Honeymoon - Day 2 & 3 (Jan 28th and 29th)

Day 2 - Queen Charlotte Sounds to the Abel Tasman

I'm just chilling out in the shade under the Bimini with the autopilot on while Garth naps. I know I'm not supposed to, but I kind of like motoring. I hate the sound of the motor and I have a headache from us yelling at each other over the top of it, but I get to use the autopilot and I don't get seasick as much. Or maybe I'm just getting used to the boat, but I think that is less likely.

We're crossing over from the Marlborough Sounds area to Golden Bay at the moment, which is about an eight hour trip. So we'll get in after dark again but no more traveling after that! Hopefully just golden beaches and more sunshine. Garth wants to find civilization so he can get some swimmers or shorts or some kind of clothing, but stopping in a town would have added an extra day onto our trip - Nelson is the only big one. I actually got to go swimming this morning without a wetsuit, which was exciting. The water was chilly, but beautiful compared to Wellington! Who would have ever thought I'd be happy to go swimming in a temperature that three years ago I would have classed as ice cold. I remember when I lived in Australia, I'd never get in if the water wasn't around the 25 degrees Celsius mark.

Anchorage near Cape Jackson

Skinny Dipping

While I'm on watch I had a timer set to go off every 15 minutes so I could jump up and check the horizon, but I'm constantly looking so I changed it to 10. I'm facing backwards crocheting a sun hat, and I can't help but feel slightly uneasy that the boat is steering itself and nobody is watching where we're going. It's 3:30pm and we've seen two boats all day, but I still worry. For some reason it's less unsettling at night time, I guess because you expect there to be more boats to navigate around during the day. I was trying to figure out why there's no other boats out on such a beautiful day, but I suspect it's because it's a Monday and there's still zero wind so all the sane people have stayed home.

We went through French Pass today, which was exciting. It's a reasonably small gap you can duck through to avoid going around a massive peninsula. But the current there is crazy and you have to get the right time just as the tide changes. Garth said it would be a four hour trip to go round so it's usually quicker to just wait for the tide, but he checked it as we got closer and we were coming in just at the right time.

 We tried to go through amidst a whirlpool of churned up water, streaming in all sorts of crazy directions. We didn't move, and then started swirling a bit. Whoops... Garth checked the time over and over again, before realizing he had forgotten to adjust for daylight savings. So we put up the Bimini, made lunch and cruised through half an hour later with only a bit of difficulty. There was a minute or so where we weren't sure we were moving forward, but our little boat managed to push through all the chaos going on down below the surface.

Still no pants. Checking the tide

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Day 3 - Abel Tasman to Golden Bay

We made it to a lovely little bay behind Tonga island just as dinner was ready last night. So we got to relax inside with the peace and quiet of no engine, eating delicious tacos and drinking bubbles. Perfect!

Showering on the deck as we watch the sun set

The moon was just as beautiful last night as the night before. It rose as a giant orange ball of brilliance, then stayed a bright golden colour all night. I wonder if I'll ever get sick of it?

Moonrise over D'urville Island

We 're planning on snorkeling in the marine reserve next to Tonga island today, then heading to Golden bay for a day of stand up paddle boarding and then making our way to the peninsula for some horse riding. Exciting! But our engine died just as we were pulling up the anchor. I was just thinking last night that it was doing really well, I may have jinxed it. We've done 25 hours of motoring in the last two days, and I'd expected it to be cranky by now. Luckily we're just out of fuel but Garth is worried that we've got a leak somewhere. I think we're probably just empty, and filling up will solve the problem... though that may be my optimistic nature shining through.

Garth lost in the cockpit locker, wearing my board shorts

There's a very light breeze now so we're hoping to get going - Garth is just trying to bleed the engine so it will work again, because it has probably got air into it when we filled up the fuel from cans. Some good has come of this though - we have exactly 40L of fuel in the tank, so I put a very accurate marking of the fuel level on our measuring stick. Before it was just estimated guessing.

Seal colony on Tonga Island

Beautiful water

Seal pups on Tonga Island

I'm starting to get our log book organized now we're doing an actual trip - before it was just scribbled notes everywhere. I want to print up a custom one for us to use, but we need to start actually filling in the one we have to figure out what is important and what we need to know later.

There are mutterings coming from inside, the last one was 'I don't even know how I'm meant to do that,' so I might go and help. At least we're in a beautiful bay with lovely golden beaches to look at. I can think of worse places to be stuck in.

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Garth has banned me from fishing. I keep catching big Barracutas, which I make him pull in because they're stupidly heavy. Then he has to take the hook out of them and throw them back again after being spiked a few times - they're full of tiny bones and worms, which makes them a pain in the ass to cook. We're not exactly short on food, so I suppose there's no point. But I like catching fishes! We were given a shiny new rod, reel, tackle box and tackle as wedding presents and it's notably more fun fishing with good gear. Before we kept losing lures and breaking the line and it just seemed impossible to pull anything onto the boat. I think I'll wait until we've eaten all the mince in the fridge before sneakily dropping the line again.

We had more engine trouble today, but it wasn't as simple as forgetting to check how much fuel was left before starting the engine. We were cruising along and I had jelly beans all lined out on my shirt trying to pick a flavor when Garth started screaming for me to turn off the engine. I didn't manage to save all the jelly beans, which made the whole thing even worse. There was diesel spurting everywhere out of a hole in an engine pipe, which means the blasted boy was probably right this morning. We lost at least 10 litres of fuel and the entire boat stinks of diesel, which is not ideal. He managed to find the leak, patch it up and have us going again in half an hour, which is amazing. I'm ridiculously impressed at how good he is at fixing things. He's been showing me how to do everything as well, which is another good thing about us being all alone - there's nobody else to do things for me, so I have to learn. Lucky for him I'm a fast learner, because then he gets to palm jobs off to me all the time.

I keep finding a lone bumblebee hovering around the cockpit and hiding under the dodger. He probably thought it was a good idea to stow away with us this morning, but is no doubt regretting it by now.

I jumped in the water when Garth was fixing the engine and it was divine - I don't even think we'll need wetsuits at all. We're getting fuel then anchoring somewhere, hopefully private, because I'm looking forward to going for a swim in the morning. Then tomorrow we want to explore the Tata islands by SUP!