I made sure I wasn’t the last one up this morning as we upped anchor and motored over to Kaiteriteri to stock up on food and fuel supplies.

Once arriving in Kaiteriteri the Silver Fern crew boarded us and we had yet another weather briefing to come up with a 3rd iteration of the plan. With low pressure systems set to hit all of the places we want to go we’ve decided to stay close to the top end of the South Island for now and check out as many places as we can here. Thankfully there are plenty of places to explore! Tomorrow we’ll head to D’Urville Island taking the more exciting route of going through the infamous French Pass. The French Pass has the fastest tidal flow in NZ at around 8 knots. To time our passage right we’ll have to leave at 4am tomorrow. Yipee.

Today has been a fairly relaxed day as I managed to drop everyone ashore and enjoy some peace and quiet. Juliet who is a Nelson local, kindly took on the task of driving to Motueka to ditch rubbish, replenish groceries, and fill jerry cans(thanks Juliet!). Meanwhile while everyone else was galavanting around I was slaving away in the galley preparing meals to be frozen and reheated later if we hit some rough weather. This may be unlikely to happen now that we’ve decided to try and avoid said rough weather at all costs. This is what I like to call proactive procrastination. What I really should have been doing was studying for my LROCP exam which is coming up very soon. That’s ok I’ll be sure to bore my crew with details of how an HF radio works later this evening.

My crew seemed to have had a nice day ashore perusing the small town and checking out the beautiful surrounding beaches. We are currently motoring towards Bark Bay to meet the Silver Fern crew and anchor up for the night. Next stop Durville Island!

Till next time,

Jess :)