Arrival at the Mercurys

We are sitting in Huruhi Harbour in Great Mercury Island enjoying sunshine and calm waters, a nice change from our trip here. We left Gisborne on the promise of a SW flow developing. We stopped off at Tolaga Bay due to the strengthening NW but were happy to leave during the night when the wind abated as it was just a bit rolly! Dawn saw us rounding East Cape and despite the continued NW we decided to keep going as the forecast for Plenty was SW. The knowledge that there was a south to SW flow over the country was of great comfort as we bashed our way into what still looked like NW to us. We eventually made Huruhi Harbour just after dark and picked up a mooring buoy for the night. The next day continued NW. The Mercury Islands marks the furthest south I had previously been on Elenya, if you search back through the archives of the blog you can find some pictures of the last time we were here.