#Boatlife

There’s something nice about no longer living to the clock. Going to bed when it’s dark, waking up when the sun comes up. Eating when your hungry, swim when your hot, afternoon siesta’s. It’s a pretty simple and relaxing way to live.

We’re down to our last eight tea bags, and officially run out of coffee. Meals are becoming more and more innovative and the planned “we’ll catch some fish” is hit and miss. I’ve said before, I love the challenge of seeing what I can make with what we have on board, but it’s been 10 days since we last visited a supermarket…. and the cupboards are starting to look, well…. I call it creative, Pete would say empty…… we wrote a list of meals we could make with what we had. The list is actually pretty good, although needed to last a few days before our next planned stop.

There is a road to outter Pelorus but no shops, this means you really need to be self sufficient. We took the tender (little boat) and rowed from the mooring around into Elaine Bay which has fuel, maybe it was the heat but we assumed if the bay has fuel, then maybe we could get an ice cream. Approaching the wharf, we see a cute old bungalow behind the fuel dock… looking very pub like, Yaass! We pull the tender up onto the grass and started walking, excited, hungry and obviously already planned our order. Passing the self service fuel dock, the bungalow was looking less and less like a pub while our enthusiasm faded. Laughing at each other on this imaginary lunch we’d created, we take a walk inland.

So with tea bags down to rations (Pete’s actual living nightmare). We get a call to confirm a skipper who’s able to help us crew Nagu to Opua. With this in mind, we decide to start heading towards outter Pelorus and wait for a weather window to head back across Cook Strait.

We had a great sail to Ketu then onto Alligator Head. An hour earlier I had commented that we hadn’t seen many dolphins. Before we knew it we were surrounded by a huge pod of dolphins and their little babies, it was an incredible experience as they all followed Nagu for a time. Such a magical way to finish up our time in the Malborough Sounds.