We ended up leaving Lyttelton on Tuesday, the 21st Feb. We cast off as the sun was lighting up the hillsides and soon slipped out of the harbour and back out to sea.
We had light to moderate winds on the quarter to start, but these soon died and we were motor-sailing up the coast on a fine, cool, but sunny day. We had a decent 2kt current pushing us along much of the first half of the trip, which made for fast progress.
Speed over ground 9.2kts, Speed through the water: 7.0kts
Sadly, I (Jackie) didn’t have my sea legs and, despite the mild conditions, was feeling decidedly “off”. Nothing new there, but that meant that Alex had to do much more of the watch-keeping. I managed to get up in the middle of the night to give him a break and took this picture of the moon on the water seen from inside the cozy cockpit.
Alex beat that with this picture of a faint Aurora Australis behind us.
Unfortunately we had light winds on the nose for the second half of the passage, but by 6:30am we had reached Port Underwood and decided to stop for a wee rest and to wait for the beginning of the flood tide in the Tory Channel. We anchored in beautiful, sunlit Kakapo Bay and had a couple of hours of sleep before heading for the notorious Tory Channel.
Just before reaching the channel, some Hector's dolphins came to welcome us to the Marlborough Sounds.
We timed the entrance perfectly, with light winds from the SE chasing the flood tide into the channel. We had to wait for 3 of the inter-island ferries to clear the entrance before we made our way in.
Despite the perfect conditions there was still quite a current and the whirlpools and waves made it exciting. Here are links to a couple of short videos of the ride:
The wind picked up as we travelled up the channel toward Waikawa Bay and by the time we reached the marina it was 12-15kts, gusting 20-25kts. It certainly made it challenging to get into our berth, but we managed it alright and soon had settled down to a beer, followed by our traditional passage completion dinner of pesto pasta!
Today we walked the 1 kilometre from our berth to the marina office (I kid you not!) to get our gate card and then on to check out the Boat Club, Jolly Roger restaurant (parma and chips, anyone?), TWO chandleries, and various boat businesses gathered near the boatyard. It seems a good place to get work done on your boat, but there is no easy access to shops. Picton is only 4.5ks away, but there is a bus the goes only once a day on Tues and Thurs and a taxi ride is $40! Fortunately we’re here to see the Sounds, not the town. I’ll think about how to provision later…
