February 1, 2019
We arrived at the entrance to Lyttelton harbour (near Christchurch New Zealand) last night just after the sun set. We were trying to beat the darkness in and mostly made it which made for a gorgeous sky – and a very dark arrival an hour later at the marina.
The two-day passage was pretty nice. We expected light winds and a lot of motoring. Fortunately and unfortunately, the wind was stronger than advertised (as usual). I say fortunately because my fix for the engine fuel filter leak didn’t hold and we lost enough fuel that it made sailing part of the way a necessity. We made it in with plenty of fuel to spare and the sailing was pretty nice with the wind (at times 25 knots) behind us.
Speaking of wind, it’s different down here (based on my vast, one-day experience). The water is different, and the wind is different. It seems less friendly and seems to announce “What did you expect, you’re in the roaring forties!” This is our second time in the forties, the first being Tasmania. It didn’t feel this way, so maybe it was just the day. -Rich
Comment from Cyndi: Rich made the observation that it’s different here, but his observation was about the ocean. I’ll add that in spite of the fact that it was being well behaved as we approached the coast, something about these seas did seem intimidating. Then again it may have been the day.
What was so striking to me was how different everything else was. We’ve been to the south island before, but just the north end of it (the Marlborough Sounds, Able Tasman National Park, and Nelson). We’re further south here near Christchurch and it feels like it. In fact it feels like another country, and at times even another planet! Being further south, we knew the sunset would be later and the evenings longer, but we didn’t know it would look so different.
Our first impression was the sky. The clouds are different here, not the long white clouds we’re used to in the north island. This sky seemed to be what I call soupy with large swaths of clouds, streaky and milky along with strange little disc-shaped clouds. This made the surroundings a different color in the evening light, getting pinkish with the sunset and the sea a strange shade of green. And for how far south we were, it was surprisingly warm.
As we motored along, the clouds turned pink and the entire sky seemed take on an ethereal glow. The seas under the clouds turned pink, too. Just then we were visited by some Hector’s dolphins with their strange rounded dorsal fins, different critters in a different world where earlier we’d begun spotting huge albatrosses. Then we were hit by a smell much like a strange perfume, floral at first then becoming more grassy as we neared the shore.
Ahead of us the land seemed massive, with huge hills and cliffs. This is a big-scale place! The light remained a long time, the pinks becoming grays and pale yellows as we entered the harbor between two peninsulas, their sides looming high above us. They were surprisingly dry and as far as we could tell, uninhabited.
It took about an hour to motor through the harbor to the marina. The sky become deep blue, and the floral grassy smell stayed strong. By the time we got to the marina it was dark. It’s tucked into a little harbor off the bigger one, circular and surrounded by hills. We could see the lights of houses on the bottom half of the hills and the entire visual had a fairyland impression. We’d had a bit of swell behind us in the outer harbor but it was flat calm in the marina, no wind. As we tied up the strange floral smell remained (for some reason the phrase freshly laundered baby clothes comes to mind) and the air felt soft and warm. We are definitely “not in Kansas” anymore.
Looking out our companionway this morning (I haven’t actually been outside yet) I see hills and trees and scattered houses, overall such a pretty and charming-looking place. And while it’s chilly inside the boat, the air outside is warm, bizarre since it’s generally the other way around. Rich has been up to use the facilities and reports that they’re really nice. It’s time for me to quit typing and go out and see our new home. –Cyndi
Here’s where we are…
Note: This marina is so new, it doesn’t even show up on Google Maps yet. Here’s the maps image and one from Google Earth historical imagery that does show the new marina.
