Poor Knights travel South

As the introduction suggests the weather took a turn for the worse but our determination saw us through the light showers and very cool air flow until the sun re-appeared and the warmth was restored to our bones, albeit temporarily! This was also our first exposure to true New Zealand summer weather, not that we knew that just then!

In attempting to source a suitable anchorage we made our way along the West coast and round to the South of the Island group. In so doing we passed som e wonderful scenery and a truly amazing 'Hole in the Wall' Big enough to fit Firebird and her mast through (this we did not try in fact), it was an super sight to behold!

We decided to anchor in a slightly rolly open roadstead on the West coast. The water looked inviting with great clarity even viewed from the deck. Our views of the water was to change rapidly once Jim and Dylan entered the dive site a little later in the day. At first we decided to take an exploratory dinghy ride around the coastline and all the neighbouring islets. That was great. The rock formations and the high cliffs were very interesting. We did not go ashore but instead went underground........into a deep, dark (at first) and sound reverbarating cave! It was huge. The sound acoustics were amazing, which on our discovery of this fact, we took full advantage of by sending loud Indian whoops into the air!

After this we returned to Firebird, loaded our dive kit and sped on down the West coast to the designated dive site. There were 3 other dive operations present, who wee catering to business from the mainland. Let us tell you no lies. The water was cold, cold, cold! The underwater world was the same, including a bottom of kelp, big boulders and a couple of stingrays. Many fish hid behind the large eerie looking kelp leaves and did not venture out of their isolated spots to come and peek at us! We pushed on through the cold water, which encouraged gross shivering after around 3.2 minutes and enjoyed venturing through and underwater cave popping out the other end, and also passing 3 other tourists on the way! We did not stop to chat!

After reaching the dinghy and managing to remove all signs of frostbite from our extremeties we sped back to Firebird for some warm showers and dry clothes. Soon after we weighed anchor and set off on our way to Kawau Island. We spent two nights here and enjoyed a lovely walk across the island to the old British owned Colonial Mansion house. We sat in the sun and Dylan played garden cricket with a New Zealand family. We also enjoyed the tour through the house itself which is filled with relics of the old days. Very interesting and informative.