The forecast for the crossing was NW15 knots, except NW25 knots west of the line from Puysegur Point to South West Cape. This meant that I was expecting head winds the whole way, but starting off considerably north of South West Cape I expected to be well east of the mystical line and in lighter weather. To my surprise (and delight) I had variable 10 knots of weather most of the way, it was light Southerly at first which meant a nice sail to start, then it died off and I needed to motor sail, and then with no wind and flapping sails I was just motoring. With the Solander Islands (two islands in the middle of Foveaux Strait) behind me and Fiordland popping up in front of me, I thought I looked on track to arrive a couple of hours early. And then the NW hit and it was a generous 25 knots and very quickly my speed was knocked down to 2.5-3 knots – at this rate I was going to be lucky to arrive before sunset! The next 4 to 5 hours were painstakingly slow and tedious as I looked out at the land to see if I was actually moving forward. It didn't feel like it but the GPS told me I was, just very slowly. Finally I could see Puysegur Point and gradually I inched towards it, and then finally rounded into Otago Retreat – the small and quite shallow passage between Puysegur Point and Coal Island. Weka Island where I was mooring up was directly ahead about 5 miles steam. An hour later I had negotiated myself in and tied up next to one of the fishing boats at the barge, and the fishermen introduced themselves and invited me over for a beer. After a couple of what felt like well deserved beers, some crayfish tails and the promise of cray-potting the following day, I went back to Honey, draped all the openings with sandfly netting (otherwise I was told I would be woken by our little dark friends) and curled up in bed.
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