Month: June 2016

June 10, 2016

We’ve only seen two other boats with mast strips. (Here’s more about the stripes.) Legacy has the two blue stripes, Nehaj has the red stripe and Thélème has a bright blue mast.

Pure Chance

Now, three unique masts are together in Gisborne, after also being together in Nelson. With no prior planning, leaving at different times and none of us actually planning to go to Gisborne, we ended up in three adjacent berths here. There are actually four of us now from the F pontoon in Nelson, all lined up here. The forth is Campaign but his mast is just plain white.

Nehaj and Thélème have become great friends and between the two boats, there’s about a billion miles of sailing experience. They regale us of tails of sailing Alaska, Patagonia and huge non-stop passages. We thought we were pretty experienced and now we feel like it might be another ten years before we can even take off our training wheels!

Here’s last night’s improptu gathering: At the Gisborne Wine Center (a wonderful place) where the stories and wine flowed abundantly. -Rich

June 4-7, 2016

Here are some scenes from our recent passage from Nelson to Gisborne, just because I like the pictures (including getting a burger at Wisconsin Burger in Gisborne after our arrival). Click on each photo for captions.

And here’s a little video Cyndi took of us going through the fast waters of French Pass. It’s an exciting ride, even if timed right.

Speaking of timing, the NZ government publishes tables that show (theoretically) the slack times at through the pass. They can be found here.

In our vast experience (two trips through the pass), we haven’t been all that impressed with the accuracy of the above. We were told that there exists another book by the Nelson Coast Guard that has more accurate times. I couldn’t find it online but Burnsco is reported to have it available. –Rich

June 05, 2016

In March of last year (2016), I interrupted our Fiji posts to focus instead on the Marlborough Sounds and Abel Tasman National Park areas of New Zealand. The idea was to get the posts done for the Cruising Information segment of our blog.

I thought it would take a few weeks. It took months, but I’m hoping it can be helpful to someone thinking of making the trip to the south island.

I’ll segue back into our original timeline with a few miscellaneous night sky photos from our time cruising New Zealand’s south island (click to enlarge/scroll). –Cyndi

June 5, 2016

I had an impulse to jump ahead in my chronological timeline and do this whole series about the Marlborough Sounds, Nelson, and Able Tasman National Park because there’s so little information about cruising these areas. I figured it might take a few weeks; it took much, much longer. I’m not sure why I feel such urgency to do things like this; I just have a compulsion to light up the dark areas, especially if I feel like they’re needlessly mysterious. I hope these posts help other cruisers in the future; we’ve heard already from a vessel who’s been inspired.

This entire series of posts can be easily accessed. You can select the “Cruising Info” menu item and go to the New Zealand page or click here to see all these posts.

So with this segment of our cruise wrapped up, I’m hoping to pick up where I left off in (so long ago I’m too embarrassed to say where that is right now). –Cyndi

 

June 4, 2016

I wasn’t exaggerating when I said we’d be leaving before dawn. These were the last views we had of Nelson. Note the expression on Rich’s face in the final photo: that’s not happiness to be leaving. (Click to enlarge/scroll through any of the photo galleries below.)

I will say things started looking up as the morning progressed into a calm, sunny day. By now we’d resigned ourselves to making this passage and were starting to enjoy it. It was fun going through the wild swirling waters of the French Pass again and nice that we could lead the way for an intimidated boat who ventured in behind us. (The French Pass is so notorious that some of the people here are afraid to go through it.)

Coming out of the pass I looked over at Elmslie Bay where we’d previously picked up a mooring, waiting for ebb tide, before heading south through the pass. It had been so windy and unappealing then; today it looked beautiful and serene. It would be nice to remember it like this.

Later we passed the huge dry bays of the north coast, ticking off landmarks as we passed. At sunset we ducked into the Queen Charlotte Sound, and what a joy it was to return to one of our favorite anchorages: Ship Cove. I was also nice to drop anchor in a new (to us) area of the bay, a wall of lush vegetation (pictured in the two right photos in the top row).

The next morning brought another calm sunny day, and we had an uneventful crossing of the Cook Strait and then 2 days motor-sailing up the east coast of the north island of New Zealand. We arrived at Gisborne early in the morning on the 7th. Below, a map of our route from Nelson to Gisborne.

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By now we were excited to take our boat into Gisborne, a place we’d only seen by car. Best yet, we caught up to our Nelson cruising buddies there! We’d go on to enjoy a few days with them in Gisborne before making another jump up to Opua, but that will be the subject of future blog posts. For now this will be my final post for this cruising period. –Cyndi