We spent a week in Abel Tasman National Park. One of the so-called “Great Walks” here in New Zealand is the Abel Tasman Coast Track, running (as you might guess) along the coast of Abel Tasman National Park. This is the most popular of the Great Walks, and is usually as or more crowded than any of them. The current pandemic shut out all the foreign tourists, though, leaving the track much less densely populated. Visiting by boat was ideal, too, enabling us to sample select portions of the track without carrying heavy backpacks, or camping with the sand fies. Besides yachting and tramping, this park is a mecca for sea kayakers — great beaches and coves, protected water when you need it, open but safe water most of the time, beautiful scenery, and water taxis to shuttle you and your kayak.
The port of Nelson is about twenty miles further into Tasman Bay, an easy day, but there’s no good anchorage there. If you can’t get a booking for a slip, you have little option but to anchor behind the “boulder bank”. This bank is many miles long, enclosing a massive lagoon of drying mudflats and narrow channels, and has only one narrow opening. That results in ripping tidal currents that reverse every six hours or so. We were unsuccessful in getting a booking the first night, so we anchored. It was awful. Don’t want to do that again. I tried using a stern anchor to hold us steady, which worked quite well overnight (fortunately), but the current took us sidewise at one point the next day, and the strain ripped the stern roller off the boat. Our new friends from the park provided an old sheet of plywood with which I jerry-rigged a repair. Will do a definitive repair back in Whangarei.
Although there was a regatta scheduled to start the next week, which is why no berthage was available, a little face-to-face time in the marina office yielded “just one night”. A little more face time got us an extension through the weekend. A bad weather forecast for Tuesday and Wednesday got us a further extension to Thursday. Actually, longer than we had intended to be there, but we made good use of it.
We needed fuel and provisions, sure, besides needing to do the washing (laundry to you Americans) and make that repair, and Robyn had long wanted to visit the Pic’s Peanut Butter factory, which is located in Nelson, but the real draw was old friends. Steve and Maggie Grey have lived in Nelson for many years. Steve and Robyn were in high school together in Minneapolis. They gave us a grand tour. We biked and walked together, and had some delicious meals both at their house and at several cafes. We had a great visit.
And of course, we took on fuel and provisions, etc, and we did visit the Pic’s Peanut Butter factory. That might sound funny, but Pic’s is truly special, and the factory tour is wildly popular. You even get to make some peanut butter yourself.
But it was time to move on. Nice mix of motoring and sailing up to French Pass and into Pelorus Sound, part of the overall Marlborough Sounds. French Pass is a narrow gate between the mainland and a large island, which sees reversing currents up to eight knots, and slack water of only about twenty minutes. There are accurate prediction tables, though, so you just have to time it right and motor through. Piece of cake.
The Sounds are generally quite deep close to shore, making for relatively few good anchorages. But there are boating clubs that have placed heavy moorings in many nice spots. We joined one of these clubs to have use of their moorings. Our first night in the Sounds, we picked up our first club mooring and were expecting a nice, quiet evening. We were wrong. An hour before sunset, two men in a commercial fishing boat insisted that the mooring was no longer the club’s, and that we had to leave NOW! The one doing the talking was abusive and threatening. Not wanting a violent confrontation, we hastily left. Fortunately, I had noticed a potential anchorage maybe a half-mile away as we were coming in, and were able to spend a quiet night there. God only knows what set him off; this was sooo un-kiwi-like!
Dietmar and Marie, German yachties “stuck” in NZ by the pandemic on their yacht Greyhound, were in the Sounds, too. They had been on our pontoon in Whangarei, where we had become friends. We chose to meet the next day and raft up together on a club mooring for a good visit. This we did, and greatly enjoyed the time together. Unfortunately, this was the first time either of us had rafted up on a mooring, so there was a learning curve. Such curve was not made easy by wind gusting up to 45 kts during the night. Not much sleep for any of us.
Time to move on again. They went on their way to Queen Charlotte Sound, while we went deeper into Pelorus Sound. At the innermost end of Tennyson Inlet in Pelorus Sound is the beautiful Ngawhakwhiti Bay (say that three times fast!). Good, protected anchorages, quiet solitude, gorgeous scenery, and mussels!! One other boat, a single man, Nick, on a little trailer-sailer, but again, true to form, we made a new friend. We love these encounters. Often, they go no further, but sometimes they develop into long-term friendships. Some of our dearest friends, we met on a street corner in Papeete, French Polynesia, many years ago. Others, we met at dawn on a pyramid summit in the jungles of Guatemala. You never know where paths will lead, or cross again.
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