19/8 Claire – Doubtful Sound (day one)

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Originally uploaded by blenkers

We were very excited to be able to book a two day, overnight cruise on Doubtful Sound. Phil and Sazzle had suggested we do this but when we tried to book from the UK with the guys that had ran their trip when they were here we found out they weren’t running over winter. It was only at the i-site (tourist info) place we found a different company called Fiordland Expeditions who did run a small boat with a max of 10 guests.

We had to drive to another town, take a ferry and a bus to get to the start of the cruise, Doubtful is the less accessible of the two. Whilst looking around it was apparent that we had the company of another young French couple and a family of four from the states. Whilst waiting for the boat to arrive they Americans starting high fiving each other whilst shouting wooo-hoo, yee-haaa or similar (have tried to blank from my mind) at which point my reserved Britishness started to get agitated. Now these boats are only 17m long and sleeping arrangement or bunk style… you understand my concern I am sure.

So the boat I run by a married couple Mandy and Richard. Richard drives the boat, arranges your fishing and other masculine roles. Mandy makes the beds up and cooks endlessly feeding you til you have to roll yourself of the boat after 48hours. Richard has the driest sense of humour where the fine line between hilariously sarcastic, that has you doubled over with laughter, and the feeling of being chastised is very hard to distinguish. He also has a very good memory for very bad jokes that he rolled off one after another during the evening for the kids.

Richard took the boat up the main sound and off various other small sounds that are arms off the main one over time we were with him. First stop was to his lobster holding pot. He’d been diving for rock lobster (he called them crayfish because they were salt water) for our evening meal and basically pulled up the cage with 10 live lobster waiting for us.

He then took us out to sea to see a fur seal colony. At this point we were asked not to make any more drinks, and the fridge doors where tied up and you just have to hold on. Ian has an ace video of this so he can update you later.

Back into the calm of the Sound we got to fishing, or not as the case may be. 4 rods were set up that we could share one between two. There’s sonar on the boat so we travelled to where the fish where and were told we would eat what we caught and that it would be very easy if we didn’t catch anything we’d have to sell our fishing gear when we got home if we didn’t catch anything. Within minutes Richard had caught a massive blue cod which is exactly what he wanted for tea. Peter the American Dad caught another, Ian caught a red fish I forget the name of but it had to go back as it wasn’t the right type of fish he wanted, the French dude and Lucas the American younger son both caught dogfish which look exactly like baby sharks (perhaps they are related) which were huge but again had to go back in. Audrey the French girl caught a tiddler called a Jock Stuart which was kept for bait. I managed to catch two other peoples lines (and get a telling off for not keeping my line off the bottom of the bed) but nowt else. I can’t even catch a fish with a sonar telling me where they are, how rubbish is that?

So… after cheese and biscuits, pumpkin soup, half a fresh lobster, battered blue cod and roasted veg and a desert of dairy milk we rolled into our bunks.