Awaroa Bay

With Vela having Mondays off, we decided to explore a bit further afield. We're a little bit restricted during the week as we need to find settled spots with mobile reception so Vela can get her hours in. So we decided to head to Awaroa Bay and try the pizza at Awaroa Lodge.

As we headed up the coast we noticed a bunch of dead trees, turns out they're pine trees that have been poisoned. They poison them rather than felling as it gives the surrounding forest a better chance to recover before the trees are blown over in a storm.

We attempted to stop at Shag Harbor to explore the estuaries - we'd received a tip that you could find baby seals playing in the shallows too. Unfortunately with a slightly lumpy northerly swell, we weren't comfortable anchoring. We did see an adult and a baby seal from afar, but not close enough to get a photo.

A little over an hour after we left, we arrived in Awaroa Bay and after a short relax onboard, we headed ashore for lunch. Nathan ordered a Hop Federation Hazy with a burger while Vela went for a Thai chicken salad. A cheeky Weka tried to join us for lunch as well.

In the afternoon, we attempted a bit of snorkelling/spearfishing, but it was unfortunately very dead. The whole of the area was covered in a fine silt, and even the boulders in the shallows had no seaweed on them - all in all the marine ecosystem did not appear to be healthy... As far as marine life went, all we saw were a few little spotties, a marble fish, a couple of anorexic kina, and some starfish. Rather disappointing...

We planned to spend the night at Awaroa Bay as there was good reception (which surprised us as the rest of the Abel Tasman has nearly no reception) but the breeze and swell got up and made the whole area very uncomfortable. The increase was forecast, but being from the East we thought we'd be sheltered. Unfortunately this wasn't the case.

After a dodgy packing up of the dinghy (took three attempts to safely transfer the outboard from the dinghy onto Starling) we pulled up the anchor and headed back for the inside of Adele Island. You can see we were a bit annoyed at having to head back to the southern end of the Abel Tasman - but we very much need our beauty sleep. We had a big black backed seagull escorting us on our way down the coast - we named him Jason (Seagull).

Adele Island may be the only sheltered spot on this entire bit of coast tonight, so we have a bit of a crowd, and there's still a bit of roll, but we definitely made the right call to move when we did. Fingers crossed we can get a decent sleep tonight - forecast has the wind and swell dropping away by morning.Read more