A short video of us going through French Pass to get to Abel Tasman.
Monday 26 January 2015
Sunday 25 January 2015
Abel Tasman
We had a smooth day of
sailing from Catherine’s Cove on Durville Island to Torrent Bay in Abel Tasman
National Park. We were looking forward to the reliable sea breezes we had heard
blow across Tasman Bay in the afternoon after the fickle winds in the
Marlborough Sounds. Sure enough the sea breeze kicked in around midday on our
crossing after very little wind in the morning. We were promised a steady 15kts,
which we got. What we weren’t expecting was for the wind to continue building
throughout the afternoon to a gusty 25kts by the time we reached Abel Tasman.
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Crossing Tasman Bay |
We left Catherine’s Cove at 8am and arrived at Torrent
Bay around 4pm. About half way across
Tasman Bay we thought we had caught our second fish of the trip as we had been
trawling a line behind us the whole way across. Unfortunately it turned out to
be a Barracuda that we threw back. Barracuda are not recommended for dinner as
they can carry parasites. If you haven’t ever seen a Barracuda before they are
pretty mean looking with very sharp teeth. Dave wore his steel wire fishing glove
to handle it while getting the hook out.
The passage through French Pass at the start of
the day was quite nerve wracking. French Pass is the narrow channel between
Durville Island and the mainland, which is the entrance to Tasman Bay from
Marlborough. This little passage has a big reputation and deservedly so. The
currents that run through French Pass are extremely strong, and we had been
told NEVER to attempt going against the current. We had to be especially
careful when we went through, as it was a spring tide, which meant that the
tides and currents were at their strongest. We went through the pass a couple
of hours before slack water so that we would have a little current with us to
speed us on our way. The currents at that time were still quite strong. That
morning was dead calm and the sea was flat as a millpond so we could clearly see
the currents running through the passage, it looked at if the water was
boiling. It felt more like running some river rapids than sailing at sea. As we
went through we hit 11kts on the GPS, which meant we had about 6kts of current
flowing with us. We had heard that small whirlpools can form in the passage
because of the strong currents flowing through, they definitely weren’t
kidding. As we passed through the narrowest part we could see whirlpools
forming on either side of the boat.
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Swirling currents in French Pass |
Nevertheless, the overall journey went smoothly
enough and we are now enjoying the impossibly golden sandy beaches of Abel
Tasman. We spent the first couple of nights in Torrent Bay at The Anchorage.
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Torrent Bay |
There is a nice walk from the bay to Cleopatra’s Pool just off the Abel Tasman
coastal track. The bays at Abel Tasman are very tidal and the whole river
estuary floods at high tide. We discovered that we could kayak up the river
from the bay near high water and decided to go back to a good swimming spot we
had found on the previous day’s walk. The swimming spot there has a layer of
warm salt water trapped underneath a layer of VERY cold fresh water. We had
great fun diving down into the warm layer of salt water and then getting the
sudden shock of cold water as we surfaced.
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River Estuary at Torrent Bay |
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Swimming near Cleopatra's Pool |
Since Torrent Bay we have spent a night in Bark
Bay and are now anchored next to Adele Island. Bark Bay was beautiful, with
easy shallow anchoring. Dave was able to dive underneath at low tide, stand on
the sandy bottom and reach up to touch our keel. The water here is also the
warmest we’ve had so far at 22c. We’re planning to spend a few more nights here
before heading back over to Marlborough later this week.
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Dave and Desolina |
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Abel Tasman sunset |
Wednesday 21 January 2015
Engine troubles
Our first hiccup of the trip so far. A few days ago Dave did a
routine check of our engine water and oil. He noticed it had used some water,
but we didn’t think too much of it at the time and just topped it up. The
following day he checked it again and found that the coolant level had gone
down once more. It wasn’t a huge amount but it was unusual, as before now it
has never used any water, so we decided to investigate. That morning Dave spent
some time looking around the engine to try to see if the coolant was leaking
anywhere without much luck. When we ran the engine, Dave spotted a green plume
coming out of our engine exhaust straight away. He turned the engine off and
said “we’re going back to Havelock”. Can you guess what was wrong?
An engine on a yacht is like a safety net. About 90% of the time we can
sail, but the other 10% we can’t for a variety of reasons. Some of the time
there is no wind, at other times the wind is coming from exactly where we want
to go, which can be just a hassle or the channel may be too narrow for us to
tack our way up wind. It’s in these situations that we’re very glad of our
engine. Not to mention that running our engine tops up our batteries, which run
all of our electrics including our navigational instruments, anchor windlass, lights
and fridge.
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Looking down towards Havelock marina |
Desolina has a small diesel engine that’s relatively simple and
extremely reliable as long as it has fuel, air and doesn’t get too hot. It’s
quite similar to a car engine, where there is fresh water, which cycles around
the engine to cool it. In a car this water goes through a radiator and air
blows past it to cool the water. In a boat engine our radiator (heat exchanger)
has salt water pumped through it to cool the fresh water. After the salt water
goes through the heat exchanger, it’s squirted into the exhaust box and pushed out
along with the exhaust fumes. What Dave saw coming out of the exhaust was the
green dye from the antifreeze in our fresh water circuit. This could only mean
one thing – that out heat exchanger had a leak. It was a slow leak but it could
become a problem if enough coolant leaked out and the engine overheated. It was
something we needed to get fixed sooner rather than later.
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Our spare heat exchanger |
We didn’t want to risk draining all the coolant from the engine and
taking it to pieces to try to fix it while we were in the middle of nowhere, so
we decided to go back to Havelock Marina to get a boat mechanic to look at it.
This was really frustrating for us as we just came from Havelock a week ago and
it was in the exact opposite direction from where we wanted to go. We prayed
that we could either patch up our heat exchanger or use our rather old looking
spare as ordering a new part from Volvo could take a week to get here, plus it
would cost us a few dollars and take a sizeable bite out of our savings,
thereby shortening our trip.
Since we discovered the engine problem on a Saturday and we couldn’t get
a mechanic over the weekend, we slowly made our way into Havelock, sailing as
much as possible and running the engine as little as possible. We also had a couple of cloudy days so our
solar panels were not topping up the batteries as much as we would have liked.
Without the engine to charge the batteries we were running them quite low and had
to conserve power as much as possible.
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Dave putting in our spare heat exchanger |
We do have to count ourselves lucky though that; we noticed the problem
before the engine overheated and caused damage; we were safely on a mooring and
not out at sea, and finally, that we were able to put our spare heat exchanger
on while we sent the newer one off to be patched up. We’re now setting off to
Abel Tasman on our spare heat exchanger, and planning to pick the fixed one
back up in Picton in a couple of weeks time.
Friday 16 January 2015
World's End
After leaving Havelock we spent a few
days in Kenepuru Sound. The bays in Kenepuru were some of the most enjoyable
anchorages we have had during the trip so far. The ambience of Kenepuru is
distinctly different from Pelor us or Queen Charlotte. Most of the Sound is fairly
shallow which gives the water a beautiful turquoise hue and means it’s quite
warm for swimming.
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I had a good swim in Kenepuru Sound, but not with these Jellyfish |
After Kenepuru we started to make
our way back out of Pelorus Sound, with the aim of eventually getting to
Nelson. We really enjoyed the couple of nights we spent around Tennyson Inlet with
our friends, so we decided to go back to this area and explore a little more on
our way out. We spent two nights anchored in Ngawhakawhiti Bay, which came
highly recommended by some friends back in Wellington. Plus we couldn’t resist
sailing to “World’s End” which is the name for the stretch of channel next to
this bay.
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Dave swimming around the boat at Dillon Bell Point on our way to World's End |
As coincidence would have it, we
bumped back into David on “Bee’s Knee’s” who was also anchored in Ngawhakawhiti
Bay on our first night there. We first met David and Megan in Mistletoe Bay in
Queen Charlotte Sound, ran into them again on New Year’s Eve in Resolution Bay
and Ngawhakawhiti was our third chance meeting. It was like bumping into old
friends!
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Evening sun at Ngawhakawhiti Bay |
Ngawhakawhiti was a fabulous bay
with access to walking tracks. The only problem with beautiful bays surrounded
by native bush is that sandflies quite like hanging out there too. It’s a good
job we have some mosquito nets to cover the hatches, but somehow they still
managed to find their way in. I now have an assortment of sandfly and mosquito
bites despite my best efforts at thwarting them and liberal use of insect
repellant. They just seem to find me especially tasty (Dave has not been nearly as inflicted). Needless to say I have had a couple of very itchy and restless nights – the price to pay in paradise it would seem.
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View of Ngawhakawhiti Bay from the Nydia Track |
On our second morning in
Ngawhakawhiti we were woken by the sound of bubbles being blown under the boat,
and slapping against the hull. Now, we have been startled awake once before by
a similar sound in the middle of the night, which turned out to be a seal
playing around the boat so we were quite excited to get another look at one
close up in the daylight. As it turns out, the sound was not a seal as we
thought, but a small group of Yellowtail Kingfish.
Now we have not yet managed to catch
a single fish on our trip so far, "surely this is our moment", we thought. Dave
dangled a line over the side of the boat with some bait on it. Nothing
happened. The fish were distinctly unimpressed by the bait and carried on with
whatever they were doing underneath our boat. Fail! So we tried a sparkly
orange octopus lure. Another fail. After waving the line around in front of
them for a while to no avail we decided to change tactics.
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Yellowtail Kingfish |
The triumph of finally catching a
fish was bittersweet. These fish were so beautiful in the water, part of
us (the former vegetarian in particular) wanted to throw it back. Before we
came away we thought we’d fish quite a lot, but when you are living in the marine
environment, and you see and appreciate all of the wildlife around you, it makes
you think twice before you take. We certainly appreciate our sushi all the more
for it.
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Sushi for starters |
Saturday 10 January 2015
Supply run to Havelock
We parted ways with our friends a few
days ago; us to Havelock Marina to spend a couple of days restocking and
organising the boat, and them back to Wellington. We had a great week together
and we’re going to miss them a lot.
The route into Havelock Marina is
quite interesting for a keelboat as much of the channel approaching the marina
is very shallow and large sections dry out completely at low tide. The way in was
very well marked, but all the same we still felt a little apprehensive
navigating our way through the channel for the first time as our keel draws almost 2 metres
underneath the boat. We started to make our approach about two hours before high
tide, which seemed like a good time for us to go in as we didn’t
see less than 2 metres of water below the keel. However, once in the marina at
low tide, our depth sounder showed 0.1 metres beneath the keel. We were
practically resting on the bottom!
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Approach to Havelock |
We had a fairly sizeable list of jobs
to do in Havelock – grocery shopping, laundry, finish putting up solar
panels, check engine electrics, fill water tanks, clean the boat, put dinghy
away, fill engine diesel, petrol, and gas bottle – but we managed to get everything
done in our two nights there. It wasn’t much fun being back in the marina after
spending nights at anchor in beautiful bays so we were very keen to get
back out as quickly as possible.
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Havelock Marina |
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Heading back out |
Wednesday 7 January 2015
Queen Charlotte to Pelorus Sound
A few days ago we made the 30 mile journey
from Queen Charlotte Sound around Cape Jackson and across to Pelorus Sound. Our
cruising guide describes this stretch of water as “naturally exposed to all
winds” and representing “quite a hurdle to boat users”. We travelled in convoy
with some friends and had kept an eye on the weather forecast for a good
opportunity to make the trip around. This journey is made much easier with a
Southerly wind. The forecast on the morning of our departure was for Southerly 30kts
easing to 20kts late afternoon. Now, if we had been on our own schedule I don’t
think we would have chosen to go over to Pelorus Sound in such strong winds.
However, our friends were only over for 2 weeks holiday and really wanted to be
able to see some of Pelorus Sound before they had to sail back to Wellington.
If we didn’t go then, it would have been likely that we would have had to wait
another 5 days before there was another southerly wind.
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Cape Jackson |
It was quite nerve-wracking, as Cape
Jackson has a bit of a reputation for being a challenging headland with strong
currents and tides, but it was a good opportunity to test out the boat, and us,
in some strong conditions. Our guidebook recommended rounding the Cape between
the headland and the lighthouse, which stands on a rock about 500 metres out
from the shore, to avoid the worst of the currents. Now, 500 metres probably
seems like a fair distance, but in a sailing boat it felt like a very narrow
gap, especially with rocks extending out from both sides.
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Our friends on Antipodes following us around the cape |
We found that Desolina needed very
little sail out going downwind in 30kts. We had our third reef in the mainsail
and a tiny hankerchief of headsail out and were averaging a speed of 8-9kts,
with a maximum speed of 10kts. Again this probably doesn’t seem all that quick
but it certainly feels fast on a sailing yacht. I couldn’t help but let out a
few shrieks when we surfed down a few waves – you can get an adrenaline rush
going 10mph on a sailing boat!
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Sailing downwind with the third reef |
Pelorus Sound certainly feels more
remote than Queen Charlotte. I’m not sure which I prefer yet. Certainly our
time here has been a little tainted so far by waves coming into the bays at night
and causing some uncomfortable rocking motions. So we (particularly me) have
not had a good sleep for a couple of nights. This is partly due to our choice
of anchorage based on the forecasts to try to ensure we’re in a sheltered bay
for the wind direction. However the forecasts for the coastal regions are a few
miles from where we are. Deep in the sounds the wind direction can change quite
a bit from the coast as it curves around landmasses. So an anchorage we think
will be sheltered, normally isn’t! We’re hoping that conditions will be more
conducive to a good nights sleep as we sail further into the Sound and we are
more sheltered from the coastal winds.
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On the helm |
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