I finished my last project 2 weeks ago and there have been no new posts on the site since then – so rather than grizzle about the lack of action (again), I'll fill the void.
Some-one's got to do it – might as well be me.
So... no prizes for guessing where this next tug comes from.
Yes, it’s another NZ harbour tug, and this time it’s the little Tika from Auckland. 1/50, display.
Auckland is the biggest city in New Zealand. It has more than double the number of people than the next two cities put together – although it never seems to be able to find 15 decent players to put in its provincial rugby team. It also seems to have more than its fair share of tossers, and politicians.
It even has double the normal amount of harbours per city. It is built on a narrow ithsmus and has a harbour on each side. Greedy bastards!
The Waitemata Harbour on the east coast/Pacific/Hauraki Gulf side is the biggest and busiest port in the country, and is served by 5 or 6 tug companies. The Port of Auckland’s (POA) tugs are state of the art ASD docking tugs. I’m reluctant to admit it but their harbour is even more beautiful than my home town, and I’ve caught many good sized schnapper on it.
The Manakau Harbour on the west coast/Tasman Sea side is the 8th largest natural harbour in the world (the 7th, Kaipara Harbour, 947km2, is just up the coast). The harbour mouth is only 1800m wide, but after a 9k channel it opens up into a roughly square basin 20k across, with a water surface area of 394km2, and a 4m tide.
Many sites on the internet wrongly tout Poole (UK, a miserable 36km2 – yes – 36!), Cork (Ireland, a Poole size puddle) and Sydney (just a creek at 55km2) as the largest harbours but actually San Fransisco, Tokyo and Rio are duking it out for top spot. Depends on the difference between a harbour and a bay: Protected on 3 or 4 sides? Poole, Cork and Sydney don’t even make the top 10 in surface area.
Despite its huge size the Manakau gets very little traffic due to its shallow depth and treachorous bar – the site of NZ’s worst maritime disaster – the loss of the Orpheus in 1863, when 189 seamen died. To reach Auckland via the safer east coast was an extra few day’s sailing from Australia so Manakau was quite busy until the Orpheus disaster. The only POA facilities on the Manakau now, are a few small wharves for servicing coastal trawlers, and the cement transporters that travel up the west coast from the cement works in Westport. The only tug on this huge harbour was the little TIKA, which was there to handle the cement ships.
