Stewart Island Frolics
February 27, 2006 11:03 am General
I don’t think this blog entry could ever really do the island justice and indeed, Patrick’s blog gives a much better description of the wonderful week we all had down in Stewart Island [and all links are to his great photos]. Such a wonderful place, completely unspoiled and remote – quite like some of the Arann islands back home in many ways.
We packed into a van, complete with deckchairs and made our way down to Bluff, as far south as you can go. Our home was to be the Crystal Voyager, a converted fishing boat. I’ve never slept on board a boat of this size, and that first night, with a strong gale outside, it was a pretty surreal experience. The next morning we headed over to Stewart Island, with some taking the cheap seats at the back.
We had packed some kayaks on board for some paddling. It was a great chance to tag-team with Dave again. We had done some sea kayaking over in Thailand, and I’m really starting to get a bit of a buzz about it. Looking forward to hitting the rivers later this month. Along with Warrick and Dave, I think my technique has significantly improved. We just need to get the rolling right, and we had some fun times trying out some deep water rescues in the various bays. Along with the kayaking, there was plenty of tramping, drinking gin and wine, and eating venison and paua that some hunters gave us that they couldn’t store.
Another absolute highlight was the fishing. Having moored in one of the bays, Gordon, Barry and myself headed out in the kayaks to see what we could catch. After a pretty frustrating hour or two, we finally decided to bait up the lines with some mussel and limpet – a couple of hours later, we had a few spotties that would do great bait for some larger fish. A couple of days later, Warrick and myself headed out in the dingy and had a magical couple of hours – drift after drift, with tingling lines and Warrick whacking them over the head with the end of an oar. Lots of fresh cod for the morning, and Wayne duely battered them up and cooked some hot chips. Yummy. I think I’ll have to take the rod out on a few more trips. The fishing didn’t stop there [Barracuda and Shark makes good bait], and we came up with fresh fillets from about 50+ cod to divide up and take home – lots of nice filleting practice too, which was cool.
