Honeymoon - Day 1 (Jan 27th)

Day 1 - Wellington to Queen Charlotte Sounds

I can't believe we haven't done any big trips together until now. Our little boat feels like a home already - when we got on board we literally dumped a truckload of stuff into the cockpit and everything just found a place tucked up neatly somewhere. Today has been lovely, and I'm sure it's because right now we're on our honeymoon and our boat is perfect and has nothing to do with the sunshine, blue skies and calm seas.

It seemed so right when we threw off the dock lines and it was just the two of us - we've done very little sailing on our own and it's been really nice. We love having our friends along and going on adventures together, but it's awesome working together as a couple to make our little boat go as fast as possible.

We've had to motor sail the whole day, with the sail hanging limply and the boom flapping about sadly every once and a while. We had wind in the harbour but we were becalmed once we entered the strait of crazy wind - go figure. When we did get a bit of a breeze and Garth went to trim the mainsail, the clew was being weird. It looked like it had come off the mast track so I went to investigate and found the bolt which attached the sail to the boom and the boom to the mast had decided to come off. Whoops. So as I was steering through a weird current in between two islands, Garth attached the spinnaker halyard to the boom (totally my idea), winched it up and managed to get it back in place before it slid another inch to the left and fell down destroying everything. He found the bolt, and that sucker is getting some lock tite on it tomorrow. Other than that our crossing was pretty uneventful. Garth slept through most of it, and the karori rip (which could have made me quite sick) was tiny and tame.

We found some dolphins at around sunset, who played with our boat for a while before rushing off to find something more interesting. They were in a small pod of about 6 and looked like they were going to cross our path about 100m ahead of us. When they saw us though they all took a 90 degree turn and came over to say hi. They were big common dolphins and I'm sure they were sending us some good luck :)

I can't stop staring at the moon. Its full tonight and so bright, i feel like a moth to a flame. There was a beautiful sunset when we were in the middle of Cook strait. One island was shrouded in beautiful shades of dusty pink and blue with the moon rising above it, and the other was highlighted in brilliant shades of orange and yellow as the sun sunk behind the hills. It was stunning.

North Island

South Island

Now almost all the horizons are dark. There's a scattering of tiny fairy lights from the coast of the north island and nothing but the dark outlines of hills in the direction we're going. Then there's this brilliant moon taking up the whole sky and illuminating a long strip of water underneath it.

The Brothers light and the moon

You can see all the shadows and shapes across the surface if it. I feel like I'm looking at a picture or through a telescope, it's so perfect. Perhaps it's just because we're all alone out here and it's such a calm night, because I have seen plenty of full moons in my lifetime. But out here where there is nothing else around, it certainly stands out. I wonder if this is what earth looks like from space - a bright ball in the middle of nothingness with shapes and patterns dancing across the surface.

The water looks like oil tonight, all shiny and dark rippling slowly out from behind us. I want to jump in and coat myself in a layer of the silky blackness, but i know it will just be cold and wet.

We're anchoring in a little bay underneath cape Jackson tonight then heading to Nelson tomorrow. Garth has conveniently left his bag of clothes behind, so we have to at least get him some shorts. It was purely accidental, I'm sure.

I keep looking behind me to see why there's a spotlight on me, but it's still just the moon reflecting off every shiny surface.