Roberton Island Hop

A ferry carries swimmers across the sea toward Roberton Island, the staging ground for a direct passage back over the open channel. This crossing is the Roberton Island Hop, an open water swimming event staged in the waters of the Bay of Islands off the coast of Russell in Northland, New Zealand. Swimmers gather here in the height of the southern hemisphere summer in January to test themselves. The marquee course spans 4.4 kilometres, setting off from Roberton Island and charting a straight open-water line back to the sheltered arc of Long Beach in Russell. The journey begins with that scenic ferry voyage out across the channel, where participants either touch down on the island's golden sands or leap straight from the ferry deck into the crystal-clear water to start their journey home.

Beyond the signature 4.4-kilometre journey, the event provides a full slate of distances tailored to different strengths and ambitions. Swimmers can take on a 2.2-kilometre ocean course that starts out on the open water and finishes on the sands of Long Beach, alongside 1,000-metre and 500-metre circuits, plus 100-metre and 200-metre dash events for junior swimmers. Strict safety cutoffs keep the field well protected, with an early afternoon course closure and minimum age thresholds set at twelve years for the full crossing and ten years for the 2.2-kilometre challenge.

A drowned valley of 144 islands and sheltered bays

To stroke across these waters is to immerse yourself in a vast natural amphitheatre formed by a 260-square-kilometre drowned river valley encompassing 144 islands. The geography creates a dynamic marine environment where deep ocean swells meet labyrinthine headlands, filtering into calm bays and sandy reaches. Navigating through the outer channels, swimmers feel the cool surge of the open South Pacific tempered by the sheltering presence of island silhouettes stretching out in every direction. The outer islands create remarkably sheltered anchorages in coves such as Indico Bay and Paradise Bay on Urupukapuka Island, while their eastern shores drop away into clean, transparent depths lined with thriving rocky reefs. Just twelve kilometres northeast of Russell lies Hope Reef, an underwater feature that rises toward the sky and exposes its crown only during the lowest tides.

Motuarohia Island: twin lagoons and pest-free bird sanctuaries

Roberton Island itself, known traditionally to Māori as Motuarohia Island, provides a dramatic backdrop for the start of the race. The island is instantly recognisable from the water by its distinctive silhouette, featuring two shallow turquoise lagoons shimmering on its western flank and rugged northern sea cliffs that rear up 78 metres above the ocean swell. Those protected shallows inside the lagoons are home to an established underwater snorkelling trail, designed to showcase local marine flora and fauna to visiting swimmers and divers. On land, Motuarohia is preserved as a pest-free sanctuary, cleared of invasive predators to allow endangered native wildlife to flourish in safety. Rare forest and coastal birds have found a vital haven here, including the whitehead, the brown kiwi, and the New Zealand dotterel. Across the surrounding water, neighboring islets such as Okahu Island, ten kilometres northeast of Russell, also serve as crucial refuges for both the northern dotterel and the variable oystercatcher.

From voyaging canoes to Cook's Endeavour anchorage

These channels carry a human history as deep as their waters, stretching back around seven hundred years to the arrival of the ancestral Mātaatua voyaging canoe. The surrounding islands preserve extensive traces of ancient Māori life; nearby Moturua Island alone holds 27 recorded archaeological sites, including hillside garden terraces, food storage pits, and coastal middens containing ancient moa bones. Motuarohia Island was equally significant, home to several hundred Māori whose fortified pā guarded the eastern headland above coastal farming terraces. European navigators soon gravitated toward the very same sheltered passages that open water swimmers cross today. In late November 1769, Captain James Cook sailed into the bay during his first voyage, bestowed the name Bay of Islands upon the archipelago, and dropped the anchors of HMS Endeavour in the calm lee just south of Motuarohia and off Moturua.

Three years later, in 1772, French expedition leader Marion Dufresne established an encampment for three months on Moturua Island, a tactical anchorage that was later repurposed during World War II when the Royal New Zealand Navy operated a naval mine-control post at Army Bay.

Kororāreka and the historic waterfront of Russell

The arrival strand at Russell brings swimmers ashore into one of the country's most historic coastal settlements. Originally named Kororāreka, the cove was chosen by early Māori for its mild climate, productive soils, and an ocean teeming with fish, before evolving in the early nineteenth century into New Zealand's first permanent European township. Its sheltered bay offered an indispensable safe anchorage where whaling and sealing vessels could take refuge and restock rations before setting out on perilous hunting voyages across the southern ocean. Approaching Long Beach from the sea, swimmers take in a shoreline that preserves its timeless nineteenth-century charm. The village waterfront still reflects the character recorded in 1844, when simple colonial houses lined the water's edge below timber cottages nestled into the verdant hillsides behind.

Stepping out of the rolling surf onto the dry sands of Long Beach, swimmers collect their seasonal fresh fruit before heading over the rise into Russell. After hours spent working through the blue expanse of the bay, the event wraps up along the colonial seafront, where swimmers and support crews gather for post-race dinners and shared stories at local coastal spots like The Nauti Penguin.