Not what I was hoping for. 

Learnt some things though.

Firstly, the wind was NNW, around 345 degrees, which made it a starboard course close on 140 degrees off the wind. The wind was reasonably stable, I wasn't sure how gusty it would be, and overall it was pretty good. So that's a positive. Windfinder/windguru had it at 17, increasing to 22, with gusts to 28 = which seemed about right, Most of the time that was too deep for the amount of wind,

Secondly, its hard to find websites with consistent Tide Times and heights. Today it was a high Low tide. If I use the metservice site it was 1.4m, and that is too high. The shoreline never really cleared up, so the water never really flattened off. There are a lot of little sand banks that are exposed at the lower Low tides, which were just bubbling under the surface today. So I had to sail  30-40+ from way from the shoreline to be safe. On top of that, as far as I can estimate (from the google overlay) I was sailing about 80m closer to the coast than the other day. The nuts is, the tide height makes a massive difference. Today also had chop rolling down the course, which I couldn't quite figure out, given the wind direction. I might have to try sailing up to Puponga, where Farewell Spit may help keep the chop from forming. I tried tacking upwind 4.5km, in search of smoother water, which is about half way to Puponga from Pakawau, but the flats hadn't emptied water, even in the Low tide - so I don't think it would have worked today. In theory the wind should be cleaner up there, as there are no hills in the way, and it looks to be 3-5 knots stronger according to Windfinder/Windy. At Low tide its a 2km walk from Puponga, so sailing up will be the better option, I could knock off 5km of the upwind tack by launching closer, but the downside is it's still a km walk

Thirdly, there are a lot of stingray. Big fuckers too - about 1m, excluding the tail. The whole course was dotted with fly fisherman conveniently placed about 300m apart up the coast line. The big stingray kick up the water and disturb baby flounder - which the kingfish jump onto. 

Fourthly, The best runs were done just off the launch site, there was a consistent shoreline, and no fisherman, but the wind was gustier, and had to be lucky to get wind all the way through