April 4, 2016
The southerly winds would die out during the night, and tomorrow would bring the kind of calm, settled weather we’d need for our trip to the Pelorus Sounds. We’d need to round Cape Jackson (the outer point of Queen Charlotte Sound) at slack tide, then make a 4-hour trip on the open ocean before heading through a pass into the next area of sounds.
Our planned last stop before leaving Queen Charlotte Sound was its most well-known and loved anchorage: Ship Cove. There are several reasons it’s so popular.
First, it’s the outermost anchorage in Queen Charlotte Sound and the best place to leap off for a trip to areas west (the Pelorus Sounds, D’Urville Island, and the city of Nelson). Conversely, it’s a convenient first stop when coming into Queen Charlotte Sound.
Second, it’s a historic landmark. James Cook chose to make a settlement here for a few months while he overhauled his ship. He then returned here four times during his voyages in the Pacific. It’s no surprise there’s a monument to him here.
(Rich and I can certainly relate to making settlements–we call it settling in–and returning multiple times to work on our boat. I’m sure our settlements involve far more pizza and beer than James Cook’s did.)
Third, and I’m sure the same reason Cook chose to stay here, is that there’s something really nice about this place. It’s beautiful and well protected in most winds, but beyond that, this place has an extra something special. It’s hard to pinpoint exactly what this X factor is, but it just feels nice to be here. It’s why, in spite of the fact we’d had time to walk around here during our mail boat cruise, we wanted to return.
Below, a gallery of photos from our mail boat cruise stop. The bird is a weka. I don’t know what weka means in Maori, but in English it means don’t set down your camera, lunch, or any other object you don’t want to see running off into the forest. Click to enlarge and scroll.
Even though the southerly winds had not quite died down, we decided to pick up and leave Punga Cove and make the 2-hour journey in cold, windy conditions to Ship Cove so we could spend the night there. This would give us time to go ashore early in the morning and hike a bit more of the Queen Charlotte Track before visiting nearby Motuara Island, a bird sanctuary. After that, we’d start our journey to the Pelorus Sounds.
Above a map showing our trip from Punga Resort to Ship Cove and Motuara Island. You can click on the markers to see what’s what. (We bypassed pretty Resolution Bay because we were short on time and had visited it on the mail boat.) Below, our early evening arrival at Ship Cove. –Cyndi
