Sailing Coral Moon from Auckland Waiheke and Great Barrier Island to Arrid Island cruising Ocean 43

Описание: Cruising Coral Moon in New Zealand's HAURAKI Gulf as friends Mike Powell and Cathy Franklin of Bellingham WA USA join us to sail the islands of New Zealand.

Peter Hallett and Sarah Drotning bought this Westerly Trintella OCEAN 43 center cockpit cruising sailboat designed by Ron Holland in Fiji. You can see the video of our 1100 mile trip from Fiji to New Zealand on this channel. Subscribe to keep up and share in our experience cruising New Zealand and the South Pacific Islands.

The details of this leg of our journey in January 2026:

Sarah, Peter, and Mike departed Auckland in strong wind and visit Matiatia on WAIHEKE Island where Cathy joined us from Bellingham. New Zealand experienced a subtropical cyclone with very high winds, before which we sailed to Gulf Harbor Marina. Once the storm had mostly passed we sailed 40 miles to the remote and lovely Great Barrier Island, where we met and made friends in Smokehouse Bay. From there we sailed around the northern tip of Great Barrier Island to the rarely visited Arid Island / Rakitu Island with the single and amazing safe harbor called The Cove, which is open to the north but protected from expected winds and surrounded by a dramatic coastline of cliffs and caves. From there we sailed down the eastern side of Great Barrier Island slowly enjoying the scenery until we rounded the south side and tucked into Tryphena for the night. From there we motored across the Hauraki Gulf (Māori: Tīkapa Moana) to the Coromandel Peninsula where we poked into four potential anchorages starting with the northfacing and exposed Port Jackson, looking into Elephant Cove at Motukahaua Island (Happy Jack Island), Motuwi Island (Double Island), proceeding south in calm conditions to Waimmate Island anchoring midway down the east side. From there we had a gorgeous sail to Ponui Island (Chamberlins Island) anchoring off a quiet beach on the west side called Apuapu Bay as we neared the end of the segment of cruising on Coral Moon. We returned back to the east side of WAIHEKE Island, to a mooring in Matiatia Bay where Mike and Cathy disembarked via high speed ferry to Auckland for their respective onward journeys.