Nelson

 
-->

Entering Nelson

 After months talking about it, we finally pulled into Nelson at the end of January. The city is planted on the southern shores of Tasman Bay, and is known for its summer afternoon sea breezes though the day we motored in from the Abel Tasman the northerlies failed to appear. 

Port Nelson - Marina, commercial docks and the Boulder Bank

A 13-km long boulder bank forms a natural breakwater to the estuary that makes up Nelson’s harbour. The manmade entrance is known as ‘the cut,’ dredged out the early 1900s after the existing harbour entrance had shoaled up to the point of choking out commercial shipping. Once inside, the harbour is mostly quite shallow and so it’s important to mind the channel markers! The shallowness, combined with tides that can range up to four metres, also means that there is a pretty limited mooring and anchorage area available, and so we headed past the commercial fishing and timber-loading docks and into the marina – what a novelty.

On the Boulder Bank, looking East

We had a warm welcome at the dock – our friend and former racing skipper Paul and his wife Deanna were staying in a house above the harbour and had seen us motor into town. They were super-generous over the next few days, driving us around town and showing us the sights.

Paul and Deanna in Kaiteriteri, nothwest of Nelson

Best stall at the country fair

One highlight was a country fair in the Sarau area to the west of Nelson. The area produces lots of blackcurrants, stone fruit and apples, mushrooms, grapes, and hops! The weather was terrible that day but luckily the craft beer was flowing from local producers and the Hops NZ tent was a good spot to get out of the rain.

Nelson lived up to our high expectations. For one thing, the marina is conveniently really close to the town centre and all boating services. There are two excellent local markets each week in town, with local produce and artwork. And there are lots of walking and biking trails through and around the town and westward to the neighbouring towns of Stoke, Richmond, and Motueka.

We hadn’t seen so many bikes on the road since we were home in Victoria! Bike lanes, even! Although we didn’t get to explore them, there were also quite a few mountain biking options nearby.

The weather was amazing while we were there too, just two days with rain during February. Really the only drawback I can think of was the weekly bagpipe band practice half a kilometer up the road from the marina. (Still too close.)

Tasting at the Stoke Brewery in ... Stoke

They take craft beer seriously in Nelson- this is the Church of Beer -- I mean, the Free House, a very genteel pub

Boat projects continued as they always seem to do. This time the transmission was the culprit – specifically the drive plate that interfaces between tranny and engine. 

Left- new drive plate, worth $500.  Right the old one, actually in three separate bits, which held together miraculously til we got into port.

Removing the tranny with background laundry for added glamour

This seeming inconvenience was in reality yet another lucky break, since we’d heard a brief but shocking clacking and grinding noise come from the assembly way back north of Mount Taranaki, on the trip down the West Coast. After a few uneasy seconds there seemed to be no other ill effects at the time, so we thought we might have just chewed through a bit of seaweed or debris. On we motored for about another 120 nm, stopping to anchor twice and then moving slips within the marina – all miraculously it seems because once we had the transmission off the drive plate turned out to be in three separate pieces, plus or minus a few metal shards.  

 

New plate in place, back of the engine

All fixed up - sea trial out to the Boulder Bank

We repainted the decks too

 All that transmission work involved a lot of waiting around for that expensive part so in the meantime we went on a five-day roadtrip around the top of South Island, stay tuned for some photos!

Wingnuts taking a rest from tramping around town - hey, here tramping just means walking around, no nasty connotations.

Random Kiwiana graffiti