The Canterbury Plains, with Mount Hutt in the distance
With Greg as Tour Guide and Leonie as Chauffeur we set off towards Queenstown, stopping for a night in Wanaka on the way.
Wanaka - a very beautiful tourist haven, bizarrely famous for having a tree growing out of the lake - this must be one of New Zealand’s most photographed trees!
As we left Wanaka we made a quick visit to Puzzling World where we experienced intriguing little collection of optical illusions, one of which you can see from the photo of Leonie and Greg.
We stopped at Te Anau and then took the Milford Road through the Fiordland National Park and on to Milford Sound itself. The Milford Road certainly deserves it’s reputation as one of the world’s most scenic highways, it was spectacular
The Alpine Scenery on the Milford Road, Fiordland.
The annual rainfall in this area is 7 metres, there are an average of 180 rainy days per year, however when we visited there was not a cloud to be seen - 5 consecutive rain free days and it was considered a drought. Milford Sound is a 16 km long fiord, surrounded by 1200 metre cliffs - apparently it’s more atmospheric in the rain, but it was wonderful in the sunshine!
Our Milford Sound Cruise Ship - although you can bring a yacht here, anchoring would be incredibly challenging due to the depth, and the surrounding 1200 metre cliffs regularly funnel winds of over 100 km/hr down the fiord.
Thanks to the unusually calm conditions we were able to go all the way out to the Tasman Sea at the end of the fiord. We thought it couldn’t get any better, but we were then accompanied by a pod of dolphins on our way back along the fiord.
Heading back from Milford Sound we stopped at Curio Bay to see the remains of the 180 million year old petrified forest in Curio Bay - also the home to a colony of very rare yellow eyed penguins. Unfortunately we didn’t see any penguins, however the petrified tree stumps and logs were very easy to spot.
One of the many petrified logs in Curio Bay, believed to have been caused when the forest was covered with volcanic ash which later became impregnated with silica turning the remains into stone.
Another natural phenomena I was very keen to see were the Moeraki Boulders on the Otago coastline. Although not unique to New Zealand, scientist claim that they are formed over millions of years in marine mud and are gradually exposed as the coastline erodes. Maori tradition dictates that they are the remains of eel baskets and gourds washed ashore from a giant fishing canoe, and the cracks and marks on them caused by the fishing nets.
We spent a few more days in South Island with Leonie and Greg before heading back to Auckland and returning to Nautilus.
New Zealand from above.
We returned to Nautilus and spend a hectic couple of weeks re-stocking the cupboards, cleaning, antifouling and generally sorting out Nautilus after leaving her on the hard standing for 5 months. Even getting the sails back up is quite a laborious job as we’d taken down and washed all the halyards and running rigging before we’d left the boat.
Once we were back in the water, we headed in to Town Basin Marina, Whangarei to have some canvas work done on our cockpit enclosure and to wait for a weather window to head for Fiji. All went according to plan - dozens of boats were preparing to leave for Fiji and Tonga, some from Opua in the north and others, like us, from Marsden Cove . The forecast looked good, we all cleared customs and were literally at the point of releasing our mooring lines when we realised there was a problem with our hydraulic rudder control box. We couldn’t leave - an emergency search for hydraulic engineers revealed one in Whangarei - and within 24 hours Craig from Mc Raes Global managed to locate and fix the problem and we were ready to clear customs again.
Our delayed start meant that we were a couple of days behind our travelling companions, Bernt and Birgit from the yacht Rebell. We first met them in Sicily in 2014 and sailed with them in much of the Caribbean. We arranged to meet them in Minerva Reef, 6 days and 850Nm later we duly arrived - and so did the wind!
Minerva consists of two reefs, only visible at low water, located about 450 Nm south of Fiji - we were there for 7 days, but we were certainly not alone! By the time we left, there were 22 yachts sheltering with us, all waiting for a weather window. Most had access to forecasts - they were the subject of much of the VHF chatter amongst our Minerva Cruisers Community.
Anchored in the middle of nowhere! Minerva North - there were 4 ½ metre waves breaking on the edge of the reef.
Photo from Rebell, Nautilus is the yacht on the left.
One of the many forecasts we got whilst in Minerva - it did not look welcoming outside the reef!
The weather finally settled down, and much as we would have liked to spend time on the reef itself, we wanted to get on to Fiji - we headed for Savusavu to clear customs - and the wind died completely.
We motored for 24 hours - there was not even a ripple on the Pacific Millpond.
Savusavu, we are one of the yachts at the left of the photo.
Customs formalities completed, we restocked with fresh fruit and vegetables from the local market and headed a few miles along the coast to anchor off the Cousteau Resort - finally able to enjoy some of what Fiji has to offer.
Our next stop was Taveuini island. We had caught a large Mahi Mahi on the way across, far too much for us to eat, so we presented it to a resort there - they cooked it far better than I could have, and the four of us ate a delicious meal in exchange for them keeping the rest of the fish. We felt it was an excellent deal!
Our plan is to continue heading round Taveuini island and then make our way on to Vanua Balavu in the L’au Group, an area relatively untouched by tourism due to its inaccessibility.
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