Patterson Inlet – Little Glory

The next morning dawned grey (a pretty much continual state of affairs on Stuart) so the pictures taken on our trip from Half Moon Bay to Patterson Inlet lacked much contrast. Patterson Inlet is the next inlet south of Half Moon and the following pictures were taken on the trip down.

Our destination anchorage was Little Glory which was written up in our cruising guide. Talking to a number of local folks, they confirmed that Little Glory was an excellent all weather anchorage.

Once at anchor, we launched the Beer Can to explore a local track not far from our anchorage.

You might notice a stern line in this shot of Iron lady. While not strictly necessary in this anchorage, we were beginning to practice med mooring in preparation for Fiordland where it is an absolute necessity. I will be doing a full post on our system, but the gist is to deploy the anchor and then tie the stern off to a rock or sturdy tree on shore to hold the boat in a fixed position. More on this in a future post.

As the day progressed, the sun came out and we caught these fellows enjoying the sun and settled weather.

Our trek took us across a peninsula to a beach on the Foveaux Straight.

This as we approached the beach side.

Not another soul to be seen anywhere either on our trek or at the anchorage.

Joe needs a haircut – seems he gained some dreadlocks somewhere.

There is a weka in this shot – a ground bird somewhat like a chicken – but he is tough to see.

We also hunted for the elusive Kiwi – this is as close as we came.

I actually suspect that Kiwis fall in the same category as the mythical snipe that tenderfoot campers are sent out to round up at night at summer camp (remember those days?). At Camp Kon O Kwee, we were all warned before our nighttime excursion to watch out for the snattle rakes as they were fairly dangerous critters that inhabited snipe country.

Nope – we didn’t see any snattle rakes on Stuart Island either, but it was another great day.