So the airfield is closed because the b*****y drag race club are better at playing politics than the aircraft operators!! This means it is a day off for us. Now being that we are in the office soo much over the summer, we aren't that good at organising ourselves when we do get time off. However, as I'd managed to get half of Good Friday off as well, and even got motivated to get the old motorbike out of the shed for a ride, I'd ended up at Kaiteriteri (google it!!) talking with the boat operators and managed to organise a day out in the Abel Tasman National Park for FREE! I do like that word.. I guess however, that being as we're going to take them for a flight.. it is not exactly free.. feels like it though, when you turn up, and the ticket has $0 as the price.
Excellent ride up the coast with Sea Shuttle to Anchorage beach, where the 3 of us (Martin was having a day off scrub cuttint!!) got dropped off, and took the long (20min) walk over the huge (not really) hill to Te Pukatea bay.. refer photos.. this bay is what I refer to as the "designers beach" as it is the MOST spectacular symmetrical crescent shaped beach in the whole of the Abel Tasman.. so we found a place among the crowd (all of 15 people!!) sat there, opened our bottle of Siefreids Gewurztraminer, and had a picnic with crackers, cheese, ham, bread rolls, and jelly jet planes (the last supplied by Martin).. we've lived here for almost 15 years, and that was the first time we'd been to that beach.. we were not dissappointed... it really is beautiful and even the photos will not do it justice... should have taken more! next time :)
Walked off the lunch over the hill back to Anchorage where we met Tim who was the skipper of the lovely little catamaran from Abel Tasman Sailing Adventures... I've not done much sailing at all, so he may well have got sick of me asking questions about what was going on.. but it was a most enjoyable 3 hour trip back to Kaiteriteri. We had to motor out to pick up some wind, but we ended up going about 15knots and it was great fun... Amazing to be in 10 to 15 knots wind and then with almost no warning sail out of it into almost dead calm! I see these wind lines on the water all the time from 4 or 5000ft, but to be on the water and experience it was really interesting. The little cat has quite a bit of sail, and Tim assured me it was capable of going quite a bit faster, but there were about a dozen or so people of board, and apparently that does slow it down some. So having done it, we are now looking forward to spending more time especially at Te Pukatea bay.. and a big thanks to the Sea Shuttle and Abel Tasman Sailing Adventures.
oh.. and we noticed that there was no sign of that pesky little biplane doing aerobatics overhead!!!!
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