Into the Sounds! (Through French Pass)

Today was a bit of a big one. We made the hop from Tasman Bay into the sounds. Nerves were a little bit high, because to gain entry, we had to travel through French Pass.

French Pass is a very narrow channel between the top of the Sounds and D'Urville Island. The navigable section is about 100m wide, and if you traverse it while it's at its strongest you can experience currents up to 7 knots, whirlpools, eddies, and many strange phenomena caused by the strong current and irregular sea floor.

We had been doing our research on the pass, obviously it's safest to travel through at slack water, but the window is only about 20 minutes. Due to a bit of an uncomfortable anchorage, Nathan was awake at 3am and went over all the documents and tide charts again.

After doing some travel maths and allowing for a bit of safety time, we set off from Okiwi Bay. As we approached French Pass, we saw another yacht, Syzygy, coming through the pass from the other direction. Their speed on AIS jumped from around 6kt to over 9kt as they went through. Nathan radioed them to ask about the conditions, and they confirmed that we had our calculations and notes correct and our timing for slack water was right. Phew!

Feeling better about everything, we slowed down a little to time everything correctly, had a bite of lunch and continued to approach. All in all it was a very uneventful passage (the result of good planning) and we pushed into only 1kt of current - we had experienced significantly more going around Cape Reinga. There were a few eddies and whirlpools which pushed us around a little, but nothing we couldn't handle.

After heading through, we started navigating up Pelorus Sound, heading towards Havelock where we have a berth booked for tomorrow night. The landscape is very different to the Abel Tasman with tall mountains, narrow passages, and a lot more bird life (we must have dodged over 30 little blue penguins). We stopped overnight in Wilson Bay and enjoyed a fantastically calm and picturesque anchorage - now it's time to catch some fish!Read more