Port Charles. For this Up the Creek adventure you’ll need a boat and crew staunch enough to brave the often formidable Colville Channel between the Coromandel Peninsula and Aotea Great Barrier Island (unless you’re coming from the south – from Tauranga or Whitianga); a small dinghy or kayak; and walking shoes – or fold-up bicycles (every cruising boat should have them, I reckon).
Port Charles is seldom – if ever – mentioned in the cruising destinations of New Zealand. Which makes it all the more rewarding to visit. With a few cautions: it would not be a viable anchorage in any wind coming from the north, or northeast quarter. And the upper parts of the bay are quite shallow. But there are anchoring spots just by the public wharf on the southwest side of the bay, and in Carey Bay just opposite by a long shallow slipway, and semi-sheltered by a reef and a mussel farm just outside of that. Or at Sandy Bay, just over the headland from the Port Charles Wharf. But to repeat: not in anything that looks like a northerly.
We were there on the long weekend. With fresh sou’westers forecast. Very, as it turned out on our return. But that comes later in our story.
After leaving the more-than 100 boats anchored in Chamberlin’s Bay at the north end
