HOLIDAY CRUISES.

Auckland Star, Volume XLVII, Issue 7, 8 January 1916, Page 13

HOLIDAY CRUISES.

MEMORIES OFJHE HAURAKI "GUIF OF- THE NORTH WIND. } ] •■.YACHTSMAN'S PARADISE. \ (By LEE-OH.) I Memories! . . -; ' a sniff of wood smoke out of door i ■' U 1 enough! even in the well-trimme ; .-' nark near my door ia a southern citj • L an eye-wink I am back in the ol< < c a?P in * he S reat sha SSy DUS h of th .; j. (jr j] 1 _- a good rata fire on the bank o i tie snoring Mokau, with our long Maor \ dnoe swinging to the black current a our feet; a glorious summer night oi (lie sands of Mokoia Island; a billy fir. -; under a big tawhero tree with a cheer /ill old Hauhau by the name of Poisoi f jj the', inconceivably lonely shore of thi j Hopuruahine arm, on Lake Waikare I' jKjiina; a far more lively camp, the sol dierly bivouac in the Wairaa Valley . J ,iray up in Bokianga, when it ivai tiuch-aiid-go whether Hone Toia's sulk) jfahnrehure men fired into our Govern ! u'jut force or not. And the sight o I s-\rhite Bail on the confined waters oj j (j, e ; little estuary sends the "nieinorj 3 back to the grand old Hauraki, witli its islands, its borsehoe bays, its huge and --twisty red-flowering pohutukawaE i . {jjjt dip their branches to the tideway and its breezy open reaches of blue irater. Old sails that took us many a j fcilej old. craft long since scrapped, old i cruising mates —also, some of them ■ pow : scrap-heaped by death—old anchorages, old songs—even the meals we . used; to contrive with an old nailcan, in the days when everything tasted }: gooJ! j Holiday thoughts more than ever go ? to the north, to the out-of-door life that t one can lead to perfection in the seldom I cold parts about the Auckland east ■ coast, the " tai-tamahine," or " maidenlike sea , ," as the old Maoris call it, in j " contrast to the surf-swept west. And inevitably the old days were best! ! .'Those cruising days!—when from Kauri Point away out to Mahurangi : and the Great Barrier Island and Cape ; Coiyille there was scarcely a bay or a ' creek'into which we didn't poke our nosy, in some boat or another, in our ! iolidays and week-ends; scarcely an inlet-bottom that didn't hold.our "mudj froqk" for a night. For that is the glory of the Hauraki. '- ,\' SEA CRAFT. I Sailing memories! The pictures and sensations that they bring! The out-Trard-boUnd fleet white-speckling the i Bniomer waters for mile upon mile from ■ the Watchman rock to the cliffs of Jilt, tntapn; the thrilling impetus that the Betting of the spinnaker gives in a I; good following breeze, and the springing leaping feel of the hull under you; ssfla straining at their tackle like a team of bullocks; the sailorly joy of ' backing through it beating home - against a stiff westerly, making tack j for,-tack with some old racing rival; ! "t&ej vet sail arching through the. rain- : low,round"your. Bow"; lying becalmed ! on the gentle heave of- the outer gulf, • the dawn, just breaking, through the fog • '.tiat precedes a hot day; otfier. sails i slowing ghostly wan," voices carrying i Of, through - the - silence and sounding siartliagry near; then the golden top of tie old Castle Kock, on the Coro- ; Jnandel :Banges,- or, perhaps the- misty forested lead of Cape Colville appearing aboTe the level swathes of -fog as ; tie stuj. swings higher. The gulf prot cession #n a blowing day, steam and sail—yachts single-reefed, the more venturesome carrying a whole mainsail, . timber scows running in boomed out : wing-and-wing before the north-easter, i tie flonnder boats hurrying home with their catches from the Thames flate; aoi? and again a square-rigger, perhaps a big painted-port ship from the Old Country, more often a coal Barque from Newcastle, marching up to Rangitpto Channel, her royals coming in before the squalls; now and again, too, a, pretty white-painted Island schooner -there was a whole fleet of them those days-aafling like a yacht, bringing in ;' «r; oranges from Rarotonga or her <%a from mid-Pacific, a fragrant cargo o| the tropics. /j-Aad there was once a ship, the Hiram £ CornweU, let us say, of and from Sew Tork. A tall Down-Easter. jrammed with Yankee notions, first trip ■ li - knd - She didn 't com e « fie .■ott&pdox way for large vessels, through ■togitoto Channel, but up the back en■™*e, the tradesmen's gate, so to say, Jetad Motutapu Island and up through t.He:Motnihi Channel. The long reef, lost;under water, with a break -ra it |™ w «ifcr, which runs out ir O m Motutapu gave us many anxioiw lonkWβ; in a breeze of wind making throngh the channel after dark. A yacnfs crew, coming out of Drunken My one fine morning, saw to their .amazement this big Yankee, everything ■.& -to her" cotton-white royals, com- ! „£■• ol ! ,n S up the channel, all but PMing that hidden reef. .."?'' wptain!" one of the boys veiled, wmi + J aCht Sailed al ° n Sside, "you've : wae the wrong way." ' •mi-l It ? er ' cou rteously expectorat- • iS !■' leaned over *c rail. ."Much v ; - 'Tv ■ Im in and I'm goldurned |.^ D ?SSS Nr BAY ' A ND JACK ;; ■ AUSTEN'S WHALES 1 «Sf n % 7 ~ J prefer its «m I > c gleat rendez-V sinlM datum -P°int from which many 1 beabtl { rUn Was reck °ned. A spot of ' of £1 Was with its magnificent grove " 'isteT M , c,7 ancient Pobutukawa trees, 'MhrP knQtt y old cannibal-a ?e trees : 'sn« mcd > growing in and around the ' i%ta"S "J? parapets of an oldPar „ S f the M* o *' l on the diff-e d ge. % U%°n Wretched their battered Wn» ¥ Gen bou g hs ' leafy tentage for •t£rf and £ many a camping party from . q*^y ; of the Maori shark-fishers on--fiii 114 1 7 '" 3 there afc OUr **** one of tanw t ' , days, m y old sail ° r acquain- " t.a&; Au sten, told us some of his mmiseences of Drunken Bay that went ' ta/, ° the middl e sixties. Austen cfcfin Ppered aII kinds of Is' a n d and Jr.. M S PTB.it; he once had a smart bri- ■& c ' Reliance, in the Western ■TiWr V trade, He had cmised from »li i, the Solomons and all about in little cutter called the Aquila, and he ■' ■ Ife a , Bpear wound in his neck to remind *i- of . the 'Wack Cannibal Islands. He «hal V r. rt, sturd y man of Devon, clean>ea like,aman-o'-warsman, and he .. gold rings in his ears. Drunken '•'.-.j,; , f 6 6aid > won its name in the old MW allSe of its handiness as a sober■'ta! Ul> 0V a ta P er ™g-off anchorage. Cap- • «h lns of outward-bound ships would run kts tbore th their less than , half- '■'» ,t r Crews on to give them » mauce to recover before puttiDg out

to sea. And weather-bound Island craft or coasters would foregather there, and many a case of square-face or good Jamaica free out of bond would be broached. The old "portokovers"—coast sailorese for pohutukawa—heard many a boozy chantey raised on the sneg waters of Drunken Bay. Austen himself had. cause to regret, indirectly, the attractions of this half-way house to the outer gulf. He was sailing up past the Big Mercury Island, outside the Coromaridel Peninsula, one day of long ago, in company with another schooner man, when a school of whales hove in sight, "all a-puffin' and a-blowin' • away like billy-oh," said he. That school, carefully shepherded by the schooners, was embayed in the harbour of the Big Mercury, then an uninhabited , island, and the falling tide left two score of them stranded there. The two skippers—Sellars, of the Comet, was the other —joined forces and sent one of their Vessels off poste-haste to Auckland for barrels and trying-out gear, while Austen an<? his co-owners sat down on the beach" and calculated their wealth in whale oil. They waited anil waited, but' though a fair wind blew the needed appliances did not come, and all the time that mine of good oil-money was spoiling on ' tlie beach. At last the schooner came back in a tremendous hurry, stu'n-slsf and water-sails set, but it was too late—the w,hales had "busted," and not even a tough old coast sailor could tackle them. The crew had gotten the necessary empty barrels in Auckland, but had also laid in a.stock of full bottles, and- ran into Drunken Bay to drink success to the whaling enterprise , . There they stayed till the last pannikin was emptied, and then a bleary-eyed, headachy crew-hove up anchor and invented excuses as they packed on sail for the Mercuries. It was all of no use; Jack Austen wormed or kicked the sad truth out of them. But that, he said, didn't bring him back his twenty-seven whales —it's a long time ago, but I'm. morally certain it was twenty-seven. Drunken Bay is more respectable now, with its Islington collar .and tie; but I prefer it, I must own, with its cap-over-one-eye air of the years that are gone. ON THE COROMANDEL COAST. A noble cruieing place of ours one Christmas time was Coromandel shore, from Manaia of thelsweet, shady baylets, and Te Kouma, where the grand old Maori peach-groves were, round about the rocky and. wooded islands and up to the little coves that jdented the foot of Cape Colville's lofty ram-bow. i That Christmas dinner' ft .ours was eaten under the spreading pohutukawas, aflame with-blossom, on a little green tongue of land on Beeson's Island, where a clear spring of coolest water welled out above high-water level.. Schnapper just' from the sea boiled in ealt water in the same ibilly with the potatoes (a firstchop method of cooking them),.oysters from the rocks at our front door, and cherries from the native-planted .groves on this old pakeha-Maori camping ground—that was our dinner, with,, of course, a "duff" from home. "The. Three T'e," one of us christened that memorable feast, "Tamure, taewa, and tio "—echnapper,. potatoes, and oystersnothing nearly as good in your most expensive hotels. That afternoon it was up-anchor for shark-fishing off Goat Island, and "good sport it was. . Then off and away northwards along the bushy coast, exploring inbends of the beautiful shore line, keeping our halliards well in hand for the sudden little guns of equalk that were apfto ambuscade us from the gullies; and when time was up, reluctantly homeward to the hot and busy city, our. steering mark old Rangitotos bluepeaked head. ("What te good o' comp !. . said a Dago fisherman in the gulf when '

he was aeked why he /didn't carry a compass. "No see Rangitot , ?").,, | . BEATING OUT. And, there was a wild New Year morning. We werfe at , anchor off an open beach on the north-eaetern side of Waiheke Island, and all but one of us were Bleeping the sound, dreumlcss sleep of the dog-tired and conscience-free, .when that one, aroused by a sudden -increased weight in the run of the sea, put his nese above the cockpit and found a No. 1 topside nor'-easter well brewed, and indeed even then breaking on the bay. It was bad holding ground, and the fiveiater was dragging her anchor. We weren't left slumbering more than five seconds longer. "She's dragging, boys!" the look-out yelled. "Up you get—shake a leg, or we'll be on the rocks!" There was no time to drees, and the. raw wind whipped bare\legs, and the , awfully cold spray drenched five rudely j wakened yachtsmen in flying shirt-taile as we hauled in the chain and anchor— no easy job, for she was. surging arid jumping viciously. After casting off the gaskets and tying down-two. reefs, we quickly hoisted away mainsail and stay-; sail and beat out to the open in the teeth of a young nor'-east gale. It was juet growing light, and a desolate waste of waters the stormy gulf, looked that; shivery early morning.. Over she Jayi lee'rail under.-and we threshed out well, clear of the rocky point, then "-Lee-oh!" and round, we went;arid off:like a-wild: duck before it. And we had our rewardpresently, when we rounded up in that beautiful little sickle of a bay, Matiatia, where the raupo-thatched village of Neho Kepa's hapu lay. asleep; water lake-smooth here, the nor'-easter ; snorting harmlessly over our heads; made all j enugi shifted: into dry clothes, got the frying-pan;going, and' felt : that we had : done a fair morning's work' and earned ! our breakfasts. ". .' • And that is the Hau-raki, the Gulf of: the: North , ; • ;