Category: Kayak Trips

The Cornwallis to Graham’s Beach / Awhitu Regional Park / Kauritutahi Island kayak trip is an intermediate level paddle around the upper end of the Manukau Harbour.

1. Cornwallis, Manukau Harbour

Cornwallis is one of the coastal towns around Waitakere ranges and it is pretty easy to access via road: If you are coming from the West, get off SH16 just after Henderson at Te Atatu South exit. If you coming from Auckland, get off at New Lynne exit and follow the sign posts for Waitakere Ranges. Once you get to Titirangi, instead of taking the Scenic drive towards Piha, take the Huia road and you will hit Cornwallis within a few mins.

We set off from Cornwallis in the morning sun:

We then followed the Cornwallis peninsular coastline towards the middle of the harbour and started crossing the narrow neck of water. Soon we could feel the difference in how the kayak handles the strong current pulling the kayak sideways and why so many people avoid paddling nearer to the entrance of the harbour.

The picture show the opening of the harbour and the peninsular stretching to the right. You can also make out the wild Tasman sea through the gap beyond the Manukau bar at a distance.

2. Graham Beach Manukau Harbour

The paddling got more pleasant when we crossed the open channel and reached the tip of Big Bay on the southern side of the harbour.

I stopped over on one of the deserted beaches around Big Bay when I spotted an unidentified animal running along the beach. It disappeared by the time I got out of the kayak:

The next beach along the coastline, Graham’s Beach was dotted with batches and holiday homes as well as the odd fishermen.

3. Kauritutahi Island, Manukau Harbour

On the way to our lunch stop I thought I will check out the little island. With the high tide I was able to circumnavigate the island – though I could not find a good spot to land.

I love to see what this island looks like in low tide. According to the chart, you should be able to walk to the island during low tide. If anyone done any paddling during low tide and got some pictures of the Harbour and Kauritutahi Island, please feel free to share via the comments section below. Also if you like the pics in here and this post, drop us a line below and say Hi!

Now back to the trip – Kauritutahi had a couple of trees and a huge random pine tree in the middle of it. The tree looked so out of place on the little island – almost like someone planted it a few years ago!

4. Awhitu Regional Park, , Manukau Harbour

I rejoined the others – and we landed at the sandy beach of the Awhitu Regional Park for lunch and shared some Christmas cookies (see the bucket hanging on the tree below):

We also cleaned up the beach and collected the rubbish (someone have left dozens of beer bottles), after being inspired by a man we met a few hours earlier at Cornwallis: The man had told us that he has been living out of his car for six years and spends his time taking photo’s of rubbish he finds in beaches & he clears them. He then sends the photos of the rubbish he found to John Key. Don’t know what John does with his pics – but I sure appreciate what the man does with the rubbish in our beaches.

5. Return journey to Cornwallis

On the way back we maintained a more inward route a bit further away from the harbour opening:

But still the head wind had picked up to around 20 and the current was getting stronger as we crossed and it was a pretty hard paddle to make it back. We made pretty good time considering the head wind – click on the map above to checkout the GPS data in MovesCount.

One of the cool things about this this paddle was that it was in the direct flight path of the flights from Sydney – we saw a continuous stream of passenger jets crossing the Manukau head from Tasman sea and dropping the under carriages over our head and landing at distance at the Auckland International Airport runway. During the peak time on Sunday afternoon, we saw typically 3-4 planes queuing to land one behind the other across the Manukau harbour. The flight-past’s kept us entertained:

We ended the paddle just after 3:00 PM. I got some really cool videos from the trip – will add it over the weekend – so please check this post again in a couple of days.

I did this trip with Auckland Yakity Yak Club. Special thanks to Cary the trip leader for timing the tides and current for a safe crossing. If you want to comment on this, please do so below. You do not need to register with this site to leave comments – you can login with your favourite social login instead (e.g. Facebook / Google + / Live / Yahoo etc…)