Akaroa - French Bay

We left Fishermans wharf Careys Bay at 6:00am, in the dark planning to arrive Akaroa Harbour 3:30pm in the afternoon. We knew we had a great weather window so we want to exploit it.  After doing the usual radio checks for outbound ship movements we proceeded to run out to the entrance at about 8 knots - it is a long way, even from Careys Bay!  It took us about 45 minutes.  I radioed Otago Maritime radio and logged my trip report and vacated to the North at about 17 knots, later lifting our speed to 19 knots for the remainder of the trip.  We had a following sea and zero wind right up until the last 3 - 4 Nm to the entrance where we met 25knots and a small amount of sea running.  Soon we were in the Harbour and cruising towards our destination.  It was 3:30pm as we arrived in French Bay; what a cool place!  We.got the boat anchored as quickly as possible so we could maximise our time ashore.  As we anchored I noticed a Cat we had seen in Stewart Island, Careys Bay and now Akaroa?  I said to Robin, ‘we need to go visit them and introduce ourselves as it seems that they are following us, or is it the other way around”?   On leaving H3 we could see that their tender was not with the Cat so we went ashore and wandered the streets getting the feel for the ambiance of this very unique NZ town.  The Feeling that something was different struck you right from the moment we stepped ashore.  The French street names, the quaint little shops, this is a place I want to come back to!  We stopped for a coffee and found friendly people serving us and a very slick little operation.  Mind you, cruise ships come in here so you need to be on the top of your game to handle big numbers in a short time frame.  Also there were tourist type boats bringing large groups back to shore to swamp the shops.  The Fish and Chip shop here is renowned and we could tell by looking at the patronage!  We passed the war memorial where white crosses were placed in front for Anzac Day where all the names of those lost were noted, French names were there too.  There were a large number of casualties for such a small community, it must have had a huge impact on the community back then.

On leaving the town, after picking up a couple of supplies from the 4 square we motored out to the cat in our dinghy to introduce ourselves, as their tender was now stowed on board again.  We received a warm welcome from Tony and Viv who were as curious to know who we were as we were them.   We were invited on board to share a glass of wine and have a chat - so typical of boaties!  Turns out my old company SDL did work for the company he worked for as a design engineer - what a small World.

They were going in to Littleton Harbour tomorrow to get some engine repairs done on one of their engines.  They needed a lift-out crane that could handle their boat width.  They had been cruising around NZ for three years now so were rather more experienced than us!

We understand their diesel heater had failed too so when they were sitting in Stewart Island, while we were there, they were freezing cold in their boat while we had our heaters running full blast keeping us toasty warm.  That would have been terrible!