New Year's Eve

Today is New Year’s Eve and the first really bad weather of the trip so far. We’re safely moored in Resolution Bay, tucked out of the worst of the wind in the lee of the hill. But it’s blowing a gale out in the Cook Strait only a few miles away and most of the day has been torrential rain.

To get our daily exercise, we made the short paddle to the nearby beach after lunch while there was a gap in the rain. There is a Department of Conservation campsite there, and a path which links to the Queen Charlotte Track. We did a 3-hour return walk up to Tawa Saddle and got drenched on the return leg. I think our neighbouring boats must have thought us mad, paddling back to our boat in the middle of a downpour and gale winds.

Stormy skies

We were expecting some friends to join us on their boat for New Year at some point during the afternoon. We took the handheld radio with us so we would know when they arrived. Shortly after starting out on the walk we heard a Pan Pan (urgency) call on the radio. We could only hear the Coastguard's side of the conversation and the vessel was being referred to using its callsign. From the partial snippets of conversation we could work out that there was a yacht with engine failure, which was being blown toward the shore somewhere in the Queen Charlotte Sound. The Coastguard then asked to confirm the yacht’s name, and after a few tense moments we heard the Coastguard's acknowledgement of our friend’s yacht’s name. Needless to say, we spent the next 30 minutes listening intensely to a one sided conversation knowing our friends were in trouble.

The most frustrating thing was that we couldn’t hear our friends on the radio, only the Coastguard’s response. We were well over an hour away from their position and would not have been able to tow our friends out of trouble at any rate since their boat is bigger and heavier than ours. We listened as the Coastguard made contact with several nearby vessels and established how far away the nearest help was. The first two boats who made contact were both 30 minutes away! But then, to everyone's relief, a police vessel called in to say they were five minutes from their position.

Weather clearing in the evening

The New Year we had planned hasn’t quite worked out as expected, but at least we now know our friends are safely back in port, and are looking forward to seeing them in 2015.

First nights at anchor

We have achieved a cruising milestone and spent our first couple of nights at anchor in Mistletoe Bay instead of using fixed moorings. The bay seemed like a good anchorage for the Marlborough Sounds as many of the bays shelve off steeply and have rocky bottoms with not very good holding. In Mistletoe Bay we were able to drop the anchor in about 10 metres of water with a muddy/sandy bottom and had enough room to swing freely, rather than having to tie a stern line ashore. We seemed to lay the anchor pretty well on the first attempt and, after reversing hard onto the anchor to set it, we were feeling pretty satisfied.

Desolina at anchor in Mistletoe Bay 

It was a little bit nerve wracking spending our very first night on the anchor, but by the second night we were sleeping soundly. To ease our minds we did set some depth and wind alarms on the boat instruments to alert us in case it started to blow harder during the night, or if we dragged into shallower water. We got a bit of a scare when our depth sounder jumped from 10 metres to 1 metre. However, we did see quite a few large stingrays gliding around the bay though so we think it might have been due to one passing underneath the boat.

Peninsula walk overlooking Mistletoe Bay

During our stay in Mistletoe Bay we paddled ashore and walked up to Te Mahia Saddle on the Queen Charlotte track and then looped back around to do a peninsula walk overlooking the bay. It was good to get off the boat and stretch our legs – I was getting a little cabin feverish! We were also invited over for drinks after dinner on a neighbouring boat, Bee’s Knees, which had sailed up from Christchurch. The owners, David and Megan were very good company and as it turns out David was an Ocean Yacht Master, so it was nice to chat through a few of our plans with him. Now we’re looking forward to exploring the outer sounds, and practicing our anchoring some more.

David enjoying the hammock chair

Christmas Day

So, now you’ve been introduced to Desolina. I wasn’t going to write much about us as this blog is mainly intended to keep our family and friends up to date on our travels, but for any readers who might have wandered across this blog by chance I’ll do a very brief intro.

David and I are two Brits living in New Zealand. We met 6 years ago in Manchester and married a few months ago. Even back then, in our university days flatting in Manchester there was talk from David of boats and pipe dreams of sailing the Mediterranean, the Caribbean or even a circumnavigation. I didn’t take it too seriously back then. We lived about as far away from the coast as you can get in the British Isles and had little to none sailing experience or knowledge. All of this changed after moving to Wellington. This was the first opportunity we had to do regular sailing and it all snowballed from there.

So, back to the present trip. It’s Christmas day. We’re sat on a mooring in Kumutoto Bay with glorious weather and a gin and tonic in hand. Jealous yet? I’m sure not every day will be like this, but for the first few days at least we mean to kick back and enjoy ourselves. Life the past couple of days has been idyllic and basically revolves around baking, reading and taking the kayak out for a paddle round whatever bay we find ourselves in. The tranquility is interspersed here and there by the sound of the drill on stainless steel as David tries to drill another hole to mount the solar panels.

I still find having Christmas in summer a little odd and have to make an effort to recreate some of the familiarity of a traditional British Christmas. This year that includes my very first homemade Christmas cake (i.e. made by me and not my Mum or Gran), and a roast chicken dinner (eaten late in the evening as it’s hard to feel like a roast dinner in 20 something degrees).

Not much else to report for now. Still waiting for the Queen Charlotte dolphins to pop in and say hello….

Introductions

Hi. I'd like to introduce you to Desolina. She's a 35ft Wauquiez Pretorien sailing yacht. Desolina was born in 1984 in France, before being shipped over to the United States at a young age. There she spent her childhood cruising the balmy waters off the Florida and California coastlines. A few years ago, she set sail across the Pacific Ocean for Australasia with her previous owner, who left her in New Zealand at the end of the journey. This is how we came to find her, berthed at Opua Marina whilst holidaying in Northland. 

At that time we had somewhat rudimentary knowledge and experience of sailing. We had been doing a little research on what features we would look for if we bought our own boat, but we felt we had no serious intentions to buy at that time - not until we had a little more experience under our belts at any rate! Well, as you'll have worked out from reading this post, we did in fact buy her (despite some misgivings), and had her delivered to Wellington where we were living at the time. 

Since then, we have spent 18 months getting to know Desolina, 12 of which we spent living on her in Chaffers Marina in Wellington. In that time we've made quite a few alterations and improvements to her. For a start, I wasn't going to agree to live on her until we had hot running water on board. Call me a princess if you like, but working full time and living on a boat you have to have a few little luxuries. 

Moving on board was a good way to gain our sea legs and test out the practicalities of living on a boat. Wellington is known for it's wind and oh boy we got some wind! Living on board at Chaffers Marina can be like boot camp for sailors. In the first couple of weeks living full time on Desolina, I suffered from land sickness and spent quite a few days sitting at my desk at work feeling as if I had vertigo. I still get sea sick (everyone does at some point), but I've definitely improved a lot from those early days. Spending a few nights in the Marina in 60kts of wind and those first few trips across the Cook Strait have set us in good stead.

So after a year of living on board full time in Wellington, endless boat maintenance and upgrades and trying to squeeze in trips over long weekends, we have finally set sail on an extended tour of New Zealand.