Tall Ships Race

Currently, tall ships from many nations are sailing in competition around Auckland Harbour. On Tuesday we had the car and drove off for a closer look.


This meant crossing the harbour bridge, which is the first time that I have driven myself across. Our first stop was the ferry terminal at Devonport where I took pictures of the town, distant shots of the boats and the naval base.


The notices pointed to Mt Victoria. We drove up and took a few shots, but we were still not near enough, so we drove to North Head, which I confused with Mt Albert.


The hill was covered in cars and many people sat along the hillside watching the race, many with radios to hear the commentary. We watched the race between the Swiss and the South Africans from start to finish. The commentator wondered why the Swiss favourites had lost.




North Head has three gun emplacements overlooking the city.


We had some time to spare and so I decided to drive to a headland on the other side of the bridge. I discovered three limitations to SAT NAVS

1. You have to know where you are going
2. They sometimes ask you to do impossible things, like turn left when you are well over in the right lane
3. Believe them when they say you are at your destination. It sometimes does not look like you are, but with more careful examination you find that you have just missed seeing the thing that you were aiming for.

The place we got to was called Kauri Point in the suburb of Birkenhead. We had to do a forest tramp which led to a view of the Harbour Bridge and the City.