The Kindness of Strangers

We had a great sail from Lyttelton up to Kaikoura, once the wind arrived.  Much of the day was spent under spinnaker.  The Kaikoura peninsula sticks out of an otherwise featureless coast and provides the only anchorages between the Banks Peninsula and Cape Campbell, at the front step of Cook Strait.

Kaikoura is that strip of illuminated land just under the sail.

We came in as the light was failing.

And then, just after we rounded the peninsula, the Kaikoura coast guard hailed us on the radio to offer their mooring for the night.  Someone from the coast guard came down to the wharf with a handheld VHF to talk us into the mooring.  That's one big side of South Island En Zed in a nutshell.  The place is very very friendly, which is always an important quality for travelers.

The next day Alisa and the boys went ashore.  There were New Zealand fur seals everywhere.

The place is beautiful, but the anchorage is, alas, far from all-weather.

I stayed on board Galactic and ended up moving anchorage twice during the day.

A front brought snow to the mountains in the afternoon.  Alaskans love seeing snow!

The next day we had a booming sail up the coast, watching the albatross and fluttering (Hutton's?) shearwaters, catching barracuda and letting them go (we really should try eating one), and catching glimpses of snow on the higher peaks.  This is the first proper snow we've seen in the Southern Hemisphere.

And this was our anchorage for the night - Cape Campbell.  It looks pretty improbable from a distance, but turned out to be great.

Once we were settled in, with crew fed and boys asleep, Alisa and I looked at the practicalities for getting across Cook Strait the next day, into Wellington.  A look at tide table and current chart showeed that we'd have to pull the anchor two or two and a half hours before sunrise to beat the tide.  That didn't sound like heaps of fun - setting off before first light with 30 knot southerlies behind us.  Luckily, we happened to look again at an old email from our friends Jon and Babs on New Zealand Maid, which described Wellington in terms of its drawbacks for a traveling boat - wind, expensive marinas, poor access.

Wellington was cast aside on the spot and now, with a relaxed start to the morning behind us, we are setting off on the overnight sail to Napier.

Poised

Galactic at anchor in Lyttelton Harbour.  Waiting for a southerly wind.

"You're a long way from home." 

We've been hearing that a fair bit lately, as people notice our hailing port and stop for a quick chat.  A kayaker said it to us yesterday, and for the first time, my initial reaction was that we aren't far from home at all - this is our home!

We've been in Lyttelton, the port for Christchurch, for more than a week now, waiting for a suitable wind to continue moving north.  Lyttelton isn't the first place that you'd choose to be cooling your heels.  Getting into town involves a longish walk through an industrial zone, which is less than ideal with a two-year-old.   And the water is both muddy and cold - not the most inviting for a swim.

Alisa has been chafing, just a tiny bit, at our idleness.  The annual Abookire get-together, which we have missed for several years in a row, is going on right now.  We had decided to miss the get-together again this year in order to have time to go down to the subantarctic.  But when we got to Akaroa we were hoping to make last-minute arrangements to get to the event, but that didn't work out.  Thoughts of family visiting each other on the other side of the world don't make it easy to bear an enforced idle spell.

For the most part, though, we're very Zen about the pace of travel on a sailboat.  It happens when it happens.  And until it does, we retreat to our family life in the cozy and self-sufficient confines of our home, set down somewhat anonymously wherever we happen to be.

And now, the southerly wind is coming - two days of SW 25 are forecast, so we're poised to depart for Kaikoura, where there are meant to be sperm whales...

~~~

 Hiking back from town.

A bus ride into Christchurch was our big outing for the week.

The Canterbury Museum was a huge hit with the boys.

A walk around the CBD was sobering.  Two years on, the earthquake that killed 185 people is a vague memory for me.  But the CBD is still largely cordoned off, and evidence of the destruction is everywhere.  The agony of Christchurch goes on...

More on the Southern Ocean soon...

Imitate the Albatross

Our sail back from Port Pegasus gave a good impersonation of Southern Ocean sailing - two reefs in the main, booming swell behind us, and hell bound for glory to get around Shelter Pt. before the tide turned.

It was a great day.  We did beat the tide around Shelter Pt., and so pulled off the trick of keeping both flood and ebb behind us for the whole day, and the healthy breeze got us all the way back to Port William, within easy striking distance of Bluff.  

The only down side was a big one.  While shaking out the second reef after rounding the point, I managed to rip the mainsail right at the luff.

I was spewing-mad at myself.  We've owned Galactic for two years, and this was the second time that I've ripped the main in the same way - while cranking on the halyard with a reef in, I think I'm having a hard time getting the sail up because the wind has the sail pressed into the shrouds, but in fact one of the luff cars is stuck on the lazy jacks.  I crank too hard, and rip the sail.

At first I despaired, as we are completely out of my favorite sail repair aid - quick set 5200, the strongest marine adhesive product on the planet.  Whatever the merits of Australia as a nation, they have not discovered 5200.

We managed a pretty good fix anyway.  I'll give a shout-out to Dan Neri's The Complete Guide to Sail Care and Repair (Beowulf Press) - it's an expensive book, but it taught us to repair our sails, which is one of those things you just have to be able to do when you live on a traveling boat.

After we had the sail fixed, a shy albatross dropped by, hoping to scavenge a meal.

The bird hung around for about half an hour - long enough for the boys to work on their albatross imitations.

Pretty good likeness, no?

~~~

Next: going way down south...