Heading into Bluff note GPS screen location.
Preservation Inlet from Dusky
Before cruising out of Dusky Saturday morning, we decided to stop for a fish near the historical points of interest regarding Captain Cook’s time spent here. The fantastic thing about Dusky is that this place also still looks exactly as it would have looked in the 1700’s, beautifully rugged and unspoilt. It is so good that It hasn’t been exploited or ruined by man. We did see lots of evidence of slips throughout the Sounds that are occurring naturally, when one tree lets go on the rocky cliff face it just snowballs to take everything out in its path. We saw the evidence of these scars being healed naturally as well, light green coloured carpet of lush regrowth covering an old scar. The slips always leave a triangular shaped scar on the cliff faces showing clearly where the first tree gave way. In the past I have always associated slips with dumb things that man has done, mainly when not adequately dealing with stormwater run-off and when we rip into deforestation, with the associated mess that follows any storm event that follows, usually flash floods.
Anyway, back to the fishing, I pulled the boat to a stop and just held it on the spot while Robin dropped his soft-bait as he liked the location close to rocks and Islands. Within seconds he pulled up a massive Cod. These fish were real hungry, they just attacked anything that dropped anywhere near them. There was no wind so I grabbed a line and by the time I was down on the bottom Robin had pulled up another! My first fish was a nice Terikihi and soon after I had a huge Cod followed by another Terikihi. We were going flat out for probably 40 minutes and had 12 good size fish on board so we decided to stop as there was a heap of food for us, for at least a week and we needed top make Preservation Inlet before dark. It was a great shame that weather was now influencing our decisions rather than taking extra time to fully explore these beautiful Fjords.
Our trip to Preservation Inlet went reasonably well with the wind behind and the sea rolling from the SW we were able to cruise at 16 - 20knots, we were now heading in a southerly direction, maybe even South South East? The sea picked up quite a bit as we approached the entrance but this is typical down here. We were just happy to have had much better sea conditions (considered a ‘stay at home’ sea in Auckland). We passed one old fishing boat chugging deep into Preservation Inlet and spotted a sailing boat tucked into a corner for the night near the entrance, but otherwise saw little sign of life in there too. It was a pristine unspoilt landscape, just beautiful! We stayed in Revolver Cove which was quite sheltered from the wind and we wanted to have a peaceful night to assess when we could travel around Foveaux Straight to Bluff. It was just going dark as we anchored up.
We also were keen to get connected to the World again - never thought I would say that, but it was difficult to get any information in or out. The new Intellian Sat phone was next to useless down here and a waste of money frankly. Robin spend a lot of time holding the device endeavouring to find and hold signal. In the end it was only useful to send a text message. Weather information was only available when we were out at sea and able to get signal to contact Bluff Fishermans Radio, manned by Meri Leask who has done this for many, many years now. Once in touch with Meri I asked if she could organise a space on the Marina for 4 days to which she replied, “leave it with me and I will get back to you”. Apparently she came back on the radio later that evening but we were tucked in beneath the hills and heard nothing on VHF. We later found out we should have switched to channel 01 which would have worked fine. This channel is not advertised anywhere as it is effectively a private service provided on a voluntary basis for the Fishermen of the Southern region. So we anchored up, had dinner and settled in for the night. We decided that the fragmented weather forecast received, sounded like we could make a dash on Sunday morning early! It actually looked doable, albeit not ideal. Also the idea of getting stuck here for days when low on some provisions, (mostly nice to haves, rather than essentials) also didn’t appeal. To be perfectly honest the rotten weather day after day was tough to bare restricted our enjoyment in the deep Southern Fjords. Robin and I were wanting to get rested in Bluff and carry out a few boat maintenance|checks before progressing further to Stewart Island where Jo will join us again for 9 days or so, with us dropping her off at the Airport in Dunedin to fly back home to Hamilton. So I am looking forward to Jo’s company again. Having discovered that lots of little things just simply come loose in the conditions, we need to keep the maintenance checks up. We have burned 10,300 litres of fuel since our departure though, so it is no wonder some things need attention. The good thing is that we have had no ‘show stoppers’ to date and that is solely due to regular checking of everything we can think of. I still love the simplicity of H3 and the condition she is in, the boat has been prepared well for this adventure.
Robin heading along the rickety jetty with some supplies
As you can see - no boats out at sea!
Spot the odd one out?? The part of the boat in the foreground was in the best condition of the entire boat! I ain’t going to sea in that!
We planned to try to arrive in Bluff before another ridge came through with the associated high winds and big sea, that would happen around 1:00pm. So we set our alarms to get up at 5:00am and be ready to move around 6:00am. use the term Marina very loosely, it is more like a row of piles with some planks of wood nailed to them as you will see in the photo. The handrails were at the perfect height to rotate over without touching the sides! Once in Revolver Cove we dropped anchor and settled in for the evening having multiple discussions about whether or not we go tomorrow. Having anchor Anchored up and heard the forecast for next week albeit very fragmented, we new that the next few days looked even worse so I was happy to make the decision that our best chance was to move again was in the morning to beat the incoming storm. We then agreed to a 5:00am start and to roll just before sun up at around 6:30am.
We were all ready to go at 6:00am but I was not happy to roll just yet as it was still very dark and we knew there could be logs etc floating in the water. Hitting one of these definitely could be a ‘show stopper’. I set all the instruments to night mode (dull and dark background) to maintain night vision and we set off at slow speed at 6:15am. It would take us an hour to roll out to the entrance of Preservation.
We had the swell rolling in well before making it out to sea, but everything about the sea was to forecast and our predictions. I handed over the helm to Robin for the first 4 hours or so and we were off - next stop Bluff. After radioing our trip report with Maritime Radio, I hopped back on the radio to make contact with Meri who confirmed she had a Marina spot for us, so that was a huge relief for me! If one is swinging at anchor in port it means we need to run the dinghy to shore every time we want to go ashore and in the kind of weather we are having, freezing cold wind, rain, sleet even, it would be terrible. The charge for the Marina is whatever you want to donate to Bluff St Johns Ambulance so I was very happy with this arrangement. The weather held up fine for the first Half of our 7.5hour leg but we could see the ridge coming in the distance. Robin was running at around 16knots which meant we were covering the ground quite quickly. We were soon well around the corner and heading East South East directly to Bluff and about 20 Nm off shore. Once we got to 11:00am there were squalls coming through to lift the sea and put us into our usual rough conditions. I took over for the second half soon after and started preparation to contact the Bluff Harbour Radio to seek permission to enter the port. Under instruction from Maritime radio I left this until we were an hour away. By now I was using the wheel to manage the conditions and noticed that the steering wasn’t quite normal particularly when applying starboard rudder. So we were definitely going to check this out on arrival. The sea was running at about 4 metres by now with a fetch of 8 seconds (speed of the sea). This indicates a close sea and that was what we were seeing - I managed to get shoved into the wave in front once which buried the nose sending water flooding across the bow - not ideal! It was amazing to feel the power of the sea when it struck the rear transom pod we had a few big shoves from behind on this leg. We really saw the ugly side of Foveaux Straight, it was no surprise later, to see all the fishing boats in port and tied up! Only problem with that was there were no Bluff Oysters for sale anywhere!
We were now about an hour out so I got on the radio to Bluff Harbour but after multiple attempts I received no reply. Thankfully Maritime radio heard me calling up and responded asking me to try one more time and if they heard no response they would phone them on my behalf and radio back. That was exactly what happened, Maritime radio confirmed we had permission to roll on in to port. The entrance to Bluff was sheltered from the winds that particular day or I was going to travel further east and enter from the eastern channel to avoid turning beam on to the sea. We rolled in without incident and were met by Meri who drove down to direct us to the jetty location. She asked for our ropes and assisted in tying the boat off. We could see that she was an experienced deck hand|skipper. Apparently her and her first husband were fishing these parts for many years which is where Meri first developed an interest in providing this radio service to the Fishermen of the Southern region.
Meri was very helpful and wanted to know what we needed to help direct us to that service. I wanted to get into Invercargill and rent a car so we had independence and it was a fair distance to town with a very limited bus run with no taxi service. Meri said no problem, I am heading into town tomorrow (Monday 9th April) so I will pick you both up at 11:00am and drop you into the town centre. Renting a car was hard work, both the big players had no cars available and in the end I only had one option, a Nissan Tiida from RaD Rentals, so it became Hobson’s choice! Not quite an Aston Martin but it will do for a shopping basket he he. The layout of Invercargill is amazing, very wide streets, lots of angle parking all set out in blocks, similar to Christchurch and US cities. This was definitely a town that planned to be a City one day! Monday, we asked Meri to drop us at a nice cafe anywhere she recommended which she did and her choice was brilliant! After lunch and two coffees (we both were hanging out for a decent coffee) we shopped for consumable items for the boat to carry out the little jobs identified during the last 10 days in the Fjords. We visited a local pub|restaurant|cafe for tea, hoping for Bluff oysters, but as mentioned before the boats had been unable to work for weeks due to the terrible sea conditions, that we were out in! I settled for Seafood chowder as an entree and Cod for our main (don’t know why, we had a fridge full) but it was nice to have someone cook tea for us. Robin had Garlic bread for his entree and Chicken Schnitzel for a main. The meals came and OMG Robin got a loaf of bread for his starter and my entree was mains size! We walked out full as a bull. We had been inside an hour and a half and noted on our way inside three guys having their beers at an outside table, I couldn’t have survived out there without becoming hypothermic but these guys were still hooking into the beers as we left - in the dark!! These guys are HARD!