Cook Strait Crossing – Wellington to Ngaruru Bay – 8 Sept 2022

Crew: Geoff, Eduardo, Murray.

The forecast was looking good for the crossing on Thursday. Grenadier and Tamerlane were to sail with us in convoy. The plan is to spend Thursday night at Ngaruru Bay in Tory Channel and then sail down Queen Charlotte Sound into Picton on Friday morning to drop off those who need to get back to Wellington.

Cook Coastal Forecast: Variable 10 knots. Southeast 15 knots developing late morning. Sea slight. Long period southerly swell 2 metres, easing.
Predictwind forecast: Morning: NE 2–7 knots veering S 2-7 knots. Afternoon: S 5 knots increasing to 13 knots. Evrning: SE 9–14 knots.

Eduardo and Murray joined Geoff at Chaffers at 1030 hrs to pack the boat and do a safety briefing before we cast off at 11.30 hrs closely followed by Tamerlane.

We did our VHF call to Maritime Radio on ch. 16 to log our Trip Report with an expected ETA of 1900 hrs. We then rigged up the No. 3 jib and motor sailed out of Lambton Harbour joining up with Grenadier at Point Halswell.

With a head wind through the Wellington Heads we kept the engine on and passed through Chaffers Passage at 1240 hrs.

Once we rounded Palmer Head we were able to turn off the engine and sail towards Sinclair Head which is the entrance to the infamous Karori Rip. The fairly heavy seas and southerly wind combined to push us closer to the lee shore than the route we had planned. Looking at the track later we saw that we were 1 mile off Sinclair Head at 1340 hrs and just 0.5 mile off Thoms Rock.

We sailed through the expected ‘washing machine’ seas of Karori Rip at about 7 kts with the tide pushing us along.

At 1428 hrs we passed Karori Rock lighthouse which usually signals the end of the rip. We expected the rough seas to abate but it just continued the same for the rest of the Cook Strait which made for a fairly bouncy ride.

We put a reef in the mainsail which helped.

Halo as filmed by Rob on Tamerlane:

We entered Tory Channel at 1642 hrs after making the ‘All Ships’ call on both ch. 18 (Picton Harbour Radio) and ch. 16. Once inside the calm of Tory Channel we motored-sailed down to Ngaruru Bay to join Grenadier and Tamerlane on the club mooring at 1733 hrs.