The annual Whai Trip

 
I have been fortunate to have been fishing and diving from the good ship Whai for many many years, starting with its builder (creator) and first skipper Peter Spurdle, who wrote the book about this story called Into the Rising Sun. I then  travelled to Tonga and Fiji as crew with new owner Mick Ellwood in 1978.
We have regularly chartered this boat for many successful trips for many many years. In fact my children grew up with Uncle Mick.
The Whai now under skipper owner John Ellwood would be the most successful charter boat on the NZ coast. No other vessel comes near it and she calls the Mercury islands home. As the boats popularity has grown it has become harder to book a weekend or  week, you need to be on the waiting 'list'.
This was the catalyst to build Tusk to run my own trips. But with the Sandford family from Rotorua we have retained the annual booking right after New Year and every year 10 to 17 of us all close friends head to Whitianga for 4 days fishing and diving and never any dull moments.

The Whai is not the prettiest catamaran, but she sure is functional, efficient and rock solid seaworthy in the biggest of seas. And John Ellwood sure does know how to catch fish.

So from January 2nd until the 6th we parked Tusk in the cove on the Whai mooring and enjoyed 4 days with great company, wine food and fishing in the Mercury Islands. And we had a ball.
Our two families will be organising the same booking for next summer. Reason is if we give it up we will never ever get the dates back....in our life times and our kids still want to keep going on Whai trips and in a few years we will be taking their kids along to.

Father and son effort

John Ellwood, skipper and owner of the Whai and what a great skipper he is. One of the best.

Shaun with a beauty

Sam has done really well

Eamon caught the heaviest, 11 kg.

An evenings catch

This year the snapper were BIG, the scallops were fat and the crayfish scarce (hard work).
But despite this we all had a really good time. There were some personal bests in the snapper league,in fact I scored a 9 kg fish (released) but the biggest was 11 kg.

Fiona with a personal best snapper

The team for 2011, and that is Tusk tied alongside