Auckland New Zealand is known as the "City of the Sails". One thrid of all households own a boat. There are two harbors. The city has hosted two America's Cup challenges and won the last one. Go Kiwis.
Docking this morning the ship was pointed directly downtown. And this is not a working port, so we were free to come and go all day long.
Ready for our last day.
Here is sailing boat for the morning, a 1995 America's Cup sail boat, with crew waiting for us - 30 newbie sailors. It didn't look like we would fit...but we did.
Captain Julia has been sailing and racing for years. She knew what she was doing directing the 4 crew members, and the 30 of us.
Best excursion ever I loved it!
Getting out of the harbor meant dodging ferries. At one point there were three ferries: front, side and behind.
Captain Julia hoisted the sail up to 104 ft, of the 114 ft. max. Leaning back and looking up, it looked impressive.
Fortunately only the deck hands climbed on the supports.
Hard to tell here but Phil could probably reach down and touch the water, his side (port) was so low. On the other hand I was about 10 feet higher on the other side.
Watchout, taching back and forth meant the position of the ropes and pulleys swung from one side to the other.
Phil took a turn on the grinders, sorry you can only see his backside. Two people per grinder.
Sailing fast (12 knots) meant really leaning to one side. Can you tell?
I checked our position with Find Me.
A nice view of the city as we traveled further away. The Captain was checkiing her phone every few minutes. The winds were high and storms coming in. She was watching the cloud formation changing too. Turns out we were sailing in high wind conditions 25 knots, the max allowed. Us newbies really didn't know the difference. She ended up cancelliing the afternoon sailing - it was too windy.
This sailboat weighs 24 tons, 20 tons are in the bullet under the boat, and 4 tons for everything else (hull, masts, etc.) Wow, so that is why she stays upright.
Sail time was 1.5 hours, it sure went by fast.
Stats for our ship as shown in the meritime museum.
In the afternoon we walked downtown to the Sky Tower. Obervation decks were on two levels: 51 (610 ft.) and 60 (722 ft.) stories up.
Lovely views.
For $220NZD you can jump off the top. I caught a photo of this guy when we were on the 51st story. He reminded me of superman! Except he was falling, not flying.
At the bottom of the tower, we saw someone else falling down. It takes 11 seconds for the entire fall. We didn't even consider trying the fall.
Then we enjoyed Alan one last time while sipping tea. Phil showed him photos from our sailing.
Time to pack, suitcases must be out by 10pm, then we have dinner at Manfredi's. We leave the ship at 9:30 am tomorrow Jan 10 and get home to GSP at 3:25pm on Jan 10. Although it sounds like just 6 hrs, it'll really take us about 24 hours.
I hope everyone has enjoyed traveling with us through the blog. If it's been fun, if you get a chance let me know. See you guys in sunny SC soon!
It was super fun to follow along and know what you were doing. I was just about envious of your sailboat excursion! Thank you for letting us enjoy your travels as they happened!
ReplyDeleteI really enjoyed reading along the adventure! When we were in Auckland I suggested to Mark that we try the sky tower bungee and his answer was along the lines of "nope... nope, nope nopenopeNOPE"
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