Thursday - Eastern route

Depart Havelock Marina at 9:30am. We cruise out for 30 minutes to our first stop at Whatanihi. This jetty serves a small community of families who anxiously wait for their mail each week. Here you may meet one of the young children who take part in the Correspondence Schooling Programme.

From there we cross to the eastern side of Pelorus Sound on to Nikau Bay. Here you will see the first of many mussel farms and will learn about how they grow and are harvested and what they mean to the town of Havelock.

One of the next stops is Pokokini, the oldest farm homestead in Pelorus Sound. It was built in the 1860s and remains a beautiful spot with a wide variety of trees, vegetation, fruit and vegetables growing in abundance. We moor up at a rustic old pier complete with cargo shed where, in the 1800s, the cream was loaded on to the mail boat to be taken to the Butter Factory in Paradise Bay.

We then stop at the gannet colony to watch parent birds tending to their chicks and socialising very loudly. On this trip we often see dolphins, seals and the many blue penguins in the area. You have to be quick to spot the penguins as they tend to dive down under the water when they see us coming.

On the way home, we are often able to stop off at Jacobs Bay and go ashore. Here you can wander through the last remaining patch of virgin forest which was set aside as reserve in the 1860s. We’ll tell you about Dillon Bell and why he was so important to this place.

Return to Havelock approx. 3.30pm.