(*another reason why Kiwis hate the French, on top of the 2007 Rugby World Cup)
The Jar - our house on floats - braved the journey into open waters with six passengers on the way out, nine on the return.
Pete shows Pamela and Tatiana the way
It was a 3.5hr journey each way at about 4.2 knots. Not very swift (to compare, we picked up some hardcore hitch-hikers later on who'd come out from Paihia on their home-made plywood boat in about half an hour).
Overtaken by everyone else en route, even Tucker
Pausing for a game on Buzz (my new canoe) - this is Pamela who I work with at Creative Edge
By official scuttling time, 14:00 hrs, there were hundreds of boats in Deep Water Cove - Pete said that in his ten years in the Bay he'd never seen so many boats in one place. Everyone was out, from the smallest yachts and 'tinnies' to super yachts, the commercial motor boats, a car ferry and of course R Tucker Thomson (a real authentic replica who fired the cannon to denote the beginning-of-the-end for the sinking frigate).
Watching the ad hoc fleet grow
There were no other houseboats though, and as we manoeuvred awkwardly through the fleet, we had a mixture of envious stares and mocking smiles at our 'living room' on the fore deck.
The helm
The Canterbury was supposed to have been sunk about three weeks ago. Bad weather meant that it was too risky for the tug to pull the giant hunk of steel past Tarpeka Point - a notorious washing machine - so the sinking was stalled. They eventually positioned the Canterbury in Deep Water Cove three days prior to the scuttling.
The day before she was due to be blown up, she was already taking on too much water (obviously, they'd punched in most of the holes before she left port to make sure she'd go without too much performance) and the commercial boats had been asked not to create too much wake when they took punters past, just in case she disappeared before the big day. She lasted the course, and finally after an extended fairwell from the iwi and the tv cameras, they put her to rest at about 15:30. Needless to say, the on-deck explosives were all for effect (and obliterated almost everyone's view as over half the 'fleet' were downwind of the frigate).
The sinking itself was supposed to take about 10 minutes.
HMS Canterbury exploded, tilted to starboard and slipped underwater with barely a ripple in under two minutes.
