Motor in windless conditions, approach French Pass bang on slack, thanks to Jim’s expert planning. It’s still a little nerve-wracking but we throttle up and squeeze through, very exciting! Immediately past the squeeze bobbing in the swirly currents is a small fishing boat. It’s the blokes staying at the wilderness resort, so all smiles and waves!

By noon we have wind, so shhh the engine and run up all our white sails. We swoosh along gloriously. Eat lunch accompanied by the lullaby of peaceful gurgling of waves.

Dolphins! Mainly full grown but a few young’uns too. Such a marvellous greeting and joyous sight! Hard to capture the magic with a single photo but here’s one to give you a glimpse.

The waves steepen over the course of the afternoon until the sea is quite lumpy and the sails are flopping about. Engine on. Furl in the foresails and turn into wind to lower the main. Pwoof!! The bow plows in deeply to a steep incoming wave. More throttle and round about, hobbyhorsing into Nelson harbour.

The entrance to the harbour is a dredged channel. There are two sequential sets of range marks to line up and carefully follow in. In addition to the sea state being at its worst, the wind is also at its peak of afternoon intensity. Kinda the most challenging time of the day to arrive!

Jim docks perfectly but the process is not without some drama as the spring dock line was looped around the genoa sheet making things a little tricky! Plus the dock has no cleats, only fore and aft rings which are meddlesome to use.

After we are hooked up to wifi we get an email advising us that a local photographer perched on a hill overlooking the harbour took photos of us (tagging our MMSI 316 014 991) while we were inward bound! https://www.marinetraffic.com/en/photos/picture/ships/3402120/shipid:381924