Easter Holidays

Here is a view of the Beautiful Marlborough Sounds, where we spent a fantastic 4 days out fishing and relaxing. We drove up to Havelock on Thursday, driving through the beautiful Canterbury plains before hitting the stunning, rugged coastline around Kaikoura. Josh was an absolute star on the journey singing songs and telling dad to climb up the mountain with his carpet machine and clean the snow off!!!!!

We met Bruce and Susanne at the Foxy Lady and settled in for the night, Josh was so excited about sleeping on the boat and went to sleep immediately, thoughts of fishing filling his head! We all slept in the same cabin, me and Josh in the double bed and Brent up in the bunk above us. Josh thought that this was hilarious as Dad kept hitting his head on the roof!

We set sail early next morning for Paradise Bay and then out to the outer sounds and into the cook straight. We fished and relaxed and relaxed and fished, drank tea (and beer) read books, chatted and mucked about really. Our first haul of Cod was a good one and we caught some really big ones and well as some barracuda and a couple of Sharks (which we threw back).

While Brent and I were busy catching dinner Josh was busy learning how to be a ships captain. As you can well imagine he was a bit chuffed about having the chance to skipper the boat and every time Bruce left his chair Josh jumped straight in. I think almost every pic I have of Josh from the weekend is of him in that chair. Lots of buttons and monitors to look at, depth gauges and a ships bell!

We whiled away the entire weekend in much the same way! Bruce taught me how to fillet fish! and yes I did it - major mile stone in my life and I HATE fish. My fear of touching them (dead) now well and truly over (having gutted about 60 over the weekend) maybe next trip I will master how to take a live one off the hook.

We experienced a real magic moment on the way back towards Havelock - we sighted Dolphins. We all rushed up to the bow of the boat, there were hundreds of Bottle nosed dolphins swimming into the boat from every direction, leaping out of the water and riding on the bow waves. Just an incredible sight, babies and adults turning to look up at us. Unfortunately no pics as my camera ran out of batteries!
A truly wonderful weekend had by all.