Mercury Island, also known as The Mercs has been on our destination wish list for over a year!  There are 7 islands that make up the Mercury island group including: Great Mercury, Red Mercury, Korapuki, Green, Atiu/Middle, Kawhitu/Stanley and Moturehu/Double Islands).  

Great Mercury Island, which is where we explored, is the only inhabited island.  The rest of the Mercs are managed by DOC (Department of Conservation) and are preserves.

We see some of the other islands as we sail around Great Mercury.

Coralie Bay

Our first anchorage is on the east side of Great Barrier and it is called Coralie Bay.  We decided to go to this bay because we had really light winds and typically this is not very protected.  This is a pretty large bay with lots of places for anchoring.

We happened to visit Mercury Island during a 4-day weekend so there were lots of local boats out at all of the anchorages.  At dusk we counted 23 boats which is a lot to us, but evidently not very many to others.

We met our friends Mirko and Daniela from Yum Yum and Leigh and Linda from Moon Shadow.  The next morning, Leigh picked us up and we did a quick hike up to the top of one of the many beautiful mountain tops.  

Peachgrove Bay

We decide to continue our exploring while the weather is calm so we head to Peachgrove Bay.  This is another bay that is typically exposed to the weather, but our calm conditions it is perfect.

There is a lovely walk to a set of waterfalls here in Peachgrove Bay.

Sunsets are stunning.

And Sugar Shack is so happy in this beautiful water.

Bumper Bay

This is truly a beautiful bay!  The water colors are stunning, the beach is long and there is only one other boat here, our friends, Yum Yum (Daniela and Mirko).

The winds were predicted to shift so we had leave Mercury Island.  We motored across to Coral Mandel, Matarangi Bay to do some provisioning.  It was not a pleasant anchorage and the dinghy landing was even worse.  We got drenched by waves and almost flipped the dinghy.  Gesh!

Afterwards we had a lovely sail, with lots of tacks, to get to Little Bay where we stayed for the night.  We arrived at 1800 and left in the morning so not much to say other than it was pretty.

Our blogs run 10-12 weeks behind actual live events.  This blog occurred during the first of February.  Hope you didn’t miss the absolutely gorgeous Rakitu Island in our last blog?