Sailing Taurus NZ

Having spent a little time living on board our current yacht, a C&C 34 called ‘Casino,’ Cara and I weren’t too perturbed about living on ‘Taurus,’ which is 39 feet long. Previous experiences on holiday in Stewart Island had taught us that we could just about manage — but we had learnt that it was best not to fall out of the dinghy as there isn’t a lot of room to dry soaking wet clothes. Still, that’s another story.

Anyway, we had applied for and gained ‘live aboard status’ at our local yacht club, the Otago Yacht Club, which was important for Cara to be able to get to work for her anti-social shifts and to be able to respond in time for her on call role. Our only other alternative was to live on our swing mooring at Deborah Bay — an hour up the harbour by boat (twenty minutes by car), but whether or not this is allowed by the local Council no-one seems very sure — including the Council.

We travelled up to Opua in the Bay of Islands to take possession of ‘Taurus’ on the 10th of October, and spend a week getting to know her. This trip allowed us to take advantage of a friend’s local knowledge, as he and his partner had chartered a yacht for the week. Somehow the trip up went smoothly, despite the massive weight in baggage we were taking, and we caught up with Elias, the previous owner of our yacht and went through the boat’s contents and systems with him. A long day took an unfortunate turn that evening when we manged to scrape our new (to us) dinghy against some rocks which were covered in oyster shells. These managed to puncture the dinghy — as well as Cara’s feet when she jumped overboard to push us off.

A few days idyllic sailing followed with Peter and Penny, our friends from Dunedin. We spent one night anchored in Waiwhapuku Bay, Moturua Island, and watched three of four dolphins play for hours. The next day we set sail for Whangaroa, stopping for lunch at the Cavalli Islands. Both are beautiful spots, and big thanks to Peter for introducing us to them.

We spent the night anchored in Pararako Bay, just round corner from the pub. Next day Peter and Penny headed back and Cara and I sailed back to Cavalli Islands where we spent the night. Thinking we should check the engine over — no easy task as you have to removed a number of sails, spare dinghy, and sailing ephemera to access it — we were surprised to find the bilge swimming in water. A pretty miserable few hours followed as we tried various ways to get rid of the filthy water — a sponge on a boat pole, a rag under feet, a hand pump with extended tubing. Needless to say we ended up filthy, and a little concerned about where the water had come from. Elias had told us that we needed to pump grease into the stern gland every hour or so when running the engine, and empty a tank in the bilge at the end of every day. Thinking we had been a bit slack in this we made sure to do this religiously the next day… only to find water in the bilge again!

Removing the water was pretty straight forward now that we were seasoned pros — though still a filthy job, and we discovered that a pipe that took water from the stern gland to the bucket had come loose. So now we knew where the water was coming from, which is always nice in a boat.

We returned to Opua and after a great meal with Peter and Penny in Russell bade them farewell. We now had to organise our departure which was not straight forward. Having no transport we could not get rid of the containers of filthy bilge water and rags, and we had to arrange how to leave our deflating dinghy on ‘Taurus’ and get ourselves and our bags to shore.. Luckily Tim, who had done the survey on ‘Taurus’ came to our rescue, and we were able to fly back to Dunedin having experienced some great highs, and frustrating lows! Other problems that had arisen were a stripped bolt that held the outboard to the dinghy, finding out that the jib sheets were so short they couldn’t be used to pull the sail around when tacking, and a few other bits and pieces that added up to quite the ‘to do’ list for our return.