Sir Come Center (Canterbury) Spencerville, South Island, New Zealand
By Slow n Steady on 13-Nov-07. Waypoint GC17399

Oh, you mean that one.......!!!! Thanks for the challenge and the great cache.

I was so relieved the maths all worked out Ya!! TFTC 3/6 #498

[This entry was edited by La Vista on Friday, May 15, 2009 at 3:37:18 AM.]

Google Earth to the rescue here. Cache within 5m of point mapped. TFTC

Found while at Spencer Park over Waitangi weekend.
Thank you. David.

After LOTS of thought and Internet research, we gave up calculating coordinates. Instead resorted to google maps and rulers to work out a rough location. Combined with local knowledge and gpsr maintaining our 2Km distance from dummy coordinates we found it!!! And surprisingly quickly! (about 20 mins). Thanks for the challenge.

Fun puzzle and a nice hiding spot.
The tracks were getting a bit too sandy for the pushchair on this one.
Thanks.

Some interesting geometry (or trigonometry?) to work out the coordinates, but an easy find. The fifth of a circuit of 6 caches in Bottle Lake Forest, with nzcoozer and a pushchair and the two little nzcoozers. Not easy going on some of those tracks. TFTC

Finally found it. Last bit for the mega.Calculation methods did not work too well for me so like some previous searchers have closely examined lots of the surrounding country. Staggering number of "ampitheatres" in this area. TFTH TNLN.

Used autocad drafting software on this cache and the GPSr was bang on the spot pointing 1m in the direction of cache when standing 1m from it. Used this spot for our afternoon tea break.

+ tb

nice puzzle many thanks
+Honda keyring; -4x blue marbles

MTB'd into this one, and a few others in the area. Well, not really a MTB, just a $20 bike from "Trash Palace" at my local tip and $20 worth of MTB tyres from TradeMe. But, looks the part and the wheels on the bike go round and round, works for me. 10spd bit hard on the hills though.
Co-ords spot on and an easy find.

Walked to this one on a warm Sunday afternoon. Lots of puddles around. Took puzzle piece, only a couple more to find now. TFTC.

Wasn't intending to come this far on my bike today but after 2 finds encouraged to try one more even though I had to walk some of the way through sand. Found cache in the obvious place. - TB + paperclips Took my 5th puzzle piece.

5/12 Did the maths before leaving home and was pleased to find it right there. Now to get back to camp before things get messy. Great day, loving this series - only nervous thing is that the spot I thought (via Google Earth) most likely for "Look Out" turned out to be a pond. Hopefully I'll find it tomorrow.

11/12 in mega. Dropped off Bothell TB. THTC. An unusual tree to find amongst all those pines.

#119, #3/12 for Bottle Lake MEGA. Another quick find.

Finally! After a mis-calculation and a mis-plot I finally got it right. Thanks for the puzzle

Ah well, add us to the list of better luck next time. Had quite a session on google earth beforehand, but perhaps we need to scale down - anywhere within 100 meters would have done.... a really nice walk we will happily repeat. Mind you doing a different one would make us feel better as then we wont have missed it when looking. Thanks for the experience. Onto number 3 elsewhere.

A nice easy puzzle when you know how I left the finding up to GSV Cheers Gav [1711]

We split the duties solving the puzzles and charged out on the bikes to get these. Rediguana navigated us to this spot ("It'll be around here somewhere...") and a short hunt turned up the cache. I'm learning all the methods used on the Great Adelaide Cache Raid! TFTC.
Cheers,
G.

[I couldn't believe I had found it. So thats what a ] conifer [looks like !!]

1st Jan 2008
Got this in the end after the second visit. Used wrong calc on the first attempt and forgot to check before heading out. Will remember next time.
+tb

Phew. With two GPS units going at once, we nearly lost each other. Finally managed to coordinate Long-John and Linleye and find the cache, but it took a while. We looked at a lot of pretty conifers. Many Thanks. TNLN SL Long-John.

Did this at home and got an approximate point, then having waded through a bit of sand with the bikes, forgot my coords were only approximate. Then remembered and spent time wandering around until we ended up just 60m from my estimate. Knew the more mathematically inclined geocachers would love this one. Long_John provided much needed moral and suger boost. Very much a 'Yippee' factor when found...there are a lot of pretty conifers in that 60m.

[This entry was edited by linleye on Wednesday, December 26, 2007 at 11:30:41 PM.]

Long slog as the adults were slow to calculate. Kept busy making sticks into swords, rolling down sand dunes and checking out huts. Sand and bikes are not a good idea! TFTC.Picked up a cute Koala TB.

My workings for this worked out perfectly - The cache was exactly at my GZ. TFTC.

+ Two TBs - seems one has been grabbed from me before I could log it into this cache.

Worked out the rough area of this cache with google earth and the hint helped us in the direction to the cache.

Sorted with Google Earth, rulers and super zoom. Thanks.

B had the fun job of solving this one. It turns out he passed as our co-ords were spot on. Getting there was another adventure in itself as bikes aren't too good at getting through sand. TFTC

I enjoyed the puzzle maths. The solution is easy enough, but there were obviously two modes in which to solve it - and one of them is wrong. You need the fourth point to prove which way is the right one - nice one. No.8 of the 12. No swaps, thanks and cheers from Grandalf(976)

The problem had me scratching a few remaining hairs away before I remembered how to solve the puzzle - tofska in Auckland had set a similar cache some years back. Quick find this morning whilst MTBing. TNLN T4TC and a good excuse to get out in the fresh air. Cheers.

I worked this one out yesterday and went a looking for it today with good results..cheers

I worked out the coords using my Map Toaster software. They turned out to be about 20m out and it was a surprisingly easy find.
TFTC!

Day 2 Cache 8. Tried working this one out by maths but came up with 4 different answers! Probably due to lat/long not being a uniform grid even at these scales [Update: I've been back to the spreadsheet and converted the four vertices lat/long to NZMG coordinates before re-doing the math and the points come out spot on]. We got some outside assistance! A quick phone call to Slow n Steady had us back on track. The original amphitheater we found 200m south was more like the Grand Canyon compared final resting place of the cache. We also disturbed a couple of muggles resting in the dunes, if only they had known, they should have picked a different spot!


[This entry was edited by SchneakySchneaky on Sunday, November 18, 2007 at 7:30:22 PM.]

1767. This one proved to be quite an epic. The coords that we had sorted out at home took us some distance away. We had discarded our bikes and walked into some interesting areas, sometimes wondering if we would actually find our way out again! In the end we decided to resort to letting the GPS help us!! So we entered the necessary coords and walked our way until everything matched up and yes, of course - we need to be right where we had left our bikes in the first place. However even then it wasn't simple as what constitutes an ampitheatre and what makes the hiding place cerggl is up for discussion!! But we were happy that our perseverance paid off and we were able to find the cache at 11.15am.

Thanks
Iris & Rodney

Well, got the rough location and then spent about 20 mins of hunting around. 2 sets of footprints preceded me which made it a bit more of a jumble, however a grid search paid off in the end. An interesting exercise in maths this one! Thanks.

FTF - pity the GPS doesn't have sub-10m resolution. Definitely had to use the clues, and even then, there are several matches - for a while I was thinking that blue tape tied on meant [cerggl]! TNLN, Thanks.

Who needs a GPS when you have Google Earth - must admit thanks to kiwilegend who does not step lightly!!

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