Stewart – Oban

Once we had the anchor adventure sorted it was time to head to town.

Our cruising guide to Stewart Island by the Mana Cruising Club strongly recommends that you complete your affairs in Oban and head for more protected waters as soon as possible. Half Moon Bay is exposed to the weather and would be no place to be in a blow.

The population of Stewart Island is concentrated in Oban and numbers something under 500 people. The center of town sports a 4 Square grocery, the Hotel and local watering hole, the visitors center and a small museum which looked interesting but was closed.

We stopped by the visitors center and rented a car for the next day to tour all of Stuarts 10 miles of roads – about half of which you are permitted to take the rental car on. The rest of Stewart is accessible only by boat.

Then it was back to the boat to grab the fishing gear as we had a hankering for blue cod for dinner. Joe and I headed just outside Half Moon and dropped the anchor on Beer Can and it took only a few minutes to pick up dinner. There is a “slot” limit on blue cod and we tried to comply, but the locals promptly finished off anything that we tried to throw back in (with a vengeance and much squawking and squabbling).

Meanwhile, back at the ranch (I mean boat), Deb was preparing for a feast while we (I mean Joe) cleaned up the fish.

The Kiwis have a really great smoker that users denatured alcohol and wood chips to smoke things in around 30 minutes. Some of our blue cod went into the smoker with Manuka wood chips (even better then mesquite).

So to commemorate our voyage to almost 50 south, we had smoked blue cod, pan sautéed blue cod in Panko break crumbs, sautéed zucchini and onions, and roasted kumara (I have no idea why we can’t get it here in the US as it is FAR better then potato or sweet potato). And, oh yes, a bit of nice red wine. (That red wine in the background must have been left over – right?)

The good ship Iron Lady and crew slept well after a very long but good day.

Next post will be on our Rent-a-Rat adventure.