Boat trip to Fletcher Bay

Overnight Boat Mission to Port Jackson

The goal for this month was simple: finally take the boat on an overnight mission and see if camping on it was actually viable. I’d been waiting for a weather window for the last couple of months and at the end of October it finally lined up. With two free days and no wind in the forecast, I headed for the top of the Coromandel.

Getting Underway

I got the kids off to school, packed the boat, grabbed bait and some food from the top catch at Maraetai, and launched at the public ramp. The ramp was quiet and the conditions were perfect—absolutely glassed off.

With the car locked up and the trailer secured, I headed out across the Tāmaki Strait. The plan was to run around the eastern end of Waiheke, up through the Waiheke Channel, and then straight up the Firth to Port Jackson. First time doing a mission of this distance in the boat, so I was keen to see how it went.

The run north took about two hours. I stopped for a quick fish around the way, throwing soft baits around an area that another boat indicated had some fish, but nothing stuck.

By the time I reached Port Jackson, I had a work meeting to dial into. Not ideal timing, but I got the Minn Kota set up and threw a soft bait round while listening in on Teams, and made the most of it. Fair to say nobody else on the call knew where I actually was.

Fishing the Top of the Coromandel

After the meeting I worked slowly along the coastline towards Fletcher Bay, casting soft baits and generally enjoying being up there. Still no fish on the board though.

Along the coastline a huge drone was working, spraying pest species. This thing was easily a metre long with a big spray boom—pretty wild to see up close.

I carried on to the island off Fletcher Bay to catch some livies, and eventually managed a small trevally on the sabiki. That went in the live-bait tank and I slow-trolled it around the island for a couple of hours looking for a kingfish. No interest at all.

Back towards Port Jackson I swapped back to soft baits and finally found some fish. Picked up a few good snapper and kept two for the chilli bin. At one point I had a snapper coming in with a decent kingfish following it, but it never committed.

By late afternoon I had to make a call: stay the night up there, or head back into the Firth with a bit more shelter. The forecast had a fresh 7–8 knots coming the next morning, so I decided to run south and tuck in behind Motukahaua (Happy Jack).

Anchored Up for the Night

I rounded the corner and set up in Elephant Cove on the south side of the island. Another yacht was anchored there but there was plenty of space.

Dinner was the first test of the new Cobb stove. I’d already made toasted sandwiches on it for lunch, and now cooked frozen dumplings and steak on it—worked better than expected.

The sleeping setup was the experiment for this whole trip. I rigged a 3.1 × 3.1 m tarp over the centre console to make a half-boat shelter, then laid out my inflatable camping mattress between the console and the gunwale. It worked, but the big mattress was definitely overkill. A thinner one would fit the space better next time.

I watched the latest Lateral Line episode before bed. They’d been fishing the exact same spots I’d been in that day—pretty cool seeing their drone footage of the same reefs I’d just worked.

A Rough Morning

The wind swung south overnight, and because Elephant Cove faces that way it started stacking chop straight into the bay. By first light it was pretty lumpy, so I pulled anchor and moved around to the northern side of the island to cook breakfast—bacon and avocado bagels on the Cobb.

Once everything was packed down, I pointed the bow back across the Firth. The conditions were marginal for my boat. A tight one-metre chop made for a slow, wet crossing. The day before I’d been cruising comfortably at 25 knots; now 15 knots was all I could hold without launching off the peaks and slamming sideways. Good fun solo, but not the sort of sea I’d want passengers in.

Shelter returned as soon as I got in the lee of Waiheke. I stopped and had another soft-bait fish, picked up a couple more snapper, and kept one.

By mid-morning the wind was forecast to build further, so I headed back down the Waiheke Channel, crossed the Tāmaki Strait, and returned to Maraetai. Boat on the trailer, gear packed, home time.

Wrap-Up

A successful first overnight on the boat. Not many fish caught, but that wasn’t really the point. The mission was to test the boat, the camp setup, and how realistic overnight trips are. It’s definitely doable—tight, but doable—and something I’ll try again. The Coromandel delivered a magic couple of days on the water.