27 Mar 2013

Northward Bound

We departed Lyttelton at 0600 hrs yesterday and leisurely made our way to Pegasus Bay where we dropped anchor for a couple of hours to do some chumming. After lunch we continued our journey north via the Kaikoura Trench and started chumming again. This time we attracted a large number of sea birds such as Cape Petrel, Bullers Shearwaters, Bullers Albatross, Royal Albatross, Salvins Albatross and White-capped Albatross. We then passed through Cook Strait and are now making our way up the West coast of New Zealand's North Island. It was a great day for those with an interest in cetaceans as we saw four Blue Whales (quite rare in these parts) and a pod of Orca - one male with a 2 metre dorsal fin! All is well on board, everyone seems to be spending all daylight hours on deck and is excited to be on their way to the Western Pacific.