Breakfast was another jolly affair today with our American guests. Just the family of four were left today. They seemed disappointed with their evening meal the night before, so just as well we went to the Pepper Tree.
After breakfast, we said goodbye to team USA and drove to a local farm to try a spot of horse riding, NZ style. When we arrived we explained that we were intermediate riders. We mounted our horses and were off.
We had warned Fiona that here horse, Amber, was fast. He was not joking. After ten minutes, Amber decided it was time to fly. This was a turbo horse who was only stopped by the next fence and gate.
Johns horse was an altogether different story. Ziggy, behaved himself impeccably, shifting into gear when asked, but knowing when to stop.
Our leader, Jake, was a mine of information and gave us a detailed history lesson for the entire hour and a half.
After the riding, we headed back to our B&B via Smokey Joes, the local fish smoking establishment. They had a wonderful array of smoked sea life. We purchased, Salmon, muscles, tuna and Rock Fish. We intend to have salad for the next few evenings, so the fish will come in handy. Robin, our landlady, has offered us same fresh salad from her garden for our evening meal.
After a bite to eat, we dorve down to the local bay and met, Tony. He owns Tri Sail Charters, chartering a wonderful 11.2 mtr, multi hull yacht. We had chartered the boat for the afternoon.
What an amazing chap. He built the yacht himself, from scratch. IT took him four years to complete. After a quick safety check, we set sail. He was very happy to let us do much of the sailing as there were just three of us anyway.
He has done so much in his life including farming for many years. He now earns his keep chartering his yacht and doing various other seasonal jobs. For more info about his yacht, see: www.trisailcharters.co.nz/intro.html .
When we started our sail, the weather was partly sunny and quite warm. The wind was up and down like a yoyo, but this craft was happy to eek every ounce of power from the available wind. We were soon pushing 7.5 knots. Compared to single hull craft, these boats are so, so stable at speed. The cabins are huge and the even the toilets are superior to your typical yacht, with no smells and an electric flush!
As the afternoon continued the clouds rolled in and a keen but cold south easterly wind set in. We pushed 9.2 knots, visiting a very impressive muscle farm in one of the bays. They seed ropes with muscles then allow them to grow for a year on long ropes suspended by hundreds of buoys in the bay. They harvest an average of 14 tonnes of muscles every day. Some industry!
We visited dome great bays and learned a lot about sailing multi hull craft. Not so different but in some respects easier, especially has this beast had motorized main sails.
We returned to the bay for 5.30pm, cold but happy.
After showering and blogging, we had our smoked fish and salad and then settled down round the fire (yes it's cold tonight) and watched a filom called Whale Ride. Robins brother is very big in TV and Film and he directed this one which has won a heap of awards. See http://www.whaleriderthemovie.com/ for more info. Great film.
