We questioned whether to leave or not right until the moment we left. The GRIBs and BuoyWeather are no help here at all. Maritime Weather is calling for gales in several areas and only recently have we become sufficiently accustomed to the place names to know what areas they're referring to. It looks [...]

Not much going on today. We're waiting out a gale on the "outside" of D'Urville Island. We saw winds to 35 kts last night, but all is calm and quiet today though gale warnings for the area persist. No one is around, just a few pied shags. We've made a couple of forays with the dinghy, but for the most part we've stayed put on the boat doing chores, catching up on laundry and the website. David is busy developing a new electronic new chain counter. Hoping we'll be able to move tomorrow...weather permitting.

We departed the Torrent Bay anchorage around 0800 this morning with nary a cloud in the sky nor a ripple on the water, heading east across the Tasman Bay to D'Urville Island. By 1000, the wind had freshened from the north and we were sailing on lumpy seas at 6 kts making good progress towards our [...]

It rained during the night (sufficient enough to collect rainwater in the dinghy for a laundry wash and rinse), but the wind was nowhere near what we expected with gusts barely in the 20's. This morning was misty and until we checked our NZ courtesy flag, we could have just as easily been in the Patagonian [...]

We departed the Torrent Bay anchorage around 0800 this morning with nary a cloud in the sky nor a ripple on the water, heading east across the Tasman Bay to D'Urville Island. By 1000, the wind had freshened from the north and we were sailing on lumpy seas at 6 kts making good progress towards our [...]

After a wonderfully calm and peaceful night's sleep, we launched the dinghy this morning and headed into shore for a walk in the Abel Tasman National Park. The campsite ashore is called "The Anchorage" and offered a lovely beach to land the dink and a well-illustrated map of the area walks. We chose [...]