The mists and mountains of George Sound
Note the fuel gauge on the left - not a lot of fuel left!
Prior to our departure Sunday morning we checked the engines over including oil and water levels, all of which were fine. I had given in to track pants today, no more shorts, it was getting bloody cold, for a Hamilton boy! We filled the boat with water, using my new filter for the first time. We just weren’t sure of where the water was coming from or if there was any pretreatment? The boat had had a thorough wash throughout the night with the steady rain that fell, something we are beginning to expect down here. We had plenty of water but wanted the extra ballast (weight) as we were now very low on fuel, in fact 100 Litres plus our reserve, so Horizon III was running slightly nose down. We tried to buy fuel but no one we talked to was keen to help us by allowing us to use their card, our contact there who runs the operation was away until after Southland Anniversary - three days time! We are pretty sure we can fuel at Doubtful Sound so we are going to ‘run the gauntlet’ down their via George Sound. I sure hope Billy, at Deep Cove can help us out! We ran the numbers based on the ground to cover and we looked ok to get through with fuel to spare. Robin took us down the coast and into George, another long sound, and just as magnificent as Milford really. Not so many waterfalls but very steep mountainous terrain.
We saw what looked like a working boat ahead of us and followed them deep into the sound where we were hoping to anchor for the night. The entire sound was teaming with Kahawai at the surface, more than I have ever seen over such a large expanse of water. We were later to find out that this is the preferred bait for Gray-pots! By the time we rolled into the ‘keyhole’ at the end of George Sound the other boat (Amazon) had dropped his anchor and backed up to the shore attaching a stern line. As we turned up, the skipper gave us a shout to go channel 10 on the VHF where he proceeded to guide us as to where to anchor and under his guidance we dropped anchor and reversed up to also attach a stern line. By the time we had reversed up the crew of Amazon had already attached a line of theirs and were running it out to us in their dinghy, southern hospitality, NZ style! We had a good chat with the Hansen brothers who are well known in these parts, they suggested we went down the northern fork to the waterfall which is fed from Lake Ellis. We took the tender back there rather than reset the boat. The fall was amazing, huge water flows which are hard to show in a still picture. We walked up a tributary creek which had low flows, we were walking on a carpet of lush moss and lichen, very easy on our bare feet! We were able to get very close to the water for better views.
The volume of water cascading down these falls from Lake Ellis above were huge!
The water was so crystal clear the rocks beneath the surface are very easy to see. Try to figure out where the rocks above end and the water begins!
Our new besties even gave us a couple of crays for tea and some blue cod, so we dropped them a Hawkes Bay Shiraz to say thanks. Yes...... fish for tea at last, yippie!
As I had been cooking for the last few nights I was pleased to hand over to Robin to make sure the cray would be cooked to perfection. We started with a pumpkin and ginger soup then followed with crayfish that Robin had barbecued in tin foil with some butter, garlic, salt and pepper - and......it was bloody beautiful! After dinner Robin had a crack at fishing and pulled in a couple of Kahawai of good size, and a few Rock Cod ( not the Blue Cod we were wanting)!
Once again, It blew up during the evening, so we were pleased we had secured the boat well. Tomorrow we would set off for Doubtful Sound via Thompson Sound, passing Bradford Sound then on into Malaspina Reach and finally into Deep Cove. Weather forecast was NW sea 3 - 4 metres with NW wind 35 knots - not a great forecast! It was to be a following sea so therefore not too hard on the boat, only the skipper!