Stewart Island part 7, dinghy expeditions

One of our favourite things to do in Stewart Island was dinghy exploring. There are tons of rivers, creeks, bays and the like that are just waiting to be explored. I often wished we had a kayak, as that would be the ideal way to explore, but Cherry and the two horse powered outboard do the job, just a bit more noisy than a paddle would.

Some of the rivers are huge and would take whole days to fully explore, like the Lords River on the map below. We only explored a small part of it, as indicated by the arrows and it still took us a couple of hours.  Rivers and creeks are by nature very protected, so the water is often mirror like. Add super clear water and lots of fish and seaweed, it was just so pretty. 

Other times it wasn’t just for fun, but we actually had to find fresh water. A good way is to look at the topo map, as that has all creeks on it. Stewart Island's water has a brown taint (varying how much), but apparently that doesn’t matter and we must admit it tasted fine. Only once (typically the only time we didn’t taste the water beforehand) did we get some weird tasting water which we filled it into one of the tanks, ups. It took over an hour to pump it out again through our only foot pump! Good lesson.

The next three photos are from the same spot where we filled water. First me catching the water, then Phil with the dinghy, and the last one is just above the ‘water fall’. It was like magic there, green and lush and beautiful drinking water!

This bay is Glory Bay in Paterson Inlet. It’s a huge bay with good protection. The two boats just visible are the American boat we met in Port Pegasus and a Swedish boat. Sophia is further back in the anchorage, out of sight. It therefore made it the most crowded anchorage we had the whole time in Stewart Island.  Not bad going.