French Pass video

A short video of us going through French Pass to get to Abel Tasman.

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.

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.

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. 

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.

River Estuary at Torrent Bay

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.

Dave and Desolina

Abel Tasman sunset

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 Pelorus 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.

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. 

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!

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.

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.

Yellowtail Kingfish

Dave dug out another fish lure which looks like a sardine and wiggles like a fish when you pull it through the water. Now we had their attention! A group of Kingfish stalked the lure as Dave walked the length of the boat dragging it through the water, like kittens following a piece of string. But still they did not bite. Finally, in a desperate attempt to get them to bite, Dave started to swish the lure faster through the water and pull it up as if the sardine were jumping out of the water. The Kingfish went frantic and suddenly there weren’t just a dozen of them, but about forty in a foaming frenzy. Not much skill was involved but one of the larger fish somehow got hooked.

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.

Sushi for starters

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!

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.

Havelock Marina

 We’re now spending a couple of nights exploring Kenepuru Sound before we meander our way back up into Pelorus. It’s funny to think we’re now only a couple of miles, as the crow flies, from where we were anchored in Mistletoe Bay at Christmas. But it’s taken us quite a few more miles and over a week to get here.

Heading back out

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.

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.

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!

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.

On the helm