Marlborough Sounds sits at the top right hand corner of the South Island. Queen Charlotte Sound is the easternmost of the sounds. The area, renowned for its natural beauty and its numerous anchorages, is something of a boating Mecca. This means that there are businesses here that cater for boats, and one of the things we planned to do whilst in the area was to try and get our rig renewed. A yacht’s standing rigging holds the mast up, and allows the winds power, caught by the sails, to be transferred to the hull which then moves through the water. If the standing rigging fails then the wind can simply blow the mast over, which is less than ideal. Insurance companies demand that standing rigging is replaced every ten years, and whilst we had had the rig inspected when we purchased Taurus and it was given a clean bill of health, we don’t know when it was last changed. Intending to head off-shore next year, it’s important that the rig is right, which means having it renewed.
To this end we visited Waikawa and later Picton to have riggers inspect the current system and give us quotes. We also had to climb the mast and take lots of photos to send to another firm. Dangling on the end of a rope sixteen meters in the air is one thing — doing so with a grand’s worth of phone/camera and having to take one handed photos is another. I was glad, as ever, to return to ‘terra firma.’
Once the assessors had been and gone we had the opportunity to explore the area whilst waiting for the quotes. Naturally, the weather plays a big part in regard to where we decide to anchor or pick up a mooring. The wind is often strong, especially the nor’westerlies and sou’westerlies that pick up strength in the Tasman Sea, so that we have to choose an anchorage that offers shelter from the wind direction predicted. Of course, this is less science than a process of gaining hard won experience, especially as the wind has a magic ability to swirl in valleys and sounds, so that once or twice we’ve been hammered by the wind coming from every point of the compass despite being in a ‘protected’ bay.
Normally on nice days we take the dinghy and go fishing, but unfortunately blue cod fishing is banned in the Sounds until late December, and a warning about toxic shellfish put a bit of a damper on our gathering seafood. Denied our staple we tried our hands at catching other fish species with some luck.
On another day we decided to walk part of the Queen Charlotte Track, a 70km walking trail, from the anchorage we were in, Schoolhouse Bay, to Ship Cove, a bay that Captain Cook visited on his exploration of New Zealand. The track is shared with mountain bikers, and I was pretty envious of their wheels and speed after a few hours of unaccustomed exercise!
Going from bay to bay means lots of sailing, and as a group of two or more yachts is known as a race we have been getting quite a bit of a racing in. Incredibly, we win every time but then we like to keep the finish line a closely guarded secret! My friend Ross taught me this tactic. On New Years Day several years ago he won the Stewart Island race around Ulva Island, but he was the only one who knew which way round we were supposed to go…
The other great thing we have been able to do is catch up with friends and family who live in this part of the country. We had a couple of days hanging out in the same anchorage as Danny and Christina — friends who left Dunedin to live in the Marlborough Sounds on their yacht, Kachina, about four years ago. We also caught up with some of Cara’s family, who came sailing one day and took us to the ‘Jolly Roger’ pub in Waikawa on another. Very kindly Bruce, Cara’s uncle, left us with a couple of crayfish all the way from Kaikoura, so we continue to eat like kings!
After a few great weeks cruising around, Cara, unfortunately, had to return to Dunedin for a work conference, so for the past week I have been solo-sailing. Without having had a lot of practice in this role it’s been a bit anxiety inducing, as land is always close and the winds continue to play the all or nothing, then all again game. Still, I have had lots of time to do painting and get other jobs done….
Cara returns on Tuesday so only a couple more days of making sure I don’t crash the boat. It looks like our rigging work will be carried out in early December, so we might head round to the next sound, Pelorus Sound, and come back. Tough decisions…
Sailing Taurus NZ 
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