Glorious Glory, plenty of adventure in Port Adventure and nestled in Abraham’s Bosom!
Thursday 16 January
An easy day today, we’re just cruising around we left Glory Cove and went around the corner to Big Glory Bay and found a nice place to anchor opposite Bravo Island. The sun is shining and there is a lot of fishing going on around here, oysters, mussels, blue cod and kina - so it looks like a fish buffet might be happening tonight!
Have a look at these photos of seaweed – they are amazing. The long snake-like one is like leather to touch and it is very thick and the ribbon one on the beach is also thick…and very slimy and rubbery, the other one looks like it has bunch of grapes inside!!! We have a neighbour for the first time on this trip. Alan on his monohull Kiwi Delight, another round the world sailor. He came over tonight for a G&T and a chat and is joining the boys tomorrow morning for some paua hunting.
Yep, I was right, it was a fresh fish dinner, those mussels went into the pan with stock, wine, Italian herbs and garlic – a huge bowlful of them, followed by fish tacos. Steak and cheese pie for me!!!
Friday 17 January
Wetsuits on (luckily, I don’t own one!) and Alan came over to join the boys on their paua hunt in Jacky Lee Bay (so named after one of Captain Cook’s crew) which went very well and they were also joined by a few seals! Alan is a mine of information on these parts, he comes from Riverton but has been down around Stewart Island for a good while, so when the paua expedition finished, he came back aboard for a flat white and gave us lots of great tips for exploration of all the bays, coves and walks to be had around here.
And we’re off. Next stop Port Adventure which sounds very promising! We’ve cruised out of Glory Bay and around Bradshaw Peninsula, past Chew Tobacco Point and down into Abraham’s Bosom (who names these places?). Locally a “Bosom” is a very sheltered and secure anchorage … safe in the bosom of Abraham perhaps? It’s awesome, our own horseshoe-shaped bay with four golden sandy beaches – aren’t we lucky to be on a boat so we can explore all these gems that are off the beaten track! We went ashore and marvelled at how gorgeous the sand is, it’s glinting gold flecks which are like gold glitter when you put them on your finger. Someone handily put an abseiling rope over the hill so we could pull ourselves up and go over to the other side to Salty Beach.
Wow, it was like a Caribbean beach – the sand, deep, white and soft – and of course, not another soul there. It was such an interesting beach to walk along as there were rocks and beautiful foliage and as we got about half way along we were delighted to see what we thought was a friendly seal coming to play. Not so friendly as it turned out, it came out of the water and started roaring at us and getting very territorial.
You might be interested to know that the hind flippers of seals can measure up to one-fourth of their total body length. Their fore flippers are incredibly strong, allowing them to walk or run on all fours. They can outrun a human on slippery rocks and can climb nearly vertical cliffs (thank goodness we didn’t know this at the time). The kids were goading it slightly, and Geoff in fact was standing in front of it at one point, with his hand up saying “no, no, no”. It wasn’t having any of that and was soon joined by a male mate. I started walking swiftly back to where we came in and after much nervous laughter the others followed suit and we all made our way off that beach and back into Abraham’s Bosom, which then ended up being not as comforting a bosom as we would have liked! Quietly sitting on the beach enjoying a beer, the male mate swam around the point and up to us on the beach and was extremely territorial and angry, out of the water he came roaring away at us – he looked to be about 300kg, so we weren’t going to argue with him and scarpered to the dinghy at speed. Unfortunately, Kate and Hugo ran the other way and up into the bushes. We couldn’t get them as the seal was so angry prowling around, he then came into the water near us, I was busy trying to get anywhere in that little dinghy away from him, almost sitting on top of Nick who was trying to motor us away. We sped off and Nick dropped us off to the boat whilst he went back to rescue the other two. The seal came back to meet Nick in the dinghy, and he sped off in the opposite direction, whilst Kate and Hugo escaped from the bushes and ran the other way up the beach and were waiting for Nick to return so they could jump in at speed and get back to the boat! There was certainly some adrenalin flowing between us all and it was quite an adventure, if a little scarey. Makes for a good story though doesn’t it!
Paua as an hors d’oeuvre tonight. It is the most glorious summer’s evening in this private bay and because we are so far south, it doesn’t get dark until about 10.30pm so we can really make the most of it.
