Marlborough sounds Day 7 (17th March) - Havelock

We awoke to a cool breeze and cloudy skies so fired up the barbecue for a cooked breakfast of bacon, mushrooms and poached eggs on toast.  After a quick clean up, we lifted anchor and headed for Havelock.  It is a real narrow channel and only just navicable at low tide with the aid of local knowledge.  We chose to come in an hour after high tide so that we had a good 4 metres of water under the hull.  In order to stay in the channel, at one point we passed a vessel coming out with a distance of only 10 metres between us so that we both remained in the channel.  On entering the marina, the fuelling jetty was the very first jetty we encountered and it was available, so in we went for both fuel and water.   Robin organised a berth, which we were pleased about, as there appeared to be nowhere else to anchor outside the marina.  The berth allocated was for a 20 metre boat but it didn’t seem to bother them so it didn’t worry us.  The charges were reasonable but we still only wanted to stay one night.  We tied up and sure enough, a metre and a half  of boat was hanging outside of the piles.  Robin and I were pleased to be able to give the outside a ‘hell clean’.  The water down here seems really good as there were no watermarks to be seen after the wash down.  Jo cleaned inside whilst we did outside.  The boat received lots of attention by locals as we were ‘right in the shop window’ and also just happened to arrive on the day of the mussel festival and St Patricks day rolled into one.  Havelock was ‘going off!   Many shops, who would normally be open had a sign on the door saying ‘gone to the mussel festival’ and who can blame them.  There were a few hammered people walking around telling their mates how much they loved them - a sure sign of too much to drink and that was only 3:30 in the afternoon!