D'Urville island

D'Urville Island

D'Urville Island is the largest island in the Marlborough Sounds, located on the northern coast of the South Island of New Zealand. It was named after the French explorer Jules Dumont d'Urville. With an area of approximately 150 square kilometres (58 sq mi), it is the eighth-largest island of New Zealand and has approx 50 residents.

The island has a rugged coastline, I only visited the West coast after sailing North from Nelson. The West coast is marked by three large inlets: 

• Port Hardy in the north, 

• Greville Harbour in the centre, and 

• Manuhakapakapa in the south. 

Greville Harbour

Greville Harbour: I think it was the highlight of my visit to the Marlborough region, it has some fantastic anchorages. I visited Greville Harbour and Port Hardy.

When you sail to Greville Harbour you may need to use some caution crossing the bar in Greville Harbour if you want to access the uper reaches and the best places to anchor, TinTin with a 2m keel and a rising tide I almost touched bottom. The water also passes over this bar at  3-4 knots but we had received some stiff rain in previous days. 

I found navionics to be more accurate than my Garmin charts for the bar crossing. I also downloaded the Satilite images for this area, this proved handy in helping to illustrate the channel. There are some markers but you still need to use caution on the approach. I was informed the bar / crossing does change with heavy rains and flooding. 

The river and anchorage I would best discribe as a cyclone hole, Mill arm, it was very peaceful, had great holding. Also Rianne and I were the only people there, midweek.

I spent a week there just chilling out and exploring in the dinghy, fresh water is available at several locations, we found a spring on the side of the valley where no walkers or housing could impact the water quality, clear fresh beautiful water.

We departed Greville Harbour for Port Hardy, timing the bar and the tides, again I found I only had 200mm under my keel at one point. We had a beautiful easy sail North on the headsail and along what I would describe as an interesting coastline. I averaged 500m to 1km offshore as I had an offshore breeze blowing the right way.

Port Hardy

Port Hardy: is a large riverine area with multiple anchorages and many that are just perfect.

I spent another few days in West Arm, it was a beautiful secluded anchorage at the Top of the Arm. Again we had the whole anchorage to ourselves and the use of several moorings. We again explored this region in the dinghy and also explored East Arm before motoring around Stephens Island to the North and further into Marlborough Sound. 

French Pass

D'Urville island is separated from the mainland by French Pass, this pass is considered dangerous by many sailors I met, water passes through at up to 8 knots during the turn of the tide. Several vortices occur near and in this passage. I would consider it more inconvenient.

I could not get the tides right without getting up in the we hours of the morning, so I just waited for a nice day and motored around the top of the island and Stephens Island in glassed-out conditions, not even a breeze. I did however feel the tides pushing TinTin around. At times I lost 2 knots. 

Should you choose to run the pass, you need to study French Pass, the tide and periods of darkness. I found it difficult to get from Nelson to the inner sound in one day in a yacht doing 5 knots. The Pass moves a lot of water. I was also trying to avoid sailing at night and just relax.

This is the reason I chose to stay at Durville Island for a couple of days, this turned into a week as it just beautiful.

Patchy

The only really sad thing to happen in D'Urville Island, was we lost Patchy. Patchy died a glorious death after endless battles with reef and rocks, the smooth calm waters of Mill Arm would prove too much. 

I had been zipping around and thinking how well our last patch was doing, it was almost 4ft, and Patchy had never planed along faster or in a more majestic location. I stopped at the yacht to add a little air before another excursion. Patchy simply exploded, the bow sunk and I decided then to retire Patchy, or risk swimming in very brisk water.

I thought we would get one more season with Patchy and TinTin, a Pacific odyssey. It was not to be, his last resting place is the Picton Landfill. Gone but not forgotten.

We then dragged the small backup soft-floor inflatable out of a locker to earn its keep, its only 2.2m. It works great as a backup dinghy or for when I have lots of people on board. One such occasion was when we were researching the Coastwatchers in PNG, I think we had 8 blokes on TinTin at one stage.

Patchy 2.0 was purchased in Picton, He is still patchless. An Alloy Nautilus rib 2.9m, best deal I've ever seen for what has been a really great little rib, its a deep V, so protects the tubes, and also has better wear patches.

I could write a whole page on dinghies, had loads of them. In short a good light 3m Rib is hard to beat. 

Safe Sailing and see you out there.

Regards Trev