OC: Finding the first five (Onerahi) Whangarei, North Island, New Zealand
By Riser5 on 11-Nov-12. Waypoint GC415MJ

After many years I am archiving this series. I will collect the caches when I am able to.
It is time for a refresh and time to have some new Caches placed around Onerahi that will cause some fun chaos.
Thank you for those who have found this series.

It's been a while since I have been out so I took the opportunity for a quick road trip. It has been years since I solved these puzzles and I had an offer of help from a friend who is a previous finder to finally knock these btds off my list of no finds. Found with help on this one. Little yappy dog announced our presence and we the owner asked some questions about if we were planting something. TFTC.

Todays mission was to get a few of my solved puzzles at Onerahi. After waiting for the app to come back online we headed off. Started at Onerahi Onerahi yatch club and walked around to locate the puzzles that I have solved.

Solved these puzzles awhile ago. Got my maths brain working on this one. Once at GZ it took a bit of searching. Tried a few locations then read the notes so we knew we were looking in the right place. Finally had it in sight. Last signed 2017. Wow. That's been awhile since it was signed.

TFTC and puzzle

A bit of a tricky one to find in the pouring rain!

A DNF for me here as well.

We had high hopes for this one as we knew the trees had been cut down, but vegetation is very heavy at this time of February and we had no joy.

Checked

Not under lawn clippings. Near tree base still.
Large chunk of wood.

Adding to Maintain list

Possibly buried under lawn clippings, no sign of a tree past or present

I had solved half this series ages ago and being in Whangarei for a few days decided to collect them to up my puzzle stats. Got to the GZ and found the whole area recently mowed right up to the fenceline. Read the last log ..... and walked away.

Not again... cache still in place.
Exactly as i left it. Yea the trees have been chopped... But the base is still there along with the cache.

Logging as found with permission of CO.

Had actually solved this one ages ago during the long winter nights. Went to look for it a few months ago, but at that time it was obvious that GZ had had a GL haircut, and it was most likely that the cache was now MIA. Several subsequent logs from other cachers seem to confirm this.

However, with the planetary pursuit challenge on, and this being my very last OC cache to find, I talked to the CO at his CITO event today and rec'd permission to log as a found, prior to him replacing the cache at some stage soon.

Thx R5 for the whole series of interesting puzzles and cache placements. TFTC

Enjoyed the puzzle but cache is either no longer in place or is well buried as the tree has now been removed. Didn't replace as I am not too sure where this one should go with the altered landscape?

No luck for us today

Likely it’s still there but I didn’t want to keep excavating tree debris & garden rubbish with a muggle standing in her garden watching me .....

A bit of maths and all solved. Pity about the search for the cache. My gps took me to a tree which I searched and searched as had someone else. Decided to expand search and found lawn clippings and cut branches and lots of debris. Honed in and found cache. Thanks for the puzzle and placement Riser5

Good old maths equation..takes me back a day or two ...once into the rhythm ...it was a breeze to solve ....arrived at GZ and found the tree and stones that a previous logger had found and it not there ...the GPS said it was ...so up the bank and searched ....ah there it is ....under the grass clipping and freshly sawn tree limbs ....not sure why the co ords are out but can see why others have trouble finding it and I guess that if the dumping continues they may never find it lol thanks Riser for a great cache and puzzle

No luck here again. Found two rocks placed at base, but no cache. tried a few more options but gave up after 15 mins.

The Squirrel and my plans for the weekend was to log as many old caches as possible to go towards completing another challenge. This meant a lot of kilometres driving and a bit of forward planning and plus collect as many other caches as we could. The plan was to travel to KawaKawa Bay and stay at Hemi's uncles home.
Early start Saturday morning with our goal to get to KawaKawa. Google tells me its 266 Kilometres one way, but with caching who knows how many km's it will be.
Left Rotorua after work on Friday with a stop for dinner (Cambridge Roast House). Next stop Huntly for a coffee and a chat with fellow cachers, then on to KawaKawa Bay. No caches done on this leg.
Early start Saturday morning to achieve our goal.

2.50pm - Once we had read previous notes knew where to look. cache semi buried under garden litter. SLTFTC

With Gap (of Fap and Gap)... Day 2 of our flying visit to Northland. Today, we are hunting for two old caches; one each in Russell and Whangarei. We are also looking at anything else between these points, within short walking distance of the vehicle. it seems a lot brighter today, but rain is on the forecast, and the ground is waterlogged...

We had a lot of fun solving some of this series of puzzles. They had the right combination of challenge and skill... Finding some of the hides proved to be incredibly frustrating... Some could do with a visit and a note from the CO, just to confirm that they are still in play...

This hide has been made a little more challenging because of the garden rubbish dump that is so near to ground zone... TFTP and TFTC.

Out for a spot of caching to reduce the list of solved but unfound caches with my youngest daughter while GAR was visiting with his father. Solved this some time ago and quite remember if I found it difficult or not. At GZ we were majorly muggled with somone using this spot to dump his grass cliippings. He asked if 'us girls' (can't have taken a good look at me if he included me with my 16 yr old as a girl!) were ok and I blithely said we were just looking for something and he went off without another word. I guessed where the cache might be and sent my girl in for the find - I was inconveniently wearing a dress, she was not. She was ogling the wee smurf in the cache so I went to get something to swap it with and put in a horse and a glow in the dark butterfly. Thanks for the puzzle and hide Riser5 - this one was a bit of a memorable find in the end!

Couldn't get the GPS to settle and point to any particular tree. Having had so many DNFs now we were getting a bit discouraged so only made a cursory search before heading off. Thanks for the challenge.

I did a quick solve last night on four of the easier puzzles because we knew we would be coming by this way. I think this one has been muggled. I love a series of puzzles to get my teeth into, so I will be back.

Found along with PageHeart. First mystery cache. Glad she was there to help me work out the puzzle

WOOOO HOOOO so this cache is my 100th find! AND my first puzzle cache! AND my first Onerahi Chaos cache!
Not going to lie- a very exciting time! Puzzle wasn't too hard to figure out... good to know math in high school was good for something Thank you Riser5! Seemed only fitting that my 100th find me one of yours- especially since my 1st find was yours as well.
Found with BulletRNZFS

A neigbouring yappy dog told everybody I was here today. A pretty stretch of road. Cache was an easy find. Enjoyed solving this puzzle - my 4th of the OC series to be solved. TFTC

On a mission this weekend with Cats&Dragons, with a the main goals of reaching Cape Reinga to find the Virtual caches up there and the 35 and 36 degree South challenges, plus with anything else in between. We had a great time touring around Northland, and it is a pretty spectacular place. Being from Southern Northland, it has reminded me that I need to visit this place more.

The initial plan was to head up the west coast and on to Ninety Mile Beach (which was a huge highlight of the trip) and then down the east coast, but the plan was flexible depending on progress. We mostly achieved our ambitious plan, but due to time restraints had to cut back a bit from the planned list. If we had another day I think we would of achieved most of what we had planned.

Some of the figures for the trip were, 1600km's travelled in a 48 hour period, 37 hours of caching, 4 hours of sleep, and 7 hours driving up from Hamilton and back, with a total of 176 caches found!!

Thanks to all the CO's for placing these caches and showing us around Northland.

I had a lot of fun solving this series, there were some well constructed puzzles. Struggled with most of the hides, as I usually struggle with these types of hides mostly. I think we got all but 5, but with the little sleep we had our patience to slowly work through the though hides only last so long. Thanks for the great puzzles.

This weekends little adventure was in the company of HKCB (as we'd both been given leave passes by our respective partners) so off we set.
The primary goals this weekend were to collect as many of the earthcaches as time would allow, the two virtuals, and complete both the requirements for the S35 & S36 challenges. Mind you this did not stop us working to collect anything else that we could find as time allowed.
It was a great trip with the weather playing its part so that we saw a great variety of countryside between caches and far too little sleep.

The result was 1600kms (over 48 hours), 189 caches (35 hours caching) & 4 hours sleep, not bad for a couple of beginners. Thanks to all the CO's and those that maintain the caches for us to collect on our too brief tour of the north.

Finally its Sunday and time to start to head back south for home, however before that happens we have a whole lot more caching to get through. This this series was the goal for the day before heading home, with a great variety of puzzles and hides it was slowly work our way around the point, through the chaos and then head south for home. Thank you for all the work that went into creating this series and giving us a tour of your part of Whangarei

Thanks for the placement

No luck for us today

Last summer the idea was born to visit [Green]'New Zealand'[/Green], together with [url=http://coord.info/PR3NXJG][red]'MimiNemo'[/red][/url]
After some important decisions regarding the beginning of our trip, the flights, the general route and the car were made, the most important question was still unanswered: which caches can we visit during our tour [?]
To get an answer for this topic I was fetching almost every cache from both islands [8)][:X]
[url=http://coord.info/PR3NXJG][red]'MimiNemo'[/red][/url] and I love [Teal]'Geo-Arts'[/Teal]...so we added all these cache series to our wish list
After this decision was made this list was more than 300 puzzle caches long...unsolved puzzle caches
Two weeks before Christmas it was getting time to start solving all these mystery caches
Even with the different language I could find almost every solution
In the case I was not so successful I was contacting some of the CO's...and was always getting help from them...many thanks for this support [:X]

During the following weeks our cache list was growing and growing...meanwhile more than 1000 caches long...too long for a simple bookmark list from GC
Time to get our route and caches in sync...time to save the PQ's to our Garmins...time to start this holiday:

Chapter 26: [green]Whangarei[/green] to [red]Taipa[/red] to
Today we were looking for the next geocaching art: [blue]OC[/blue]

Solving all these riddles was not so easy
Some of the puzzles were really hard to solve [8)]
Therefore I thought the hiding places were not so difficult...far wrong
Something I was thinking we were searching the needle in the haystack [B)]

At the end we had four DNF's and we needed almost 5 hours for the complete series

I would like to thank 'Riser5' for showing us all this places, the riddles and for maintaining all these caches,
Dev46

Together with [url=http://coord.info/PR3BC8B][red]'Dev46'[/navy][/url][/red] I was on a 'sightseeing-tour' through lovely [Green]'New Zealand'[/Green]
During our great time we could see a lot of beautiful places and we also could find 'some' caches in the area...this was one them [:X]

Many thanks to all CO's for all these nice caches
MimiNemo

Day 2 of our Waitangi weekend road trip to collect a few puzzle series of caches that we have solved over the last month or so - plus any other caches that we can find on the way!

This was our thirteenth find of the OC series and took a lot of scrambling, cuts and bruises to achieve the find.

A quick puzzle in the series.

#3726

This entry was edited by KiwifruitsNZ on Sunday, 08 February 2015 at 03:48:50 UTC.

#459 Another DNF avenged. Neighbourhood dog still an issue as muggles were falling from the sky but the cache was quickly found. TFT(Christmas Tree)C.

Easy when it's handed to you.
TFTC

Still there

Checked on cache. Still in place. Just go over the mound of vegetation.

Drat!! A 2nd OC DNF today. Certainly is a yappy dog across the road as per last log. Maybe we were looking in the wrong place. Will keep a watch on this.

need to check

Great another OC puzzle solved. 45th to solve it. Liked this one. Thanks for your efforts making these puzzles Riser5.

DNF'ing the first five. I was pretty close to finding this one but a neighbourhood dog did not like my presence and I decided to stop looking and leave it for another day.

Nope no luck finding this one either. I had conflicting hints between the geochecker and the cache page and didnt thin of checking the notes/logs on the cache page. Searching in the wrong place meant this one wasnt found.

Another good one in the series. SL TFTC

Well 3rd time lucky, definitely made a mountain out of this one LOL but today we found it.....slowly very slowly finding the OC series. Have them all solved too. Cache nice and dry. TFTC

The OC chaos series. Definitely on the radar for my trip north. Took a few weeks of lunchtimes to get all the puzzles sorted. Took the best part of the day scrambling around to find the caches. Got them all in the end though. Excellent series. Thanks.

[green] Day 2 of the three day GeoTour North with ToursDirect, the prelude to the MEGA in Auckland. Fantastic tour, recommend it to anyone (too late!). I surprised only 4 people chose to come along. Log signed as GeoTour North, which includes me, Edvern, PageNZ, KittyKatch and GrimRaider.
I managed to solve some of these puzzles, Edvern solved some, PageNZ ... between us we had them all, so let's go!!
Yeah, I can do simultaneous equations. Math is my thing.

Another happy find of the Geo North team. Thanks Riser5 for the puzzle and the hide.

#6228. I think we had a bit of trouble getting to GZ, but once there the cache was not too hard to find. TFTC.

Back on the OC trail after a brief interlude to find two trads. No problems with the solve and can't read my scrawled notes so not sure if we had any problems with the find! TFTC.

Checked up on this one. All good.

It seems that there has been some tree chopping so some branch hopping is required now.

A quick, easy to solve puzzle for my first in the Onerahi Chaos series.

Locating the cache took longer to solve than the puzzle as we approached from the wrong side and were looking for a micro. However after moving around and up the cache was in hand; it is probably better classified as small rather than micro. TFTC

Found this afternoon and retrieved TB. TFTC !

stood exactly here back when the puzzle was first solved, but perphaps it was missing at the time...
Today it was a quick easy find using the hint on the cache page; the hint in the geochecker conflicts & needs updating. +TB

After a month of slowly puzzling over this OC series, I thought it was time to get some smilie faces on my map. I have a few more to solve over the coming weeks. Thanks for the series.

Found orginally as part of phasevisitor team, now created own account, re-logging as yorkshirekiwi83.

We are in my old home town of Whangarei, visiting family for Easter, and decided to go out for a wet afternoon of caching. After grabbing a few caches throughout the afternoon, we arrived in Onerahi later in the day to pick up a few more caches and some of the OC series.

After some quick maths work, the puzzle was soon solved. Looked for the cache on the wrong side at first, but soon found it after moving around to the other side. Thanks for the cache!

We are in my old home town of Whangarei, visiting family for Easter, and decided to go out for a wet afternoon of caching. After grabbing a few caches throughout the afternoon, we arrived in Onerahi later in the day to pick up a few more caches and some of the OC series.

After some quick maths work, the puzzle was soon solved. Looked for the cache on the wrong side at first, but soon found it after moving around to the other side. Thanks for the cache!

11222... An enjoyable logic puzzle... Found the first five OC's a wee while ago now, TFTC.

There on placement

An interesting puzzle, and I was well past finding the first five when I arrived here. Thankfully a quick find.

TFTC

Great puzzle and now encourages me to solve more of the OC series soon. Thanks

A nice straight forward solve, but a bit more complicated at GZ. Initially we followed the hint from Geochecker without success. After taking another look at the cache page we noticed the cache had been replaced and now the hint pointed to a different level. The cache was in hand soon after. Thanks for our eleventh find in the Onerahi Chaos series of puzzles.

No worries here, made a quick find. Probably easier with the 3 of us. Thanks.

Good find here as many eyes do help. Signed and yes another wee smilie for the series thanks.

Looked and looked and looked - no luck today Will be back here though as still lots more puzzles to solve and collect - I hope!!

No problems with the solve and with three of us looking the cache was soon located. Thanks for another unique puzzle and the cache.

After a good quick solve on this one unfortunately we just couldn't find it......not sure if our head high is as tall as the CO's ??? but we haven't found them all yet so will come and have another look with mr tikitour to gain a bit of height.

Woohoo - another green tick - they are nearly as addictive as smiley faces!!

wow weeeee another enjoyable puzzle solved, ready to pickup .

found after 3rd attempt with butters TFTC

Found third time lucky.TFTC.

Sorry i hadn't realised that I'd missed logging this very important FTF!

We'd just come back into town from caching out at the whangarei heads, when I saw that the cache had been replaced for one of the few puzzles I'd solved at the time. As I was the driver, i navigated the car to GZ, then left hubby and the kids inside with the air con on while I got "just one more"! (How many times have we said that?). No problems finding the cache. TFTP and C

Replaced tonight. Hidden at the base.

I will get this sorted, I think the weather may have gotten it. Will be replaced, all going well, tomorrow morning.

Published

Woohoo - another quick solve, looking forward to collecting this when we are through!

Looked and looked but couldn't find,but caching in the dark does that, will try again in daylight.