Our FIRST Holiday on MAUI

I’ll never forget BOXING day, 2010. I woke up, got dressed, then mum; dad, Jessie, Kate and I were off. When we finally arrived at Matauwhi Bay, Russell, I was already fed up with my sisters, Jessie (9) and Kate (6). But once we were out on our new launch, Maui I was too excited to care. Once we were set up aboard her, we set out for a fish off Roberton Island. Little did we know that that was where our trouble would begin?

 We got to our secret fishing spot, and decided to go for a drift fish. There was not too much wind and the ground was quite rocky (plus the anchor winch was still a bit faulty). Dad turned off the motor, then we baited up and dropped our lines down. We had a successful fish with 5 snapper and a couple of kawhai.

 Once the bites had stopped, dad tried to start the motor. BUT GUESS WHAT!!! It wouldn’t start. Dad was starting to freak out, because the wind had picked up and we were starting to drift towards the rocks. But he could not put the anchor down because the anchor is powered by the winch, which is powered by the motor!! So with ropes and chains flying, dad and mum got out the spare anchor which was under the seat. Dad desperately chucked it over the stern. Phew! At least we weren’t drifting towards the rocks anymore. Then hoping for good luck dad turned the key and by some miracle the motor started. But instead of going into Roberton for a swim, he turned the boat right around and headed back in the direction of the mooring. Mum fried up the fish and we had fish, tomato sauce, bread and butter for lunch.

 Once we were all full, Dad called up a guy about getting a new starter motor (dad thought it was broken). So once it was sorted, we all had to drive back to Kawakawa to pick it up from the petrol station. Thank goodness it was couriered up from Dargaville. We drove back to the boat once again and dad put it in place, turned the key and it worked. By this time it was 6:00pm, too late to head back out. So we had some dinner and settled down for our first night on Maui. Not exactly the way we imagined.

The next morning I woke up in Indaco bay. “Wow” I exclaimed, dad must of got up early. I quickly got changed. Then Jessie, Kate and I ran up to the top of the boat and waved out to the Alison’s on their boat, Amity. Carli and her dad saw us, then motored over on their dingy. We then decided to go for a swim. So we got changed into our togs and jumped off the top of our boat. Almost as soon as we got out, we all asked the same question “can we go biscuiting”? And guess what! The answer was YES! So we jumped in the dingy and went biscuiting. We had a blast. I stood up, then fell off strait away. We got back to he boat dripping and happy. But now it was time to collect some seafood!! YUM!

We went fishing first. We caught three snapper and four kawhai. Next it was onto scalloping. Mums the diver in our family and she got 19 scallops. I got one pathetic under size one. Then we got about 50 mussels off the rocks out of Indaco bay. We went back into the bay and anchored up. Man, lunch was yum that day!

So, our holiday on Maui turned out to be a screaming success! We had motor trouble (a bit on the down side), we got seafood and we went swimming and biscuiting. Summer 2010 could not have been better. But January 2011 was just! By SARA