November 18, 2011: Our final day

It’s happy birthday to Nicole Donahoe, and Chef Mabee has carved an elaborate apple swan for the breakfast bar in her honor.

Happy birthday to Nicole Donahoe

One gift given, another taken away. We’re hoping to make landfall on Tiritiri Matangi, a remarkable island of conservation. The once-eroded farms are now sanctuary for some of New Zealand’s rarest birds: the flightless takahe and kokako, which was nearly extinct.

But the southwesterlies intrude again, making the tender operation too dicey. We need a calmer easterly wind, so all we can do is snap photos and sigh.

Returning to Auckland Harbour

By noon, Island Passage is safely lashed back in her berth at Auckland Harbour. I feel a total disconnect to the miles clocked — a 120-mile loop from Auckland to Auckland. It feels like we’ve been away for years, into another realm.

Capt. Vince told me on our first day, “You come out here and unplug. To be able to step off the planet is so nice.” I now know exactly what he means.

Betsa Marsh is president of the Society of American Travel Writers

November 17, 2011

Reluctantly, Capt. Vince heads us out of Smokehouse Bay west for Kawau and the Victorian fantasy world of Sir George Grey. Twice governor of New Zealand, Grey took over the home of a mining executive in the 1860s, plowing in a fortune to take it to 30 lavish rooms and transform the gardens into his private Eden

He brought in Chinese pheasants, New Guinea tree kangaroos and South African monkeys. Zebras pulled his carriage.

Island Passage ship off Kawau

But before we can see Grey’s Mansion House, we have to cross the Gulf with 20-knot southwesterly winds and three-foot swells. We batten down any flyable objects and brace for the four- or five-hour crossing.

It’s not too bad and we anchor safely at Bon Accord, the only spot Island Passage is allowed off Kawau. It’s a quick tender ride to Mansion House, where a preening peacock shows us his feathers, a shy wallaby scuttles into the woods and New Zealand wood pigeons flap away from their branches.

Calla lilies grow wild among the palms and tree ferns — how many times have I tried to grow callas back home, and here they’re weeds. The lilies, like all the New Zealand native species, are so unremarkable to Kiwis, yet so exotic to the rest of us.

Sir Grey's mansion house

Hearty hikers tramp up to the ruins of the old copper mines and up the Redwood Track, another import from the acquisitive Sir George.

Capt. Vince joins us for our farewell dinner, roast duck with risotto and merlot-raspberry sauce. It’s like the end of every wonderful cruise — where did the time go?

 Tomorrow: Our final morning aboard

Betsa Marsh is the president of the Society of American Travel Writers (SATW).

November 16, 2011

Day two in our perfect little harbor off Great Barrier Island, but suddenly the sun and warmth are gone. We bundle up for the short jaunt over to shore and the quirky homestead of Trish and Sven Stellin.

Sven Stellin and manuka

For more than 18 years, they’ve been making Barrier Gold balms and oils from the manuka and kanuka plants, better known in the States as tea trees. The plants, once reviled as weeds, now are the source of healing elixirs and bold-flavored honey.

Sven walks us through his distillation process, from harvest to the final drop coming from his Rube Goldberg still. He uses all the waste oil on Great Barrier Island to fuel his fires, and the Island Passage even drops off her waste fuel oil to help with the effort.

This is one of the few shopping opportunities on this Hauraki Gulf journey, and we all make the most of it. There shouldn’t be an ache or pain in the U.S., Australia or New Zealand after we all tote Barrier Gold home.

Capt. Maurice and snapper

The al fresco lunch on the aft deck is the last of our angler’s snapper, this time in the form of fish and chips. Chef Mabee dips the filets in Corona beer and flour and fries them up. The spinach salad gets its sweetness from manuka honey.

With the fish gone, it’s time to send Katherine Madill and Shane Silver back to the sea with their rods, under guide Poppa Hughes’ tutelage, and sure enough, they reel in our starter. It’s trevally sashimi topped by razored grapes and a mist of gingered sesame oil. “Four hours from sea to plate,” Shane marvels, and he’s absolutely right — it is a marvel.

Tomorrow: We visit the fantasy world of Sir George Grey

Betsa Marsh is the president of the Society of American Travel Writers (SATW)

November 15, 2011

The sun and warmth of a real spring day help carry us over to Port Fitzroy on Great Barrier Island, heart of an inspiring conservation tale. I’ve been to Kapiti Island off Wellington, which is a predator-free haven for New Zealand’s endangered native birds. This bit of land jutting into the Hauraki Gulf is now the Kotuku Peninsula Sanctuary, which is also trying to give native birds one last chance.

Dr. Emma Cronin at Glendern Sanctuary

The late Tony Bouzaid was the visionary who first bought an old farmstead here in 1994, restoring the 1901 farmhouse and then tackling a much bigger restoration project: reclaiming the native bush for the birds, and replanting tens of thousands of tree species.

Dr. Emma Cronin and her darling daughter Pippa greet us at Fitzroy House, to explain the ongoing work. Her husband Scott Sambell takes us up the hillside in a unimog, an old military transport, to get us into the bush to see the re-emerging shrubs and trees.

We listen for kaka and tui birds, and look for the little chevron skink, a brown lizard so rare he’s almost a myth. But the species is real, and eliminating the cats, ship rats and pigs from Great Barrier is the only way to give the skink a chance.

Dr. Cronin and her team use everything they have: poison, traps and a clever anti-predator fence that runs more than a mile and a half through the preserve.

Bouillabaise for lunch

Then it’s a quick run back to Island Passage and lunch on deck: Maori crayfish bouillabaisse packed with fresh snapper and prawns. The French baguettes are a bit burnt, but we tear into them anyway and toss the crusty bits, with permission, to the seagulls and the fish.

The afternoon is open for close-in fishing, deep-sea fishing, kayaking or vegging. It’s my chance, under glorious sunshine, to explore all 140 feet of this ship, from the open pilot house to the oversize saloon to the aft deck.

Topside, I watch a maneuver I haven’t seen at sea before: The crew lifts a steel-hulled tender up with a crane and lowers it over the side. Half-way down to the water, they load it with fishing rods and gear, then settle it on the Gulf.

Island Passage carries five tenders, including one for rescue. We use them to zoom to all our shore excursions. This afternoon, anyone left onboard the ship can hop aboard one of the little boats with Capt. Vincent Maurice for a spin around our little patch of paradise.

That’s one of the most indulgent parts of the Island Passage experience: It’s planned around our interests. Anglers have a boat and crew at their command. Kayakers can slip into the waves whenever there’s free time. Nappers can duck off back to their cabins for siesta, and readers can take a book up on deck for an uninterrupted stretch. The crew will bring you a nice beverage and then give you time and space to relax.

By dinnertime, we’re feeling grateful to the fishers among us, who brought home some serious snapper for Chef Mabee to work his magic with. It’s the centerpiece of an aft-deck barbecue whose platters overflow with salads, grilled asparagus, sausages, lamb and those wonderful green-lipped mussels. We dine with the crew, and I learn that host Sethson Pelten has a 2-week-old daughter back home on Vanuatu that he’s yet to see.

Tomorrow: Finally, a shopping stop..for Barrier Gold balms and oils

Betsa Marsh is the president of the Society of American Travel Writers (SATW).

November 14, 2011

We tender over to Waiheke Island this morning, forced by southwesterly winds to land on shore rather than the harbor. At sandy Oneroa Bay, we time the waves to make a beach landing, hopping off in rhythm with the surf.

Dale Weingott at Kennedy Point Winery

It’s a morning of wine tastings at three of Waiheke’s best vineyards. This once sleepy island was a hippie haven until vintners discovered its climate was a match for Bordeaux’s, and the first vines were planted in the late 1970s. Since then, Waiheke has become a commuter island for Auckland and real estate prices have shot up, our Ananda tour guide tells us, 500 percent in the past five to 10 years.

At Kennedy Point winery, we sip syrah and nibble New Zealand cheese and bread, dipped in olive and avocado oils from the estate. The winemaking is such a traditional French-style process that the staff picks the grapes by hand and, as bar manager Dale Weingott says, “we clean our feet and destem them just like Lucille Ball.”

Chef Mabee plating snapper

Te Whau (pronounced Tea Foe) serves up killer ocean views with its Bordeaux-style blends, and Obsidian pours a nice light Weeping Sands pinot gris to send us back to our tender and a beachy exit.

This afternoon, we’re facing into the wind up to Great Barrier Island, “Guardian of the Gulf,” and our displacement catamaran gets rocking and rolling for a few hours — what Capt. Vince calls “a bit lumpy.” We pull into a calm nook off Great Barrier, which blocks the heavy Pacific swells, and finally anchor about 7:30. The Island Passage settles gently in for the evening.

Saloon on the Island Passage

November 13, 2011

After a week in Wellington, New Zealand, it’s time to hop the hour flight back to Auckland and link up with the Island Passage. I find the low-slung catamaran at her little berth along Princes Wharf, just a few blocks from the Victorian Ferry Building that is the icon of Auckland Harbour.

Auckland Harbour is beautifully designed for aimless ambling, with a wide, tiled sidewalk that marks the Maritime Trail. I learn bits of Maori and European history along the way, while ogling some of the world’s most beautiful yachts.

To get into the seafaring mood, it’s fish and chips at an outdoor waterfront grill. By 4 p.m., I’m ready to board the Island Passage and head into the Hauraki Gulf, the glorious playground for Aucklanders. The entire expanse, 4,200 square miles studded with more than 40-plus islands, is the Hauraki Gulf Maritime Park.

This small ship has only 10 cabins, so I’m expecting the maximum of 20 passengers for this first five-night cruise of the spring/summer season. But there are only eight of us, and with eight crew plus Captain Vincent, it’s an incredibly pampering guest-to-crew ratio.

Chef Vaughan G. Mabee lives up to his reputation as part of the culinary team that took Noma in Copenhagen to No. 1 in S.Pellegrino’s Top 50 restaurants for 2010.

The starter is a deep-water hapuka with fresh asparagus and New Zealand’s famous green-lipped mussels. Mains are New Zealand Angus beef or snapper, with mustard potato, just-picked watercress and a surprising plum juice sauce. Each course has a recommended Kiwi wine for accompaniment and passengers each pay a $30 fee for all the wines for that meal. CEO/owner Peter Bissett sits at the head of our table, proudly serving only New Zealand wines.

Chef Mabee pops up from the galley to announce each course. For dessert, it’s burnt butterscotch budino, “sort of an Italian crème brulee,” he says. “I worked in Florence and we had a 90-year-old pastry chef. For six months, I asked ‘Can I have this recipe?’ and all she ever said to me was ‘No!’ Finally, she gave it to me.” The rich pudding, spiked with Wild Turkey bourbon from Kentucky, seems all the sweeter for the chef’s persistence.

Tomorrow: Wine tastings at three of Waiheke’s best vineyards

Betsa Marsh is the president of the Society of American Travel Writers.

Betsa Marsh, a Lowell Thomas Travel Journalism Award winner, is a writer and photographer who’s reported from every continent. She’s cruised from Antarctica to the Arctic Circle, from Istanbul to Tahiti. Her heart is with small, historic ships of legend, but she revels in the well-brewed cup of tea and aromatherapy massage of a grand luxury ship, too. Betsa writes for print and online media across North America, as well as her own Globespinners.com website. She lives in Cincinnati, Ohio, and is president of the Society of American Travel Writers.