Malcolm and Shona in New Zealand : Labour Weekend holiday - Legend yacht race to the Mercury Islands

Now for something completely different - a superb 5 days sailing trip aboard 'Candidas' a Chicco 30 sailing north from Tauranga up to the top of the Coromandel peninsula to Mercury Island. The island was named by Captain Cook because he documented the transit of Mercury from there on 9/11/1769!

We did see lots of stars at night but the only transit was by tender to and from the shore for prize giving!

Barry and Diane our wonderful hosts were great fun and we thoroughly enjoyed the sailing, racing, fishing, happy hours and rum nightcaps!

This is Hahei our favourite place near Cathedral cove.

We took 2 days to sail up anchoring the first night after 10 hours in 'boat harbour' (very literal the kiwis!) A bit wet on first day, then a beautiful reach in sunshine for 4 hours up to the Mercury Island. We saw a range of wildlife including blue penguins (worlds smallest penguins!), Jesus birds ( a type of storm petrel that 'dances' on the water) and sooty shearwaters, but unfortunately no dolphins or whales this time!

Malcolm and Barry had a wee bit of difficulty finding the anchor!!??? caption 'It was here this morning'??

Food on board was in the true yachting tradition, good, plentiful and accompanied by plenty to wash it down!

The island itself can only be reached by boat or helicopter.

The prize giving on the beach included a fancy hats prize so we were Noah's Arc - the warm hats came in handy on the chilly trip back as well. Barry won a prize for his rainbow monkey hat! Malcolm's was an elephant hat!

One real first for me was catching tasty snapper for tea. We caught 11 snapper and 1 gurnard, all beautiful fish and such fun - food for free I love it. I even learnt how to fillet them although I was a bit hesitant at first as the knife was ultra sharp! Diane and I were definitely the top fishermen on this trip!