Vela Huang

Today we were lucky to have Amin take a day off work (he didn't seem too upset at having to do this) to drive us around Nelson and prepare for setting sail towards the Abel Tasman. We stopped at a couple of local fruit & vege shops which had an amazing array of locally grown produce, including fresh milk straight from the farm (can't wait to make some flat whites with that!)

After we had gathered everything together and had one of the best butter chicken pies, we headed to the boat. Unfortunately this was where we ran into a hiccup.

When Nathan started the engine, we were greeted with a lovely, long, loud warning tone. After checking the panel, we had a battery warning light. On further investigation, Nathan discovered that we had no reading from our engine battery. This seemed very strange, but we were able to start our engine anyway so Nathan voted to head off to the Abel Tasman regardless and figure it all out once we were there. Intelligent and clever as always, Vela asked "what about our anchor" and we quickly scrapped the plan to head off as we had no power to our anchor winch... Bugger.

On even closer inspection, Nathan managed to find a blown fuse. So thinking a replacement fuse was all we needed, off we trotted to Burnsco. Unfortunately the new fuse immediately blew, so the problem was deeper than we were able to diagnose.

Some frantic googling and phone calls ensued and we managed to find a marine electrician who wasn't still on holiday and able to promptly pop down to visit us. After a couple of hours and managing to hunt out some electrical diagrams from online, our electrician had to call in the big guns (his boss) to help him figure out the issue.

Eventually they were able to pinpoint the issue to the extractor fan in the engine bay. The extractor fan creates a negative pressure environment in the engine bay, ensuring no nasty fumes leak into the cabins. The bearing in the fan (which is 8 years old at this point) had given way, drawing too much power and causing the fuse to blow every time we tried to turn the engine on.

By this time, it was too late to get hold of a replacement fan, so we booked another night at the marina and will have a new fan installed in the morning before setting off.

Boats... Right?

After all the excitement, it was time for Vela and Nathan to make a decision as to the rest of our journey. We have two options available to us:
Option 1 - continue South to explore Stewart Island and Fiordland
Option 2 - spend more time in the Abel Tasman and Marlborough Sounds before continuing North

After some serious consideration, we had more or less reached a decision when there was a knock on the hull. A man named Bill who also owns a Oceanis 45 (exact same make and model as Starling) had come over to say hello. After chatting for a bit, it turned out Bill was an experienced boaty and had cruised Stewart Island in the past. We asked his opinion on our decision and he said we would be too rushed to do Stewart Island and Fiordland justice. So that confirmed our thoughts and we've made the decision to keep our trip to the top of the South Island before heading up the east coast of the North Island. This allows us to spend more time in cruising hot spots such as the Coromandel and Great Barrier Island, and a possible third attempt at the Poor Knights.

Afterwards, we invited Amin and Cil down to the boat to celebrate and enjoyed a wine together while watching the sunset.Läs mer