Video Blog Mk1

Hi All,

Thought I'd try and post a video for this blog. Still trying to get the hang of putting the shots together and uploading it so you can see and hopefully hear it ok. A few scenes in this one are a bit noisy due to the wind but as I get more practice at it the video blogs should get a bit slicker! I was also recovering from a hangover and really needed to go to the loo so bear with me on this first one!

Love

Nick

Summer Hols Part 1

I've had to break up this write up into several 'chapters' as I write it otherwise you may well still be reading it by the time I see you next!

Following tradition, I'll start at the beginning with the Stag weekend for my colleague and good friend Steve and will get to the trip in the Abel Tasman and wedding in due course.

Steve and I flew from Auckland to Blenheim at the top of the Sorth Island on an 18 seater turboprop, the approach into Blenheim was stunning as it followed the Queen Charlotte Sound, sort of like flying down Loch Ness, before popping out over the plains surrounding Blenheim. The plains are covered in vineyards as far as the eye can see and the whole area is surrounded by large, dry looking hills reminiscent of the Napa Valley in California, which I suppose is why they make wine here too! One thing that struck me the most about the scenery was that in the 50km that separates Queen Charlotte Sound and Blenheim the landscape changes from lush green, wooded hills to dry dusty plains and sun scorched hills. I’ll spare you the details of the stag night in Blenheim, suffice to say I think we entertained numerous locals with our drunken antics and none of us got hurt in the process.

The following morning we rose at 6am (approximately two hours after going to bed…) to head to Picton to catch a fishing day long fishing charter. Whilst the sea air was just the ticket for a fuzzy head the motion of the ocean was too much for some tender digestive systems. Gravity was defied and the seagulls were grateful for the fast food dinners and breakfasts that one or two of the party had consumed. The charter took us out of the Marlborough Sounds and into the Cook Strait to fish and after limited success at the first spot the captain offered myself and one of the other guys who’d brought our wetsuits and dive gear to hop in for a spearfish. Brett had bought all his spearing gear and I had everything except the gun which I was able to borrow from the deckhand.

The frigid water of the Strait numbed my face instantly and very kindly blew away a few remaining cobwebs from the night before. The visibility was around 3-4m and neither Brett or I saw too much for the 1^st twenty minutes. After swimming a little way along the rocky coastline I dived down and found a Blue Moki which I promptly shot, it was about 7-8lbs. Two minutes later I saw an even bigger one and took that for dinner too. Brett found some Paua amongst the rock (Paua are a type of shell fish which have a black muscle like flesh that some people consider a delicacy, personally I found it quite tough and a bit over rated, the inside of the shell is nice though it's got all sorts of colours in it and is often used to make jewellry) so after measuring them carefully we took the legal ones and headed back to the boat.

We continued to fish all day with some success, I caught two Blue Cod, some of the guys caught small sharks which we threw back, one caught a large grouper and a few other species were caught and returned.

Steve fishing for Grouper off the back of the boat

By the end of the day two of the boys were still bent double over the side, the BBQ, toast and cups of tea we’d been furnished with by the deckhand enjoyed for a second time by the local wildlife. The charter dropped us off at Steve’s father in law to be’s ‘bach’ which you can only get to by boat, it was raining and we were tires but our haul of fish made for a feast at dinner before the drinking commenced again…

The boat we chartered moored at the jetty below the bach

We stayed at the bach from Saturday evening till midday on Monday. The weather was sunny for the most part with a few clouds floating about here and there. One evening we all went down to the jetty and stirred the water up to see the phosphorescence which are little plankton type things that are visible to the eye only at night and only when they are disturbed. Jumping in the water is a good way to disturb them so myself and one of the other fellas went for a dip and lit up the water with billions of tiny green glowing lights. I can’t describe it well enough to do it justice and I don’t have any pictures but despite it being a bit nippy I’d do it again in a heartbeat!

On the Sunday afternoon after a slow start to the day and having allowed enough time for a big breakfast to settle, three of us set out to gather scallops. I love eating scallops and luckily I can dive well enough to gather them too so I’d volunteered to bring my suit on this weekend for this purpose. The bach has its own ‘tinnie’, an aluminium boat with a small motor on the back of it. Steve set the boat up and Brett and I suited up, jumped in and we set off for the other side of the bay where Steve has scuba dived for scallops before. Having a touch too much alcohol in his bloodstream and no body else to scuba dive with Steve manned the tinnie while Brett and I looked all over for scallops. I was getting down to around 12-14m but wasn’t having any luck. We left that spot empty handed and tried our luck at another spot. I successfully gathered one scallop from the second spot, not enough to feed ten strapping lads though. Third time lucky and we moved to a spot just below the hill the bach was located on. This time in about 11-12m of water I found a good sized bed of scallops and spent the next hour or two gathering about 80 scallops (scallop limits in the Sounds permit 50 per diver and 50 for the boat assuming it’s crewed) That evening we feasted on scallops wrapped in bacon and scallops baked in garlic butter – delicious!

Breakfast time at the bach!

The water taxi picked us up from the jetty at Monday lunch time and we headed back to Picton to go our separate ways. Kieran (another work colleague) and I were able to get a lift to Nelson where we stayed in a youth hostel before heading to the Abel Tasman on the Tuesday.

Christmas Hols

Happy New Year to you all!

I hope that you all enjoyed the festive break? I've got some stories from mine that I thought you might like to hear/see.

I spent this Christmas with Evelien's family again in their new beach house in a place called Waihi Beach on the East coast of the North Island just at the bottom of the Coramandel Penninsula. It was nice to get away from it all and recharge my batteries, I spent the vast majority of Christmas eve asleep on the sofa, my body and mind just gave out and it felt great to just be able to relax with nothing pressing to do. In hindsight it's probably been my first holiday where I've just been able to relax and not go anywhere for a long time.

On Christmas day Evelien, her Dad Gerald and I walked round the coast to a beach and went for a swim in the waves, keen not to loose all my fitness over the holidays I decided to run the 7.5k home over the cliffs and along the beach and I beat Evelien and her dad who drove half of it! We had to wait till Evelien's brother and his fiancee arrived late afternoon to start our present opening which was the point where I felt really fortunate to have been 'adopted' by Evelien's family, Evelien's mum Sonja had made us each a Christmas stocking with some small goodies in and it was just nice to open presents in a family environment. I received enough Chocolate to sink a ship and amazingly none of it had melted despite it sitting in my hot car for a few days prior to Christmas. That evening we had a meal at the neighbours house who have known Sonja and Gerald since they moved to NZ 30 years ago, the dinner was reciprocated at our place on boxing day where we had fondu which I thought was just a chocolate or cheese dip meal but these were big pots of oil which we cooked various meats in. The rest of my time at the beach was spent reading, walking, swimming and sleeping!

On the 27th I drove back to Auckland late in the afternoon to get ready for a spearfishing trip up north with my hockey mate Ben who lives in Wellington. I loaded my kayak onto the roof of the car and picked Ben up at 8am on the 28th from his mum's place in Auckland. We packed all our camping and fishing gear in my car, loaded his kayak onto the roof and set off on the four hour journey north to a place called Bland Bay stocking up on provisions on the way. We arrived at the camp site in the early afternoon and set up in the caravan that we were borrowing from another hockey mate before setting out for a quick dive. The weather wasn't great and there was quite a swell so after being bounced around in a bit of a washing machine looking for crayfish we swam for a more sheltered area on the other side of a bay. The visibility was approx 3-4m which isn't great for sneaking up on fish, of which we saw very few of anyway!

Having been out for about 3 hours or so we decided to cut our losses and swim home, I was pretty sick of the taste of seawater by this point and tired from the drive so when we stopped in the middle of the bay because Ben wanted to explore a rock a few metres below us I was less than impressed. Ben went exploring one side of this rock and went for a dive round the other. As luck would have it I dived down more or less on top of a nice sized Kingfish, I was only down about 3m and he cruised within a few metres of me, his distinctive yellow tail clearly visible in the mirky water. I tried to follow him looking for a good shot but with his back to me there was precious little to shoot at. Just when I thought he was going to dissapear I saw him turn and swim back around infront of me for a second look, he was right on the edge of my vision and I could only see a faint glow from his yellow tail.

All this was happening very quickly and without really thinking I took aim at roughly where I thought his head was and pulled the trigger. The speargun makes a 'clack' when the powerful rubber bands launch the spear in the direction you're pointing the gun, immediatly after the clack I was surprised and really excited to have the gun pulled from my grip and dissapear in the direction of the fish as the line connecting the gun to the float on the surface danced infront of me. I shot to the surface for a breath to find Ben looking in my direction, he'd heard the 'clack' whilst trying to reach a crayfish at the back of a crack and had surfaced to find out what was going on. Whilst I should probably have been more concerned about the gun and float tearing accross the ocean I couldn't help bursting into a huge grin and telling Ben I 'thought' I'd shot a Kingy!

I don't think he believed me so he popped down for a closer look and saw the line dancing around beneath the surface. We swam after it and found the Kingy putting up a decent fight despite having a metre long spear through it's side just behind it's head. At this point Ben, who is considerably more experienced at this than myself, rugby tackled the Kingfish which was a shade over a metre long and brought it to the surface. The trick then is to hook the fish to your float line before removing the spear so it doesn't escape and do a runner on you. We removed the spear and tried to finnish the fish off by pushing my dive knife through it's skull, this didn't seem to work as theory would suggest and with blood and guts filtering out of our quarry we were conscious that we were now offering quite an attractive feed to any passing sharks so we decided to swim the fish back to shore and sort it out there. I reloaded the gun, more for peace of mind than any practical use at this point and Ben and I swam back side by side so as to appear a much bigger (and therefore difficult) target for any peckish sharks.

After about four hours of gutting and cutting we had several steaks and two huge fillets! We gave a side of fish to the campsite owners and a few steaks to our neighbours before cooking up our own steaks for dinner. The steaks were huge and neither Ben or I could finnish them! The very best part of the whole experience was taking a fillet to the local Fish & Chip shop the next day, getting them to batter it and eating it with chips by the beach for lunch! mmmm mmmmmmm!

The rest of the trip was a lot of fun, we rigged up our kayaks with spearfishing gear and kayaked about a bit, fished a bit, kayaked a bit, fished a bit more for the next few days. After shooting the Kingfish and eating it for just about every meal for three days I got a bit fussy about what fish to shoot and only shot one other fish the whole holiday (although I did miss a few too!)!

Now it's back to work not to mention look for a place to live, all three of my flatmates are moving overseas in the next month or two and our landlord wants his house back so we're leaving here at the end of next week. I've got two places on the cards at the moment and really just have to make a decision!

Next Friday I fly down to Blenheim on the South Island for my friend Steve's stag weekend in the Marlborough Sounds followed by a few days camping and hiking in the Abel Tasman National Park before heading back to Wellington to do the Harbour Swim there in the morning before racing up to the wedding in the Wairapa in the afternoon! Hopefully when I get back up I'll be moving into my new place and I'll be able to give you my new address!

I hop this finds you all well and not asleep from the length of this one!

Lots of Love

Nick

Coming up