The warmly cool, clear, ringing, perfumed, overflowing, redundant days, were as crystal goblets of Persian sherbet, heaped up – flaked up, with rose-water snow. — Herman Melville
Drying out the PRADA on Allora’s lifelines!Moving from Wet Jacket Arm to Breaksea Sound.
Reflections
Being at sea, on the sea, there is always a close and present awareness of the line which divides the landed world and the underwater universe, though normally, the waves demand our attention and keep that parallel universe well hidden, and away from our thoughts. The eerie sense of depth creeps in at odd moments when something reminds you of the rocky bottom and the multilayered world of fishes below. In tropical water sometimes the bottom is visible at enormous, ludicrous depths, as the time we motored into the Gambier on a glassy sea and Diana could see sharks clearly in the pass a hundred feet below us. But in Fiordland, the water is usually hundreds of feet deep within just a couple boat lengths away from the “shore.” The water is not murky but light barely penetrates. Stillness is legendary here, also the shimmering layer of freshwater floating atop the tide, that looks like heatwaves in the desert. You can peer straight down and see golden leaves tumbling in the current above the darkened depths. But most of the time, the Sounds keep their secrets well hidden and the water mirrors back the soaring peaks and luxuriant waterfalls and exuberant beach and fern forests, doubling the awe. As stunning as it is, the obvious trick of the mind is to delete the bottom half of the image as “merely” a repetition. Sometimes I had to be reminded to see it another way. Perhaps because she was photographing these landscapes, Diana learned to see these reflection even more vividly, to delight in the ubiquitous natural Rorschach.~MS
Neat that this stunning landscape so often gets a glimpse of itself!Wile E. CoyoteOne of the handful of times we were able to actually pull a sail out – too much or too little winds to work with.We’re not in the islands anymore!‘Real Journeys’ run tour boats through some of the fiords. They never stay put for long.Approaching the ‘head of the bay,’ to anchor, we’d have to be really cautious about the typically steep sided, silty sandbank which gets created by the river outflow.
We were primed to love Broughton Arm. Tony, a New Zealand sailor we met in Tonga (from an Auckland sailboat building family) got there ahead of us and posted his impression, the humbling sense of privilege he felt to be in the remote presence of such mighty granite walls and peaks. “Paradise found!,” he exclaimed. It’s hard to think of a way to convey the heart sense of moving through pristine and unpeopled areas like this, the sense that goes beyond the imagery, the waterfalls, and magnificent trees, the wildlife. The sense of living stone and water and place. You look at one of the these peaks soaring above the the fiord continually stunned by the mass and energy represented there, and then by the bounty of life exuberantly, vividly greening those granite flanks. And water, water, water everywhere. ~MS
When the sun shines overhead, the sandbank (and its’ creatures – see the ray?) are super visible and too shallow for Allora’s 2m draft.We found a deeper edge (50′) where we dropped our Australian made Sarca Excell anchor. Started with one shore line and added another later when the wind picked up.The fog came flooding out of the canyon head early in the morning and I ran out (coffee in hand), jumped in Namo and started rowing into it to take some pics. Didn’t realize I was still in my warm fleece onesie and had no sandfly protection. Totally worth it.
The sun reached the highest peaks and it only morphed the fog into yet more beautiful iterations.
This is a close up from the lower left corner of that last photo!And the last wisps were seen at 11:15!Whitebait are eaten whole with the head, tail guts and the lot still intact – most often fried, the tiny, delicate nature of the fish make them a highly sought-after dish. We were generously given these and they were described as if they were a truffle, so I was hoping they’d taste like lobster!Been vegetarians for a couple years, but pescatarians, really, since we live on the sea and can catch FRESH fish. These were only attempted because they were a gift.RoShamBo: fish beats butter, sadly.Prepared/Disguised as described by the local fishermen, in eggs, but they were a no go for me. Marcus ate them but said he wouldn’t walk across the street to get some more.My kakak excursions were often 2-3 hours and almost a meditation with the slow movement and extreme focus on details. Instead of covering distance, I got into just looking closer and closer at EVERYTHING!
It had rained the night before, so everything was drippy and bathed with fresh water. The top 10 metres or so of the fiord is freshwater. The area gets 7-9 meters (22-29′) of rainfall every year, emptying into the sounds via its many rivers and waterfalls. On its way, this runoff picks up tannins from plants and soil that stain the freshwater the colour of tea.Even the boulders share their world with lichen.Suddenly 10 of these HUGE 1 meter (3-4′) fish darted all around me! They had a shark like, predator attitude and I only learned later that they were Kingfish, or Haku/Kahu in Māori. It definitely broke me out of my close focused, serene mental state!
Saw this and had to go closer to see if I was imagining a ray shape?!A New Zealand/Australian Eagle Ray (Myliobatis tenuicaudatus)! (Looked it up later – I have never seen an eagle ray like this).
I did a double take on this daisy, as it was the ONLY one I saw in Fiordland, EVER! Must have been early or late season?!
Time to head back to Allora when this is what I’m seeing!Time to get yet another perspective!Bird’s eye view!Not the easiest thing to pilot from aboard a sailboat, but at least we’re at anchor!A much clearer view of that sandbank we need to avoid.Another phenomenal day dawns in Broughton Arm.
We’ve had to carry all of our trash since leaving Oban in Stewart Island, so we clean and cut any plastics, smash our aluminum cans and stack paper. Talked about making this a weekly practice, but usually we’d wait till the buckets were overflowing!
More kayak time.
See the face?!And the kind of Kokopelli-esque shadow?!
How ’bout Narcissus seeing his own reflection?!Hehe. Couldn’t resist. (Marcus, in sandfly attire, was actually looking at fish!)
