Cruising on the Interislander

“What a way to start a holiday, cruising on the Inter-IsIander” so the advertising jingle goes.  We left home at 6.00am to travel into the wharf  and lined up with Eileen and Geoff, Dot and Derek, and Pauline and Geoff, our travelling companions for the next few months.  The sun was just rising over the eastern hills and it looked like it was going to be a nice calm day for the crossing.

Sun rise at the wharf

We were sailing on the “Kaitaki”, (meaning Challenger) the largest ferry in New Zealand waters.  At 180 metres long, and  with a gross weight of 22,365 tonnes, Kaitaki can carry 1600 passengers, and 600 assorted cars, trucks, motor bikes, caravans and motor-homes.

The Kaitaki

Geoff and Pauline must have been worried if they would make the trip at all, as the car battery on their Nissan Terrano refused to start the vehicle.  With the aid of some jumper leads from a staff member, and helpful advise from fellow travellers, the vehicle jumped into life, and Geoff and Pauline breathed a sigh of relief.  As instructed, we all slowly made our way aboard the ship, and parked where directed.  We had two large trucks towering either side of us.  Muffy was locked up in the caravan, and we hoped she would not be too distressed all by herself for the duration of the journey.

Romany Rambler parked up in the hold

Several of our group had taken “Sea Legs” to help them avoid motion sickness.  We sat for a while, then got up to stretch our legs, walked around to explore, and went to the cafe for a snack.  Luckily, the weather was kind, the swells were not too bad, and the poor sailors amongst us all coped quite well.

  Starting off on our holiday

A breath of fresh sea air from the side of the boat worked wonders and we popped out from time to time to see the sights.  With the sun sparkling on the water we soon left Wellington behind.

Looking down on the stern

Across Cook Strait and then we entered Tory Channel into Marlborough Sounds.  This is always such a pretty part of the trip, with bush covered hills either side, dotted with isolated houses.  Here and there we saw yachts and dinghies with people out enjoy a day’s fishing.

Tory Channel

Marlborough Sounds

Arriving at Picton we decided to find a place to park up down by the marina and eat some lunch.  Muffy was very pleased to be reunited with us and told us in no uncertain terms that she was not too happy at all to be locked up for such a long time by herself.  Geoff and Pauline drove off to replace their car battery – a wise decision, we all thought.  Let’s hope that is the end of car problems on our trip.

   View of our wharf side lunch stop