HUNTED BY A SEAL

I spend my time these days between my home in Coromandel and work in Auckland. It’s a lovely balance and while I am in Auckland, I live on an old kauri motor sailor in Westhaven Marina for 2 or 3 days a week. I do look forward to getting home to Coromandel on a Thursday night but also enjoy my weekly time on the boat.

It may be surprising to some that Westhaven is the largest marina in the Southern Hemisphere and is home to over 2,000 boats. During the day it can be a hive of activity but very few people stay in the Marina and it gradually becomes a quiet and tranquil place in the evening and stays that way through the night and into the early morning. The soft rumble from the traffic on the nearby motorway gradually fades and the new lights on the Auckland Harbour bridge make a stunning backdrop.

I have been living this lifestyle for just over 3 years now and one of the aspects that I really enjoy is that I can store my kayak on the boat and with little effort drop it into the water and head off for a paddle. Most Tuesday and Thursday mornings I set off in the early morning and meet up with my adventure racing friends and spend between 1 and 2 hours kayaking in the harbour followed by a hearty breakfast at the local marina café.

I am by no means the only one living in the Marina and a couple of years before I arrived another visitor had made Westhaven her home. Her name is Owha, and she is a female leopard seal and rather like me she comes and goes on a regular basis. She, however, had come from a little further than Coromandel, which is about 40km as the crow flies. She had swum up from Antarctica, a distance of some 5,300km. They can swim up to speeds of