WELCOME TO ERF
...New Zealand
and the Cook Strait
ZOOM ENHANCE ZOOM ENHANCE
The Captain
The Vessel (named "MidKnight" ...christ)
A 21 foot fibre-glass yacht from the 1970s with a retractable keel and a 2 stroke 4 horsepower outboard motor.
It lets water in and the motor broke down on our way out of the marina. Redundant pieces of the motor were also melting off.
I can talk about it that way because I love that boat.
The yacht was doing around 5 knots under sail. Winds and tide could easily be 5 knots each, so we had to plan our crossing to coincide with these flows. I studied this handy gif of the currents,
with that cleared up we headed for the treacherous ocean
...so I began vomiting.
I'd been vomiting for hours by now. Good vomiting mind you, dry retching. The kind where you're empty but spitting because it feels good.
Feeling woozy I went to have a nap and, later, Dominic told me that we'd miscalculated the tides (fucking animated gifs eh?). Queen Charlotte's Sound was emptying as we arrived and was pushing us into these rocks.
It was getting late and we weren't yet in the safety of Queen Charlotte Sounds. We were now 4 hours late. Luckily the tides changed and we made it in half an hour before darkness, at about 9pm. That was New Years Eve.
...it rained.
We made a tent on the back of the yacht and spent the rest of the day motoring between the bays. There wasn't anything much to do but wait it out.
Everything got wet. It was impossible to see where we were going at some points so I trusted the depth finder more than usual. That night my bed was damp and my toes were cold. It was worse than 9/11.
...the sun was shining so we made hay and hung our clothes out to dry.
I never thought Picton could look like a tropical paradise, but coming into that bay there were girls dancing on the beach and palm trees.
We moored at Picton with its' greasy food and toilets. The shit flowed like wine.
Bonus: barn.jpg, picton-mural.jpg
