Milford Sound
We set off for Milford at 5:45am Thursday 29th March, heading due North for Cape Farewell Spit cruising at 12 knots, sea was flat and winds about 15 knots. We knew that would change as we rounded the Cape and sure as predicted we were then in a large short sea (3.5M), that slowed us down to 8 - 10 knots max. We travelled along the western side of Farewell Spit until we heard a strange noise from behind, we both turned to take a look at the same time and noticed that the stern of the tender was swinging around wildly. At first we were unsure of what had happened so I closed the throttles and remained in gear to keep our heading in the big sea while Robin lowered the tender to see what was wrong and he soon spotted that one shackle had come undone and dropped into the bottom of the tender. So in any other conditions it would be a very easy and comfortable fix, but with only a couple of knots of speed the boat was rising and falling very steeply meaning the boarding platform was awash, in fact right up to the top of Robin’s legs at times! I could see Robin was battling so I left the helm on auto pilot at idle to lend a hand while we re-attached the shackle and nipped it up with a pair of pliers. We lifted the tender back up to it’s normal home position and got back under way. Of all the checks carried out, we didn’t do this one, so it looks like there will be one more added to the list!
Once around the headland the wind and sea settled back down and we were easily cruising at 12 - 13 knots again. We cruised all day in good conditions considering where we were. As we got further off shore though, the sea became more unruly and was short, not what I was expecting, but the wind was a southerly with the sea running straight at us and standing up, it should have been no surprise By 10:00pm Thursday we were down to 11 knots then 10 knots and the boat was beginning to get a hard time burying the nose repeatedly into the waves firing water everywhere up through the anchor well and at some time during the night it punched the starboard bow light right out of the retaining socket! I decided that a change of course was required to look after the boat, letting the boat roll, something it is very happy doing as it softens the entry of the boat into the waves. We were able to run with a lot less banging and thumping again. We continued through the night and with the approaching dawn we were cruising in much smoother conditions, slowly increasing speed as we went. On coming back on watch at 6:30am I was determined to make our arrival time so lifted the speed up to 18 knots and we stuck at that until we reached the entrance to Milford Sound. The forecast was for a rough night ahead and I wanted to be sorted and settled as quickly as possible. On arriving at Milford Sound entrance some 30 hours later with only one brief stop to fix the tender, I radioed Fiordland Maritime radio to close our trip report. Throughout the trip I was radioing in our position, heading and speed every 4 - 6 hours. The persons on watch at Maritime radio were fantastic, very helpful and professional. It was comforting to know that we were being monitored throughout this leg which took us 45 nautical miles off shore. We saw one fishing vessel during the day out from Greymouth and another commercial fishing boat during the night - that was it, it is a very lonely place out there! I only picked up the commercial guy through the AIS system that operates through the VHF radio, long before the radar had picked him up and before our eyes could detect their navigation lights in the total darkness of Friday morning.
Cruising in past sheer cliffs of rock disappearing up through the clouds and mist to several thousands of feet high. The water beneath the boat was over one thousand feet deep!
Metres of fresh water lay on top of the sea water meaning our salt water pump was delivering fresh water!!
Entering Milford we discovered that it was blanketed in low cloud giving the whole Sound an eerie atmosphere. At first I said to Robin, what a shame the weather is crap for our run in but very quickly changed my mind as we entered a ‘Lord of the Rings’ scene. The vertical rock faces were disappearing into the clouds and mist, with water cascading down these massive rock structures towering thousands of feet above us. It was an unimaginable scene, something I had never seen anything like in my life, I was spell-bound. We were crawling along about 5-7 knots following the multitude of tourist boats loaded with people, cameras in hand, creeping along the shoreline only a few metres from the cliff. We stopped occasionally to take our photos and to listen to the sounds of the waterfalls. Mitre Peak was on our right and was lost in clouds, we didn’t see that until the following morning. My depth sounder failed immediately we entered the sound as the waters were simply too deep for the transponder mounted under the hull to cope with. The photos will hopefully give some sense of the wonder of this untouched natural landscape. It was almost like rock cathedrals reaching high into the sky. I tried to set up the satellite phone to let people know we had arrived safely but even that wouldn’t work in the confines of Milford Sound.
Spot the odd one out! Very basic marina but hey it worked well and was incredibly well sheltered.
Back at the boat, we were only awoken once during the night to high winds and the boat bumping into the large wooden piles that we were tied to. We had fenders out too, to soften the impact, but with a big tide swing and only able to tie one side and with enough slack to cope with the tide, we just had to live with it. This Marina had no floating pontoons as one would expect in more elaborate complexes but hey, we were much happier here than swinging at anchor, in fact as we would be soon to discover, anchoring would have been a major issue.
Horizon III sitting low and sleek when compared to the high bow and large platform of the work boat next to us. Gives you some idea of the dangerous sea conditions these guys work in!
Just enough sun peeking through to create this very low profile rainbow.
On awaking Saturday morning and looking around us, the whole scene was spell-binding. There was Mitre Peak, clear of cloud, albeit briefly, towering majestically above the surrounding mountains, with large amounts of snow packed onto the rocky surfaces on the South Eastern faces. This was over 5000’ high! We enjoyed the view while it lasted then organised a cooked breakfast as the temperature down here was significantly lower than in Abel Tasman! After breakfast we decided to travel back out through the sound to take it all in again, but this time with different light and travelling in the opposite direction. Then we were planning to fish as we have had three meals in a row that didn’t include fish. I was really keen to get back to fresh fish for dinner!
The wind out at the entrance was 25 knots but we were keen to fish so we found a spot that was relatively sheltered steering well clear of the cray-pot buoys that we could see bobbing around on the surface. Robin used the remote to lower the anchor as the lock needed to be disengaged. Soon as the lock was released and the down button was pushed the winch continued lowering the chain, without the button being engaged?? The winch was now lowering a heap of chain and wouldn’t stop! Robin hit the up button to trip the circuit breaker as the helm control would not respond either up or down and thankfully the circuit breaker popped, stopping the winch.
Now we needed to discover what had gone wrong. The boat was holding ok so Robin investigated the wiring to see why the remote control was holding in the down position. It became clear that the down button was jammed on, once this was isolated we reset the circuit breaker to discover that the helm control was now working fine and the remote would be able to be used to lift but not lower the anchor, effectively meaning that we could operate normally. I decided that lunch would be a good idea about now so Robin took a break from the anchor locker and we enjoyed lunch while discussing the drama of what had just happened, but it was’t quite all over yet!
We had given up on fishing at this point so I started the engines and began lifting the anchor chain as Robin monitored the winch from the bow. I pulled up about 40M of chain and with 20M left to go, we could tell that the winch was loading up big time. Clearly we had hooked up something as by now 17M remained and we were in 21M of water? The winch was groaning now, but we continued lifting the chain until it was near the surface to discover a huge birds nest of knotted rope wrapped around the anchor that was tight as a drum. We were free from the bottom but had a whole new issue to deal with in order to be free to move the boat. It was clear that the dinghy and a sharp knife was likely to be the solution, so I took the helm to keep us off the rocks, that we were now very close to, while Robin set off in the tender with the knife. He was completely obscured from view underneath the bow at this stage so I was very reluctant to push forward with the engines not knowing how he was getting on up front. However, we needed to push forward as by now the stern was getting very close to rocks, I did so using just the port engine so as not to cause Robin any further issue beneath the bow of the boat, it was still blowing 25knots on the nose! Next thing I heard was the rattle of the winch clip for the tender so I knew that Robin had done his job up front with the knife. Robin confirmed we were clear of the cray-pot so I retrieved the last few metres of chain and anchor and engaged both engines to get the hell out of there! jokingly, I asked Robin if he wanted me to reset the anchor so that we could try fishing, to which he replied, “ ah no thanks” or a collective of other words that meant the same. So we were soon heading back in with a dinghy loaded with a twisted section of rope, including a broken float, hence why we didn’t see any evidence of a cray-pot when we first lowered our anchor. What a waste of a day! We disposed of the rope and float at the Marina. Later, when talking with Mike Shand, a local Cray fisherman, he said, “oh there are hundreds of pots out there that have been lost”, so. Needless to say, we wont be fishing there again!
We opened a bottle of wine and had dinner, reflecting on our eventful day in the mystical magnificence of Milford Sound. We will be headed for George Sound tomorrow, a journey of 4 hours or so.
What a magic part of NZ - we only needed a beam of sunlight to activate the Snow White of the clouds. This looks so similar to something Tim Wilson of Queenstown might paint!