Enderby and beyond

We woke up one morning to a relatively calm day and motored across to Enderby Island. The island is just amazing, as we approached we could see a large number of sea lions both splashing around in the water and ashore. DOC have a team here monitoring the sea lions as this is one of the main breeding colonies in the Auckland Islands. Unfortunately they told us that pup numbers are down by around 30% this year. Landed at Sandy Beach and Louise from the sea lion team helped us negotiate the sea lions
and gave us some tips for dealing with them as they want to play, but even a small playful sea lion can be quite intimidating! The exception to this is the pups who are very cute, one bared his teeth and growled thinking he is bigger than he really is! Near the shore was a whole mass of pups playing in a big heap. Earlier, just after we had dropped anchor, I watched through the binoculars as a group of yellow-eyed penguins slowly made their way down to the beach. As they entered the water they split
into 2 groups and 'porpoised' rapidly through the water, one group passing close by Elenya. Between us, on our way around the island, we saw more yellow eyed penguins including one who has chosen to moult right by the DOC huts, lots of sea lions, fur seals, pipits, royal albatross, giant petrels, auckland island dotterel and auckland island cormorants. There were also some mega herbs still in flower, although the main flowering season is over. We would have liked to anchor here for the night but
unfortunately the wind came up more from the west so we returned to Port Ross for the night.

After a day waiting for the weather we moved down to Musgrave Inlet. On the way we stopped at Ranui Cove where there is a WWII coastwatchers station and lookout. Good views from the lookout and Jim was fascinated by the 1930s and 40s reading material and other paraphernalia left in the huts. Next we visited Haskell Cove, we couldn't land here but Jim dropped me off in the dinghy at the head of the cove and I slowly made my way down past a rockhopper penguin rookery. For small birds they make a lot
of noise! After retrieving me and the dinghy we made our way down to Musgrave for the night. All along this coast are impressive cliffs (the western side of the island must be even more stunning). Enjoyed watching some light mantled sooty albatrosses soaring in the updrafts on the cliffs. This may be a good time to mention that although we have a couple of bird books on board, we are no ornithologists so while the birds we mention are what we think we are seeing we may also just be making it up as
we go along!

At the head of Musgrave Inlet are cliffs with a waterfall dropping into Lake Hinemoa which can't be seen from the inlet but the next day we walked up to the lake. Jim went first and disturbed some feral pigs on the shore. At the lake, which is about 700m inland, we saw three sea lions playing in the fresh water. A group of four sea lions also checked out the dinghy as I was securing it ashore after landing! We had a brief stop at Norman Inlet to look at the pile of corrugated iron and wood which
is the remains of a castaway depot on our way to Waterfall Inlet. Our peace and quiet in Norman Inlet was shattered by an airforce orion which overflew us. The coast line here is spectacular, cliffs and waterfalls (especially in Hanfield inlet which we took a detour down), lots of bird life - albatross, petrels, sooty shearwaters, shags and penguins. We motored quite close to the cliffs enjoying the views and the shelter. We are now passing through areas of white on the chart - no soundings, completely
unsurveyed!

Waterfall Inlet appears very sheltered, there are certainly larger rata trees here than we've seen so far in the Islands which should be a good sign! We don't have a permit to go ashore here but it will hopefully make a snug hideaway to sit out the next spot of bad weather. Interestingly our definition of bad weather has changed somewhat! What we are calling a good day here we probably wouldn't have bothered going out in in the Hauraki Gulf! eg Wednesday we had patches of rain and even hail at one
point but relatively little wind so that was accorded a 'good' day!!