Te Aurere Voyaging - max 71 characters

April-May 2007

Kaupapa of the Voyage – Offshore training for crew

Ports of Call - Mangonui(Aotearoa)-Kingston(Norfolk Island)-Mangonui(Aotearoa)

Crew - Captain, Navigator: Jack Thatcher. Kaumatua: Anaru Reedy. Trainee Navigators: Hemi Eruera, Wati Forbes. Watch Captains: Emma Siope, Kiharoa Nuku. Crew: Waikarere Gregory, Sandra Schischka, Mahara Nicholas, Liam Ogden, Piripi Smith, Candice Reading.

Te Haerenga

The crew met up in Aurere about five days before hand to prepare the waka for the journey and to make sure it passed the Cat 1 regulation checks to voyage offshore. Te Aurere was parked up the Aurere river at Hekenukumai’s whare. After a new paint job and a few modifications to the waka it passed the check and was ready to sail, we had help from Stuart and Liz from Aotearoa 1 and matua Brian Wiki in helping us prepare which was awesome.

17/4/07: Dawn was breaking and there was a beautiful kohu surrounding the awa as we set off to move the waka through the river mouth and over to Mangonui were we would clear customs and put all our gear on. As Jacko started the karakia we moved down the river as the sun was starting to rise, when we cleared the mouth a huge Uenuku appeared over Hekenukumai’s whare, we were hoping that was a good tohu for our haerenga.

In Mangonui we loaded up the waka and had our karakia from Rima Edwards and also Papa Tip. We then sailed out of Doubtless Bay and up the coast. The two crews of four had shifts of six hours each, Hemi and Wattie navigating us to Norfolk under the guidance of Jacko. The night came, being away from any land lights all the whetu came out which showed a pretty awesome view of Te Korowai o Ranginui. Sailing on the waka and looking up at the same whetu our tupuna did, te mutunga ke!, Jacko summed it up well by saying ‘we were in the best classroom in the world’.

On the way over we were lucky enough to see the Kuaka (Godwit) migrating north to Siberia in huge flocks for days. From the time we left Aotearoa we also had a couple manu kaitiaki follow our waka.

The basic course we were taking was Nga Rangi ki Whakararo (North North West). Our main positioning rahui whetu was Mahutonga (Southern Cross).

It took us 4 days to reach Norfolk Island, Hemi was the first to spot the Islands from about 30 Miles out, not long after a school of playful dolphins escorted us in while we sung waiata back to them. As there are no jetties on the rocky coastline we anchored just outside Kingston and had to wait till morning to clear customs.

The first stop off point after we were welcomed onto the island was to visit an ancient Polynesian Pa site were a karakia was done.

Around the period of 1000-1400 AD it is thought that at least two Polynesian groups populated the islands at different times.

In 1774 Captain Cook later discovered an uninhabited Norfolk Island. Norfolk was originally set up as a New South Wales penal colony in 1788. In 1856 the descendents of the Bounty mutineers and their Tahitian wives arrived at Norfolk from Pitcairn Island, they brought their own language with them, ‘Norfolk’ is a unique mixture of 18th century boatmans English and Tahitian. The Island is now home to approximately 1800 residents, roughly a third are descendents of the HMS Bounty.

The people of Norfolk were awesome, they billeted us all out and really made us feel at home. We had a couple of BBQs and met some real characters, none more so than Kim, who was the skipper of the boat that originally helped bring the waka and crew in. We stayed on the Island for three days until the wind turned in our favour to leave.

The Easterly winds were good for us to be able to leave the island and we were hoping for them to change to North Easterlies to take us back to Aotearoa which they pretty much did. Some of our main rahui whetu for positioning again was Mahutonga, but we also used Te Matau a Maui (Scorpian), Whanui (Vega), Poututerangi (Altair), O Tama Rakau (Formalhault) and Atutahi (Canopus) for steering.

On the way back we done a bit of fishing, we managed to catch a couple of sea gulls by mistake which are a real hoha to get off the line, Liam eventually managed to catch a big Tuna after he had been bummed out on camera losing some ika a couple times before.

It took 5 days to get back, we had to heave to for about 16 hours on the fourth day. Arriving home we got hit by a couple of squalls on our final night just as we were approaching the North Cape, one ‘all hands on deck’ was called during the last night but all in all in was a pretty sweet voyage, we had timed our departures with the weather to perfection.

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