On our way down the coast towards Auckland, we anchored in Urquharts Bay for the night (Whangarei heads). A pod of orcas came to visit and it was the first time we had seen them so close. It’s always special to see any marine life but orcas are pretty new to us so we were excited. No photos unfortunately.
Well we’re back in New Zealand again and getting Mari back into shape. Our first shake down trip will be to Auckland to attend a marine medic course in December and then who knows…possibly exploring more of NZ by boat and then perhaps the pacific islands. We’ve learnt not to make too many plans.
We left Mari on the hardstand in Opua in September 2020 to return to Australia on board Patriot X. Now it’s April 2022 and we are finally allowed back in to NZ. After a frustrating trip with flight cancellations and massive queues at passport control and security we arrived in Auckland to find that our bags had been lost and whilst sorting this out we missed our connecting flight to Kerikeri. They put us on standby for the last flight to Kerikeri (which luckily we made) to pick up the rental car keys from the bottom drawer of the rental desk (thankyou Bob from Far North Rentals).
It is a well known fact that boats do not like sitting unused for any length of time and we have verified this in full. Whilst we were fairly satisfied with the overall condition of Mari, we did not expect to have to fix/replace so many major items – the main furler motor, the starter motor, the water maker pump, the boat speed triducer, and the heat exchanger for the engine. Not to mention the updates for the FA50 (AIS) and the GP150 (GPS) due to the date rollover problem.
During one of our shakedown sails (testing the new rigging) we lost Eric, our little drone. We did not fully anticipate the difficulty of landing on a moving platform with lots of obstacles. Eric took some great photos and videos before disappearing into the sea.
Due to delays in finding and transporting the heat exchanger, we missed the start of the rally and will have to make the passage at a later date.
Alas, our sailing adventures were not to be. Another emergency trip home put sailing plans on hold again and we left Mari in the bay of islands marina.
We walked for a few hours before taking the ferry back to Bluff hoping for a last opportunity to spot a kiwi in the wild…no luck unfortunately.
We stayed the night in Invercargill and on the advice of some folk we met in Queenstown, headed towards the “not to be missed” Catlins. We took our time and made numerous stops along the way to see various waterfalls, ancient petrified forests, yellow eyed penguins, gemstone beach and just generally very picturesque landscape. We stayed for a couple of nights at an AirBnB in Kaka Point which also happened to be the local boutique brewery (Catlins Brewery). Very pleased to be able to say that Norm knows what he is doing.
We did a day trip to Dunedin and really enjoyed the architecture and the general feel of the place.
That evening we staked out a hide overlooking Nugget Point and were rewarded by a pair of endangered Yellowed Eyed penguins popping out of the surf and skipping their way home.
The following day we meandered along the banks of the mighty Clutha river almost all the way to Wanaka and eventually to Hawea for the night. It was a fantastic drive though some amazing scenery… which we’re sure would have been much better had it not been raining for most of the way!
We arrived at Fox Glacier the next day after a particularly enjoyable drive (it was crystal clear today) through Haast Pass. On the advice of the manager of the Rainforest Motel, instead of driving up Fox Glacier, we drove away from the mountains to Gillespies Beach and looked back to see a better view of Fox Glacier than you’d get up close… it was quite a sight!
Gillespies beach was also purportedly a good place to find punamu (NZ jade) and we spend some hours walking along the very stoney “beach” looking at our feet. We took away a few kilos of stones, but we didn’t have any Eureka! moments. The search for jade seemed to become a primary objective for much of our trip up the West coast!
Jade carving workshop 
One of our creations 
Our trip has been built around a few highlights that we wanted to see, but often influenced by the people we met along the way. We were chatting to the owner of the cafe at Manapouri before catching our boat for the Doubtful Sound cruise, and she assured us that we absolutely must go to Stewart Island. She recommended that we stay in Bluff and catch the ferry across the following morning. She also recommended the backpacker accommodation there. Since we hadn’t planned our next destination, we thought we’d give it a go and booked a night at the only accommodation we could find in Bluff – the Eagle Hotel, and a couple of nights at the Stewart Island Backpackers.
The Eagle Hotel was an interesting experience. It was a Monday night and everything in town was closed and the proprietor informed us that the hotel dining room would also not be open. We resigned ourselves to having a drink at the bar and then snacks in our room for dinner. We met Charlie in the bar who was there with his mates and family on his annual ”onion run” from Ashburton. Some time later, the hotel proprietor came and told us that he was now expecting a truck driver in for dinner and that he had to feed him as they always looked after their truck drivers, and would we like rib eye for dinner? They opened the dining room just for us (I don’t know where they fed the truckie) and the rib eye was delicious.
The ferry ride was a little boisterous but nothing for us seasoned sailors, even so, a number of passengers were sick all the way over. We’d heard that the trip can be very rough but we were lucky.
Stewart Island was beautiful but cold and wet. The island businesses were obviously geared up for summertime tourists only and were surprised that they had so many visitors at this time of year. Quite a few places were closed. Since the weather wasn’t great for hiking or bird watching (the main tourist attractions), we decided to do a “carve your own jade” activity run by David Goodin, a very accomplished artist and jade carver. We chose our pieces of rough stone from Dave’s collection and a design that we liked, and Dave guided us through the process of cutting, shaping and polishing our pieces. It was a fantastic experience, I highly recommend doing this if you are at all interested in jade.