of one or two days.

This photo was taken by Priscilla when she came for a visit in 2004. I used it as my profile photo on all my blogs on Multiply for many years. It has been replaced by this one below, showing me playing the flute. This has now become my trade mark profile icon on all my blogs, FaceBook, Twitter, Gmail etc.

This one photo sums up all my hobbies together. I like photography, sailing, playing a bamboo flute and also blogging. However, it took a while for me to have this photo taken because I usually go sailing alone as a single hander. The digital camera has made it much easier for all bloggers to illustrate our blogs with more meaningful images. In my earlier blogs I was using Kodak prints. These have to be

scanned first, saved on hard disk and then uploaded to our blogs. The definition or clarity is not as good. Since I started using a software called Picasa to manage my digital photos, I have finger tips control of every single image. On last count I had over 50,000 images saved on my computer. The modern digital camera is capable of taking very high definition photos which require increasing storage space. I have recently added an external hard-disk with capacity of 1 Tigabyte (1000Mb) to my old desk top. That should last me for a while. Nowadays, the modern lap tops internal hard-disk already have close to this capacity in order to cater for gamers. Come to think of it, lately I hardly see any desk top computers being advertised for sale in the papers! Most lap tops have touch pads instead of a mouse. I love my mouse and I cannot use a type pad efficiently.

My new desk top PC is an hp Compaq Presario CQ3000 series, 2 Gb RAM, 500 Gb Hard disk, 23" monitor and came with Windows 7 home premium softwares. It is also very cheap @ NZD764 from Heathcote Appliances, the Base, Hamilton. My old PC was really ancient. It was a Lenovo desk top with 350 Kb RAM and 80 Gigabytes hard disk, running on Windows XP. I have been using it for 5 years and it is way over due for an upgrade. Delays were caused by my fear of being unable to transfer all my personal files and soft wares from the old PC over to the new computer.

It turned out to be not such a big job after all because I have an external hard disk of one Tigabytes capacity. Basically, I [poured] all my files and documents from the old PC into the ext HD and then [pour] everything from that to the new PC and it was done. The only problem that I had was transferring the email service provided by Eudora from the old to the new. It took me 3 days to figure that one out; but I have lost all my archives of old emails on Eudora and also some digital photos which has gone AWOL on Picasa. Never mind. The new PC is much faster and more than made up for the small loss.

Guests on my boat.

2010-05-28T09:48:00.028+12:00

I had the pleasure of showing many of my friends how to handle a boat, running on wind power. For most of them, it was their first time on a sailing yacht which has no engine. If they can get used to the heeling of the boat, most of them can steer the boat within 5 minutes. My instruction was very simple: imagine that you are in a car; but you are steering the back wheels!

David Jin

David Jin was a golf partner from the Narrows Golf Club. David was teaching Orrin to play golf when he was told about me hitting buckets of balls daily at the driving range. He invited me to play a round on the golf course with him and I have been there ever since. That was more than 5 years ago.

David Jin

Huang family

John Huang was another golfer whom I met at the Park International golf course. He was playing alone there for some years. Later he joined the Hamilton Golf Club where we met again in 2008. Together with Kevin Lee we formed a threesome which lasts until today. We have played over 380 rounds together.

Charlie and his angels

Charlie was a golfer I met at the Narrows. One day, I invited him and his two children to go sailing with me at Lake Ngaroto. They just loved it.

David Jin

Albert, Wen-wen and Ting-ting

Albert Chow is my nephew. He lives in New Plymouth, NZ. I always carry enough life jackets for every one. It is always good practice to train kids to get used to wearing them while on a boat.

club members

Sherina

Sherina was the unlucky one. She came with me to Lake Ngaroto for a day's sailing. That day, the lake was like a mirror with not a breathe of wind. As you can see, the main was still furled around the boom.

Christine

Christine rarely came with me to Tauranga for sailing; but she asked to come along that day. I took her to Amokoroa where I launched the boat. We dropped anchor and stayed one night on the boat.

Alex Kraayenhof

Alex sailed a Paper Tiger, a catamaran,at the Ngaroto Sailing Club. He just loved to run circles around us on the lake during race days on Sundays. One time I invited him to be my crew on the Nanook.

Ng Tsun Kong

Tsun Kong and I went sailing at the Bay of Islands. I towed my boat to Auckland where I picked him up. We used the ferry at Opua to cross over to Russel where we stayed one night on the boat. The second night we checked into a back packer for a hot shower and a warm bed.

May and Margaret

May

May and Margaret were friends from Hamilton East. We met at the ESOL class run by Nancy Rounthwaite. I invited them to come sailing with me. Margaret was very brave because she was on crutches at the time.

Kevin's friends

Four of Kevin's friends from Malaysia paid him a visit at the Gold Coast. He brought them home to Hamilton. I agreed to take them sailing at Tauranga harbour for the day. They all came from Miri.

Brazilian

This guy stepped off the plane at 9 a.m. at Auckland. By 11a.m. he was crewing for me at Lake Ngaroto! He arrived from Brazil to take up a one year training position on a Waikato dairy farm arranged by Ross Wrenn.

in-laws

One year all my relatives and in-laws came to visit us in Hamilton. Naturally I entertained them by taking them sailing in my boat.

Orrin

This is Orrin, a young golfer from China. He helped me to stop going to the driving range. It was a long story. If you are interested, you can read it up on one of my blogs. Orrin helped me to change from a ball hitter into a real golfer. I am very grateful to him.

As you can see here, I have tried my best to convert some of my golfing friends into yachties. As far as I know, no one has yet bought a trailer yacht. I wonder why none of the people I know are sailors. I think all of them have the wrong idea, assuming that it is expensive to play golf or sail. I have been sailing for over 25 years. The wind has always been free of charge. I sailed a dingy in Malaysia for many years before I came to NZ. Apparently I was very lucky to have the right hobbies to blend in as a permanent resident in this country.

Omokoroa

2009-07-18T13:49:00.007+12:00

One small Kahawai for dinner
smoked chicken salad for lunch

cooking dinner

dawn

boat ramp

On the Omokoroa trip, my wife Christine came along to find out why I like cruising. I dropped anchor and we slept in sleeping bags. The wind on the second day was good, at 10 knots. I explored the northern end of the harbour. The water was barely deep enough for my trailer yacht at low tide. In some parts, I had to raise centre board completely for a while. It was fun and the boat does not heel so much with the keel up. In some parts the current was very strong and my boat was moving sideways like a crab.

Tauranga harbour

2009-07-17T13:25:00.008+12:00

Mt. Maunganui
boat ramp at the Marina

Wednesday evening regatta

Regatta

The winner

Nanook cruising

Sunrise at Tauranga

In the evening, I beached the boat near Mt. Maunganui and went ashore to buy some pizza for dinner. I took my pizza and drink to a park bench where I sat down and enjoyed my dinner for about an hour. When I returned to my boat, I discovered that the tide has gone out and my boat was left high and dry. I found and asked three big German tourists to help me push my boat back into the water. When I was afloat, I thanked them profusedly, saying "Thank you very much Fraulein". Yes, they were German ladies! Quite strong too!

Russell near Paihia

2005-07-23T22:56:00.009+12:00

The longest distance that I have towed my boat was 370 km to Russell. On the way, I picked up a friend, Tsun Kong, in Auckland. A ferry runs from Opua to Russell. Boat and car cost $8/trip. There is room for about 20 cars. The waiting time is never more than 15 minutes; probably much less in the summer months, due to heavy traffic during the holiday period. The first night we slept in the boat. The second night we checked into a back packer for the hot showers! It was quite a nice cruise around Paihia harbour. I raised my Genoa (geniker) and it pulled the boat forward in very light winds!

Launching

on the ferry

Lake Rotoroa

2005-07-23T22:52:00.000+12:00

This is also called Hamilton Lake, about 5 km from my house.

Raglan harbour

2005-07-23T22:49:00.001+12:00

The tides at Raglan harbour move very fast and can be dangerous to keel boat. The Noelex 22 has a retractable centre board, making it ideal for exploring Raglan harbour during ebb tide. The Noelex can be beached safely; but keep an eye on the tide!

Taupo

2005-07-23T22:47:00.000+12:00

There is plenty of room under the boom tent which becomes the galley and sitting room. It is a bit cramp inside the cabin which is used only for sleeping and storage of all the sailing gear like anchor ropes, sails, life jackets, spare lines, anchors, radio, charts etc. These photos were taken at Boat Harbour near Kinloch.

Tarawera

2005-07-23T22:43:00.005+12:00

Hot water beach on Lake Tarawera is accessible only by boat. A cluster of lakes is found near Lake Rotorua: Rotoma, Rotoiti, Tarawera, the Blue Lake and many other smaller lakes all fully stocked with trout. A fishing licence costs $12 a year; but fly casting is not easy to learn because it is an art.

Seen here is Alex Chow, my nephew. He came all the way from Amsterdam to sail with me on Tarawera.

Rotoiti

2005-07-23T22:38:00.000+12:00

Munupira Hot Springs on lake Rotoiti is well developed. It costs $5/visit but is well worth it, especially in mid winter when your boat does not have central heating! It felt really luxurious soaking in a natural hot pool with a glass of red wine. The water is crystal clear at the jetty where the fresh water trouts are easily visible!

Lake Arapuni

2005-07-23T22:35:00.007+12:00

Arapuni is an artificial lake on the Waikato river created by a hydro dam, near Cambridge. There are six dams built across the mighty Waikato river to harness cheap hydro electricity. Seen here with me is a friend from Miri, Tam Chi Kim.

In Manuwatu there are many huge wind turbines constructed along the hill tops using the wind to generate electricity in a more environmentally friendly way. In Wellington harbour, kiwi scientists are experimenting with wave generators.

Huntly lake

2005-07-23T22:29:00.000+12:00

First time on the water in NZ. I picked the wrong day. There was hardly any wind.

Lake Ngaroto

2005-07-23T22:18:00.007+12:00

This was the first time I launched the Kestrel to check the integrity of the hull. The small 2 hp outboard engine is used mainly for parking and in case of emergency caused by unexpected equipment failure. It is adequate for moving the boat at 5 knots without using the sails. I am a member of the Ngaroto sailing club. In summer we usually hold a regatta on Sundays. There are other trailer yachts and many dinghy sailors.

Alex on his catamaran, a Paper Tiger which he used for running circles around us during Sundays regattas at Ngaroto.