April 16, 2019
(A rare current note from Cyndi)
It’s been a very busy season for us cruising New Zealand; thus we’ve been unusually slow with the blog posts, especially since we were without internet while in Stewart Island.
I’ll start with what’s been going on with our plans. After our first visit to Dunedin, we thought we’d cruise to the south end of Stewart Island (the location of the much-revered Port Pegasus) then continue on to Fiordland on the west coast of New Zealand’s south island. We hoped afterwards to return to Stewart Island to see the rest of it, but we knew there was a risk we wouldn’t make it back that way.
After arriving in Stewart Island, it didn’t take long for us to become so besotted with it that we changed our plan. Stewart Island and Fiordland both have magnificent scenery, but Stewart Island was giving us light breezes, moderate temperatures, protected anchorages, and easy cruising. Fiordland, on the other had, is subject to frequent winds, voracious sandflies, and few protected anchorages. Why rush through this beautiful place which, except for chilly mornings for whomever got up first to turn on the heater, had so little to contend with? Especially to go to a place as challenging as Fiordland.
Thus, we opted to pass on a great weather window to Fiordland and remain at Stewart Island. We ended up spending three weeks exploring the island’s east coast, and there was a lot to explore! With a couple of exceptions to wait out passing fronts, we never spent more than one night in any anchorage as there are just so many to see. We still held out Fiordland as a possibility but in the end, as summer was passing into fall, we decided to visit Fiordland by car and tour boat. We’d see fewer of the fiords, but we were willing to trade that for ease and comfort.
We also changed our plan to make our return to the south island at Bluff, an area by the city of Invercargill. After dong some research we realized Bluff was actually a fairly long way from the city and had rustic facilities to boot. It didn’t take long for us to decide to return to Dunedin instead.
As for my part of the blog, I’d like to take some time out of the chronological stuff and do a few posts about our 2019 season so far. We’ve had an unusual itinerary for a foreign cruising yacht so we’re anxious to spread the word that the east side of the south island is a terrific place.
Meanwhile, we have some work to do on our blog. It seems that Google has quit supporting the program we used to do many of our older photo galleries so now they have vanished. We’ll have to work to rebuild them and hopefully that won’t take too long. I normally love Google, but I’m not very happy with their tendency to just quit supporting things.
Below, a few photos from our season so far; you can click to enlarge and scroll through them. (Google, please don’t disappear these!)
Update: We did end up doing our “cruise” of Fiordland, visiting both the Milford and Doubtful sounds, by car, hotel, bus, and big fast boats. The trip was amazing, the “sounds” (actually fiords), jaw-droppingly majestic and beautiful.
Were we sorry we didn’t go to Fiordand on our own boat? Not at all; in fact we were very relieved! We had amazing weather while there: sunny, almost cloudless skies, very light wind, and flat seas. Yet in spite of that, the sounds (Milford especially) managed to funnel a notable amount of wind down their main channels and according to the employees, this wind really picks in the afternoon (both our trips were morning trips). If this is what the very best weather brings, we’d hate to see what an actual windy day looks like. We also appreciated how much ground we could cover on the fast tour boats—we could see in hours what would take days in our boat. It’s a no brainer for us: this was the best way for us to visit Fiordland. –Cyndi
