HAWK is provisioned, her tanks are full, her bottom is clean, and Evans and I are ready for some sea time! We'll be heading out sometime in the next few days on the first of three legs to reach Vancouver. We'll leave Dunedin and run east in the Roaring Forties until we get close to the longitude of Tahiti, then we'll turn north. We're aiming to make our first landfall at Raevevae in the Austral Islands, reputed to be one of the most beautiful islands in all of the Pacific. While Evans got a brief taste of the tropics last June during his quick trip to Fiji, it has been three and a half years since I've been in warm waters. We're both looking forward to sandy beaches, tropical lagoons, bright sunshine, snorkeling and swimming, and some Polynesian culture. From there, we're planning to head to Tahiti, Hawaii and then on to Vancouver, arriving at the end of the northern summer.

We've very much enjoyed our South Island adventures. In the last HAWK update, I talked a bit about the fiords. We spent almost as much time on Stewart Island, the large island just off the bottom of New Zealand's South Island. The land was a real contrast to the fiords, low rolling hills covered with scrub and punctuated by bare granite domes of rock that rose to 1,000 feet or more. It reminded us of Newfoundland or the Outer Hebrides in Scotland, and the main town is in fact named Oban in tribute to the other Oban HAWK has visited, in Scotland's Inner Hebrides. Two large inlets each with dozens of anchorages project into the east coast of this island, and it is a wildlife paradise. In Port Pegasus, the uninhabited inlet at the bottom of the island, fur seals played tag with me every time I went rowing in the dinghy. Yellow-eyed penguins, the rarest of the penguin species and the largest penguin in New Zealand, and Blue penguins, the little penguins known as Fairy penguins in Australia, swam circles around the boat and fished in the lagoon.

Dunedin is a lovely town full of wonderful stone buildings built by Scottish masons seeking to recreate their beloved homeland. Dunedin is Gaelic for Edinburgh, and the town center has been laid out in reminiscence of the Scottish capital, around a central octagon with the same street names. Once the staging point for the South Island gold rush and the largest city in New Zealand, Dunedin is now a university town of about 120,000. The town sits at the head of a ten-mile long winding estuary bordered by two long peninsulas made up of rocky hills and rolling fields. The highlight of our stay, for me, was a wildlife tour we took to see the Royal albatrosses that breed at Tairoa Head at the seaward end of the southern peninsula. This is one of the only mainland breeding colonies in the world, and the only one within a dozen miles of a large city.

The Royal Albatross Observatory has been working to maximize the number of fledglings the colony produces since its inception in the 1930s. About ten years before that, a few adolescent albatrosses missed the Chatham Islands and ended up here. They were having no success breeding, for this area is far less isolated, much further north and much warmer than any other breeding colony. Predators were taking eggs and chicks, blowflies were causing infections, and the heat was overcoming many adults. With a great deal of intervention, the colony now consists of 50-60 breeding adults, and this year they will fledge 20 chicks. It seems right and fitting to me that these birds should serve as ambassadors for their kind, for the colony would not exist today if man had not intervened. We have been fortunate enough to spend almost unlimited amounts of time with albatrosses at sea, but most people never get the chance to see them. I was so gratified to see the reactions of the visitors, who gasped as a Royal albatross crested the hill twenty feet over our heads and pointed excitedly as it turned and glided down toward the sea.

On the same tour, we visited a Yellow-eyed penguin colony on private land. The farmer who owns the land has learned that penguins are better business than cattle and sheep, and has begun fencing in large areas and replanting native vegetation to increase the population. Visitors are limited to those who come on tours with guides that enforce certain rules and ensure that the animals are not stressed. Since eco-tourism of the penguins started a decade ago, the colony has increased from 60 to 120 breeding adults. I felt uplifted after this tour ?it seems there are so very few success stories when it comes to endangered species.

We'll be out of e-mail contact for the next couple of months, probably until we reach Hawaii. But know we're thinking of you as we make our way north and looking forward to seeing some of you in the next year when we'll be spending some time in the States.

Fair winds and safe anchorages,
Beth and Evans
s/v HAWK