Time to move on.......
We awoke Tuesday morning at dawn to the sounds of wind and waves rolling into Catherine Cove so decided to cruise to Pelorous sounds, Jo stayed in bed watching breakfast on 3 as we cruised across the sounds. Once in Pelorous we were in the shelter of land again and flat water. We keep heading deeper into the sounds until we had little or no wind. This was Wilson Bay where there is a little resort with restaurant and bar facilities. We were looking forward to a nice coffee, so after breakfast we headed to the jetty for hopefully, a coffee. We were met by a couple who were holidaying from Europe working at the cafe, it was their day off and Carolina was very apologetic that they were closed Tuesday 12th March due to the owners heading into Blenheim for a well earned break of just one day!
We were shown how to access a scenic walk so Robin dropped Jo and I back to the cafe to commence a coastal walk. We took about 45 minutes to reach amazing views back up the Pelorous Sounds and being always up for a challenge, we looked at the hill top towering above us and wondered how much better the view would be up there. The eyes are very poor at judging distance, much like when you try to swim somewhere, so very soon we were breathing hard and I was running at 129 BPM (according to the Fitbit), felt much harder! We scaled the top after climbing on all fours for part of the 30 - 40 metres but when we reached the top and looked at the panorama around us, it was all worthwhile. We took the photo attached from the summit.
On beginning the descent we had an even better appreciation of the steepness and the metre high bushes that gave us security as we came back down. We were looking down on a small group of Woolley sheep who were staring at us as if to say ‘what the hell are you doing up there and don’t eat any of our bloody grass’.
We returned to the boat and decided to fishing for tea thinking that it would be like our first day. No such luck - we went all over the place and just as we were about to give up ( I had even taken some Premium beef from the freezer to thaw out ) and Robin caught his second shark, large enough to feed the three of us, so meat went into the fridge and shark was on the menu that night!
Wednesday 12th March
Jo and I decided to go for a swim around some mooring buoys before breakfast, so Jo donned her swim wetsuit and I wore a rash shirt. Jo set off first and I dived in to follow. Breathing was good and swimming seemed effortless as I settled into a rhythm. Next thing I get a walk on the back from Jo , who had come to an abrupt stop when she realised we were swimming amongst a heap of jellyfish some of which were of the stinging variety, all were quite large. We about turned and swam rapidly back to the boat, that was our swim done for the day. Apparently they are prolific down here, but a lot depends on the bay you are in and the tidal movements to the time.
After breakfasts we set off for some fishing to see if we could catch some Gurnard for tea. We pulled into a bay called Horseshoe Bay and dropped anchor. Robin went for plastic baits and after only 15 minutes had caught a 500mm Gurnard. We decided to join him and after trying bait on hooks for what seemed like an eternity, I gave in to Gulp Plastic baits too. Robin had by now pulled in another nice gurnard, so we almost had tea on board! We started pulling up barracuda, and I thought our fishing was done for the day. We set a limit of 12:30pm to stop and with 2minutes to spare Robin pulled in another Gurnard, we were all set for a big feed of Gurnard for dinner tonight!
We went back to our. Little cafe for lunch and a coffee from the barista Carolina who welcomed us the day before. We were impressed with the coffee ( had a second round) and got caught up amongst a party of 12 or so who arrived on the Marlborough ferry service for lunch. One young fellow sat down at the piano and played classic music for us during lunch - it all seemed so perfect looking out into the bay.
When the ferry skipper arrived, he told us about his encounter with Killer whales about 2nm from the cafe. When we told him that we picked up a pod of Dolphin (about 20 or so) heading deep into Pelorous Sound, he was very surprised as seldom will Dolphin hang about when these Whales are about. We suspect they were already escaping from them which is why they igmnored us as we passed them. We decided to turn and run with them and see what they would do. Sure enough, in they came and we gave them a ride in our wake at 12 knots for a couple of nautical miles before we decided we needed to turn and head for our destination. They loved riding our wake and swam within touching distance of our Boarding platform. These were big Dolphin as you will see from our photo so it was a beautiful encounter in a quiet place.
After lunch we headed back to Ligar Bay for some kayaking and a trek to discover the Waterfall marked on the map. We don’t think it will be as impressive as Catherine Bay but who knows???
