Our handy go to place for a weekend without huge cost is Kaiaua and its fantastic right next to both the Kaiaua Hotel and the Fish and Chip shop.

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We left Auckland late on the Saturday morning on the way to our son, Alex’s new house in Mangere Bridge and it’s looking great. It’s really nice to see him in his own house and he is really chuffed with it.

After an hour or so, we thought we’d better hit the trail towards Kaiaua to avoid the worst of the motorway Kings Birthday traffic and cut across to Manukau and went out the back way through Clevedon.  We celebrated with a coffee stop in a Clevedon Cafe!

An hour or so later we were rolling into the Kaiaua NZMCA park and there was plenty of room left. It’s a seriously nice part of the world here with the water just outside the gate and plenty of places to walk and a trail which runs from here all the way to Matamata via Thames if you’re really keen 🙂

We started off by visiting the pub and having a G&T out in the Garden Bar.

It was a fairly drab old day with the clouds hanging over us and the odd peep of sunshine coming through but not enough to seriously do any meaningful charging, so I was expecting to see it how the two new Lithium Phosphate, 150AH batteries went. They do have a Bluetooth arrangement where they connect to an app on the phone and show you what’s happening.

At 4:30pm, the Sail GP was on, so the TV was on through the Mi Box which we’ve recently installed. (better quality picture than the dome) This would bring a bit of a drain but with the sun popping in and out on the panels, we really didn’t use much.

By the time the Racing was over it was dark, and we headed over to the Fish and Chip shop for Fish and Chips. Really nice Fish too.

Back with Rafe, we watched a Netflix movie through the Mi Box again and at the end of the night when I switched everything off, we’d only used 20 Amp hours. Unbelievable. Somehow on the AGM’s we would have used heaps more than this and the voltage would have dropped too. The Batteries were showing 13 volts at the end of the night!!

My birthday was only a few days before this so lunch was a plate of Mussels with a G&T each at the Pub!

After lunch, we walked down to the pink dairy and checked out all the Motorhomes parked in the free parking by the beach. Fiona wandered over and bought Ice creams, so we sat there and soaked in the ambience 🙂 A lovely spot.

We went back to Rafe to watch the Sail GP second day and then it was back to the Pub for a birthday dinner, and it was stunning. I had a Rack of Lamb which was melt in your mouth…!!

That night we didn’t really use a lot of power, early to bed so only the Router, the TV until about 9pm, the odd flash of the water pump during loo flushes and making cups of tea and a few LED lights but we did get a few peeps of sunshine during the day … about 8 Amp hours.

The next morning, I checked on the batteries and we were 20 AH down for both days!! Amazing.

For all the people I discussed this with beforehand who all said, “It will change your life” and take the stress out of not being plugged in and the ability to use power without thinking about it. They’re all right. It’s amazing and I wish I’d done it earlier.

By the time we got back to Devonport we were fully charged off the alternator, so the system works!  A great weekend too.