Mooring in Opua
About 30 years ago we had a mooring made up and dropped at Tapu Point in the Bay of Islands. It was for our yacht Wild Honey, a Hartley 32 foot ferro yacht that I had recently finished constructing over a three year period. The Admiral has always joked that it was her surrogate engagement ring. (Well, what would you do, have a ring on your finger or a large ring on the sea bed? The choice was obvious.) We never extended ourselves to such a luxury…the finger ring that was, and a secure concrete block on the sea bed seemed to be a much more sensible acquisition. The Bay of Islands in Northland was the primo cruising ground of New Zealand, and back then, there were no marinas in the area anyway.
I had already ‘launched’ a mooring in Tauranga myself circa 1978. This was a two tonne mooring made to high specs. It was made on the nearby beach by filling a metal hoop ring with concrete and reinforcing. The bottom sand was heaped up so that a concave shape would enable the mooring to suck into the mud and stick. A large steel D ring poked out the top, locked in with much reinforcing. Heavy and light chain was then attached, a rope riser fixed onto the chain with a buoy on top. These were cowboy times, when a licence was not required, and no particular spaces allocated. It was cured by the cycles of several tides. Three days later I fixed four 44 gallon drums to the top, and floated the whole caboose out using a dinghy at high tide. At the spot X, I chopped the rope holding it and presto, it sunk to the bottom. Well, I tell you, it was exactly the same thing that has to be done using professional services today. And, it was made for a fraction of the cost of a professional one done today. Oh yes, I know about inflation, but today one pays about $3000 for a new mooring. However, that is if a space is available.
The Bay of Islands mooring was made by so called professional workers, but I had supplied the chain. For the cost of a dozen beer, I was gifted a length of ship’s anchor chain that was not wanted on the site of a major engineering works in Whangarei. The shackle was about 60mm diameter itself! (The cross sectional size of the ring metal.) Sadly I could not make this one myself, and handed it over to be made up. We sold it after Wild Honey was sold, and always lamented the loss of our private piece of marine real estate.
New spaces for moorings are like hen’s teeth. Mostly, they would be very far away from convenient dinghy launch spots anyway. Therefore one has to look for existing moorings that are for sale. Recently, we discovered a notice for a mooring for sale at Tapu Point, so snapped it up. It was newly serviced, and was only 100 metres from our original mooring. It is opposite the lovely new Opua Cruising Club to which we intend to become members soon. The block will save us expensive marina and/or mooring fees in the future when we have to attend family matters. We now have a base for Wild Bird in the Bay of Islands. A new adventure is ahead of us. The adventure of meeting new friends, and revisiting our old cruising grounds awaits us.
In the pic below, Wild Honey used to be just left of centre, and our new mooring location is about in the centre. What a blast from the past. It is not too different from today, but back then we had our dinghy in the bush next to the ferry landing at Opua and used to row it under the wharf across to the mooring, fall asleep aboard WB the sail out to the Bay the next morning. Perhaps a meal of fish and chips at Russell and a next day a sleep at Roberton Is. But those were the days when we were working full time, and the weekends were just too short. Now, the weekends are just the right length.
Post script: After gaining a job as caretakers in the outer Bay, we shifted Wild Bird to Waipiro Bay opposite Urapukapuka Is, and rented the mooring to visiting yachties.
However in the winter of 2014 a terrible easterly storm came through the bay and in the malstrom, our mooring was lost when the boat on our mooring cut the head line. The next story is on the replacement mooring, one much bigger and heavier. Now for rent.
30 year old pic of Tapu Point
