Sailing North to the South Island!

Monday 6 October

Wellington continued to be a tad grey & windy and we had time to kill as our ferry got pushed back from lunchtime to mid afternoon so we drove down to check out Plimmerton - had a walk along Sunset Parade beside the sea and popped into a Sallies Op Shop. Louis grabbed a coffee and ferry supplies at the Urban Bakehouse next to the NZMCA and we caught up on some travel admin before hitching up & heading into town to the Bluebridge Ferry Terminal.

Queued up for a couple of hours, had a chat with Bill & Heather on their Regent from Vanari who were just ahead of us on the quayside, then finally boarded a very full “Livia” at 4pm. Sadly discovered that we hadn’t booked a cabin on this return crossing so made ourselves at home in the cinema as these were about the only seats left!!!

It was a pretty calm and swift crossing - about 3 hours port to port, and the Sounds were looking beautiful for the last hour into Picton.

Took a while to disembark all the vehicles so we set off for Blenheim in the dark and pitched up at Fitzroy Vineyard around 8ish.

Said a brief hello to Luke & set up roughly where we had been back in January… which turned out to be a bad idea as we were buffeted by a ferocious wind for the next few hours!!!