With a gale out for the whole area, the Awarua radio chaps were very thorough. The news and traffic to small ships, dozens of which were in the Fiords crayfishing, was put back some 45 minutes. Of that we were unaware at the time. The traffic between us was taped and not less than four attempts to determine our bearing were necessary. Once believing this to be an easy business I now know better. The position line resulting from our faint signal we were to the westward of Steward Island, but this did not agree with our DR which placed us to the south of Stewart Island and which proved subsequently to be correct.
That night we lay ahull and after carefully going over the log, Jill and I concluded that the DR was the most reliable indication of our position and before dawn we set the inner staysail and then the small jib and steered to the north east. Jill at the wheel, the drowned APE being byond resuscitation, sighted what appeared to be mountain peaks early in the day.
Progressively raising sail we steered all that day towards a mountainous coast. Long discussions ensued. If it was Fiordland, where were Solander and Stewart Island'? If Stewart Island we must beware of the Traps. The land, which upon inspection revealed itself to conform to the shape of the south coast of Stewart Island, looked magnificent as we raced along a bare half mile off. It was Port Pegasus or the bush, before dark for us and we unrolled more and more main in a fabulous sail with breaking crests and wheeling seabirds about it.
The engine fired up reliably at the narrow southern entrance and we turned and beat painfully under sail and engine, into our first introduction to the ferocious winds that can funnel out of the fiords and channels of N.Z.
Barely discernable in the gathering dark were the features of Port Pegasus, roughly conforming to the 1849 chart of Captain Stokes in the Acheron, still the latest. Jill had providentially produced this essential chart from her drawer of navigational goodies. This confirmed good advice that we had had, that being, that one should not be too parsimonious when ordering charts for a proposed cruise. Deserted and quite unchanged from their original state the arms of this dark harbour reach away between rugged ranges. The anchor a 501b CQR which we have ready to go when within five miles of land, roared away and eagerly bit into N.Z.
That night of March 21, my birthday, was spent enjoying a magnificent dinner of soup, chicken, vegetables, plum pudding and champagne. While the yacht sheered about as if in acknowledgement of a south-west gale outside, we slept the sleep of the just, unaware that the men of Awarua Radio, with no answer now from our defunct radio, fearing that we were on a lee shore, had notified the Search and Rescue Organisation who swung into action immediately.