Its stopped raining! oh no wait it's just started again!!

We have been busy doing all sorts of things since our last update. We are often asked by family and friends exactly how do we spend our time? I'd like to give a long list of things that we do and how each day is filled to the brim with activity. This would allow me to explain my lack of any correspondence and convincingly show I'm on the level. Unfortunately the list looks a little lame when I do put it together.

1. Getting up! this is obviously the third activity of any day. In order to get up you first have to wake up, which can take at least an hour in itself. All good activities require planning (second activity of day) so it is better not to rush them. We plan each "getting up", that is after we have actually decided that we should get up.
2. Breakfast. This has to be planed the day before as you may need bread or yoghurt, in which case you have to make them first. Breakfast is also a good time to look at the rest of the day and plan anything you wish to do. The weather plays a big role so we don't plan until we can look at the weather that is actually happening each day. Rain, Heavy Rain, Torrential downpour etc.
3. Lunch. Always important to ensure you are fully capable of doing what is required so lunch is always on my list of daily activities.
4. Activity. Whatever you actually planned to do for the day.
5. Dinner. After a hectic day doing there is nothing like a good feed to cap the day. This allows reflection on the day and a bit of thought about what you could have put in a letter to your family if only you had the time.
6. Rest and relaxation. An important part of every day. Nothing like a comfy couch or bed to read a good book or magazine like "Boating New Zealand".

I'm sure you can start to see the hectic fully filled days that transpire in the cruising life. We do enjoy having the ability to take the time to relax and enjoy the day, each and every part. A lot of time is spent doing mundane things. Laundry takes a wee bit longer ass I have to do it all by hand. This also needs a fair bit of water. No problem with water here as there is rather a lot of it! Mind you running ashore in the dinghy to fill drums from a stream, while be eaten alive by the sand flies,
then returning to the yacht and lugging it to the deck do take a bit of time. Once all the laundry is soaked, scrubbed, rinsed and hung up you then have a boat you cant move as it is massively over-canvassed and will capsize in the slightest breeze.

A reasonable amount of time is spent securing the boat each night. We have been cruising at a time some would consider less than sensible to be down here. This is because the weather is even worse now than it is in the summer, wind, more rain etc. In some locations we have been lucky to use permanent shore lines and moorings put in for fishing boats. Always in good locations and made for boats far bigger than ours so no strength problems. In other locations we have to weave a lattice of long ropes
to various trees, rocks etc to hold us. All while the sand flies take a quick snack. The worst locations for me are those perched on the narrow ledges of mud at the head, and some sides, of each fiord. Here you may be anchored in 20m to 30m of water. The only problem is if you drag the anchor off the shelf you have all your chain and anchor hanging straight down, or if you drag towards shore you have little room between you and the shore. We had the less than 1 meter between the shore and our rudder.
We were fine but it is a little unnerving.

We have managed to get some more good dives in since our last update. The locations we pick have tended to be those that are protected as a reserve or no anchoring zone. In Doubtful Sound we had a couple of dives in a narrow channel called "The Gut". This area has a high tidal flow and has a good selection of black coral, red coral, sea pens and other suspension feeders. The strong current meant we only saw a small part of the area but I would recommend this site if you dive. Breaksea Sound provided
a good location to get a feed of scallops for Tori. Wet Jacket Arm provided a couple of dives and Dusky sound has provided one so far.

One thing you notice about diving here is the quantity of things that are missing from places like the Hauraki Gulf. Fish and Crayfish for example. There ar plenty of good sized fish down here. Crayfish are everywhere. On one dive I gave up counting them at 42 legal sized crays that I could see from one spot looking in one direction. They literally are on and under everything. We have taken one Cray since we have been here and I am told it was very good.

Fishing, not a great success for us in normal circumstances, has provide some nice meals. We decided to have a go with our handline whilst anchored two days ago at Supper Cove in Dusky Sound. Our lure which is normally towed had provided nothing in the last two months. We attached a couple of hooks with coloured plastic on them (the guy in the shop 8 years ago said they would be good!) to our hand line and dropped it to the bottom 50 metres below. Within a couple of seconds we got our first bite,
then after a minute our first fish. This turned out, after winding up 50m of line, to be a small (read very small) fish. Having released this we got the line to the bottom again. This resulted in 3 seconds fishing and winding up 50m of line onto our handline. Looked like the same fish to me! Having discovered the small fish were not the subject to a size limit by MOF we decided to leave them on the line. Within a few minutes of getting the line back in the water we got a big bite. This turned out
to be a Groper about 90cm long. Yummy too!! We dropped the line to the bottom and caught two more in about 30 mins. After that we managed to get two sharks, one about a metre long, which luckily got themselves of the line. We stopped fishing at that point. Its the first place I have ever seen that you can drop a hook in the water, the bait will swim onto the hook and tea will obligingly eat the bait so you can haul it up.

We have seen a few other (4) recreational craft over the last few weeks. This is a change from our first month when we saw nothing other than the tourist boats. All the recreational craft have been small, about 6m to 7m, fizz boats. There are also a number of medium size charter boats here. One of these managed to hit a rock a few days ago and is now 300m down on the sea floor. In general we will see about one boat a week.

Whilst all the fiords have a lot of history we are now entering the southern fiords which we have a good book on (thanks Alisdair) and are looking forward to exploring some of the once bustling towns, sealing and mining areas. We have also been using the Mana Cruising Club Guide and the NEW Fiorlands marine guide "Beneath the Reflections" which has been excellent (available from DOC or at www.fmg.org.nz).

Whilst we prepared well for this trip, fingers crossed, there are two dangers I never thought of. These were obvious the other day as we explored in the dinghy. We had stopped at one anchorage and went to look at the other nearby anchorage and also the river. About 200m from the second anchorage there was a slip. The slip was about 200m wide and had seen about a 200m thick part of the cliff slip away. The cliff was 400m high. That is a large bit of rock! Good job we weren't anchored under that. Across
the other side of the fiord, about 500m away, the bush had been destroyed to a height of about 3m above high water. This appeared to be caused by a 'wave' created by the slip.

I'm not sure if the time away isolated is good or not. I, who really do not like cold, was heard to state "Its' quite mild today". This was on a day that saw us wearing two wool tops, two polar fleece, a rain coat, wool hat, long johns, trousers, thick wool coats and boots!

I'm not sure Tori truly described the magic of our "misty river trip". We went for a quick trip just to look see, but ended up about 3km inland up the river. The cooling night air saw a marvelous veil of mist about 3 metres high form on the river. As we paddled back down the river in almost silence we could hear every sound from the forest and air, the mist opening up in front and closing in behind us again. The slowly fading light gave a marvelous show as trees became shapes became outlines became
part of the general blackness. The marvel continued as we paddled back across the river mouth flats with the stumps and debris appearing out of the dark about a metre before we bumped into them. Every now and then a scraping from below the dinghy was the only sign we were passing over something.

From Our location here at Dusky Sound we plan to spend another week or so exploring before moving on to Chalky and Preservation Inlet. New Year is looking like Stewart Island prior to checking in with DOC in Bluff and a restock and repair period prior to departing (hopefully) to waters south.