Sailing the Sounds of Silence

The motor off, the ship-to-shore radio silent, our boat glided through mirroring waters and eased past a promontory of nearly vertical forested mountains. In front of us was a giant geologic amphitheater, the head of Dusky Inlet fiord. The 11 passengers on the 65-foot ketch, Breaksea Girl, fell silent and ceased all activity--even breathing, some said. The emotional impact of such magnificence--the steep-sided granite bowl duplicated in a sapphire mirror--stirred everyone. My vision blurred as tears welled in my eyes.

Although we had spent hours sailing through miles of senses-arousing scenery, our skipper knew how Dusky Inlet would affect us and had made it the finale of our day.

We were at the halfway mark of a seven-day exploration of the fiords that penetrate the southwest coast of New Zealand’s South Island.

Five hundred million years ago, great crevasses in the Earth were created by our planet’s convulsions. During various ice ages over the past 2 million years, these immense fissures were scoured by glaciers into fiords opening to the sea. Fiordland park has 14, all pristine and unique, earning the World Heritage Area designation.

Dusk was flooding the Dusky fiord, and we sailed into a cove for the night. Our anchorage was surrounded on three sides by the lush slopes of one of the major nontropical rain forests of the world.

Our sturdy ship routinely carries scientists, naturalists and others on research missions. Skipper Dave Shaw and his wife, Ruth, are longtime defenders of the environment, and they run Fiordland Ecology Tours as low-impact educational--and entertaining--encounters with their unique world.

We had planned the cruise as the highlight of a six-week tour of New Zealand last fall (spring in the Southern Hemisphere). My wife, Pat, and I, and her son, Mike, and his wife, Ann, were celebrating wedding anniversaries. Mike and Ann have spent a lot of time in New Zealand and will move there later this year. Their son, Sean, joined us for a break from his job in Northern California.

Pat and I care about sound environmental management in national policy planning, but we’re not activists. We had some concern initially that we might find ourselves confined on a small boat for a week with overwrought environmental crusaders; we were relieved to meet passengers who shared our level of interest. There were two other married couples and two single women, one of whom, a physician, was also a financial backer of Breaksea Girl. All together, we were six Yanks and five Kiwis.

Shaw was an excellent mentor, and his comments about the history and biosystems of the fiords and his answers to our questions left us feeling educated and sympathetic to preservation efforts.

The voyage began on a perfect spring Sunday morning in late November. We convened at Fiordland Travel (booking agent for Fiordland Ecology Tours) in the town of Te Anau on Lake Manapouri. First business: Decide which luggage to leave. Pat and I reduced six weeks’ worth to two compact garment bags and two duffel bags to take on the boat.

From there, a high-speed ferry took us across the lovely mountain-ringed lake and delivered us to a bus for a half-hour trip down a steep road to Deep Cove, the head of Doubtful Sound fiord (named after an Australian hearing aid company, according to our comedian bus driver; in fact, Capt. James Cook named it in 1770).

There, Breaksea Girl bobbed in welcome. After moving all luggage and ship’s supplies onto the deck of the neat, solid-looking boat, Shaw gave us the required safety instructions and cautions, then made bunk assignments.

Pat and I, being senior among the passengers, were given the only double bunk. We felt guilty because one young couple was on their honeymoon. But we learned later that their wedding formalized a longtime living arrangement, and the gallantry urge dissipated.

The crew consisted of a licensed first mate and his wife, a galley magician who produced consistently excellent meals, including breakfasts cooked to order. Here we encountered the one negative of the trip: The three vegetarians in the group got make-do substitutes, not vegetarian cuisine as requested. On the positive side (for the meat eaters): With our location across the international date line, we were among the first Americans to sit down to a Thanksgiving feast that Thursday--roast lamb with mint sauce and steamed pudding for dessert. Although not provided by Breaksea Girl, beer and wine and even champagne appeared and were shared.

Once we were underway, Shaw, a veteran mariner and former worker for the Fiordland Park Service, outlined our cruise. We would sail westerly an hour and a half to exit Doubtful Sound fiord, enter the Tasman Sea, then sail south about 6 1/2 hours to Preservation Inlet fiord. He suggested that we start any medication we might have brought along for motion sickness. “Don’t be embarrassed if you get sick,” he said reassuringly. “Even I do, and I’ve sailed the Tasman for 13 years.”

Pat and Ann suffered a few spells on the open stretches.

The Tasman Sea is never serene. It lies in a region known to sailors as the “Roaring 40s,” a latitude range in which strong winds, accelerated and churned by weather systems spawned in the Antarctic, circle the globe unobstructed by major landmasses.

We arrived at our first anchorage fiord about 10:30 p.m. It was spring, and at that latitude enough twilight remained to silhouette the fiord’s peaks, which seemed almost overhead. The calm cured all queasiness. Sleep came quickly.

The next morning, the daily routine began. Around 6:30 the ship’s generator rumbled to life to heat water and power the galley for breakfast. The boat had two dining areas: in the saloon near the helm and above the deck in an enclosed area with 360-degree views.

During the day, passengers could assist with the sails or at the helm or merely observe spectacular scenery. Mealtimes were occasions for long discussions. Yanks and Kiwis enjoyed instant compatibility. New Zealanders’ exceptional civility is a common trait, along with great friendliness. Soon a kind of family cohesion developed among all aboard, passengers and crew.

Emerging topside the first morning, I felt as though we were on an expedition. The skipper briefed us on where we were, what we were seeing and what we could expect that day. First was the remarkable geography and climate of the area. Within sight were glaciers, hanging valleys, waterfalls and rain forest dense with ferns, orchids, deciduous and coniferous trees, mosses, parasitic and symbiotic plants and vines. Endless canopies of trees that succeed in reaching for maximum sunlight create an ethereal undergrowth of shadow-adapted plants. All survive in a delicate balance.

Although we saw virtually no rain, Fiordland gets more than 200 inches annually. The mountains into which the fiords penetrate force the moist, constant west winds to rise and cool rapidly. The moisture condenses to form rain. At higher altitudes, heavy snow falls to form glaciers that melt and flow in alpine rivers and waterfalls.

Short excursions led by Shaw in the motor launch enabled close-up viewing of animal, plant and sea life. We sailed several times each day to locations of special interest: to one place to see fur seals and understand why they stayed at the entrances to the fiords; to the inner reaches of a fiord to meet pods of dolphins and learn why they preferred that environment; to a rocky outcropping to see crested penguins; to other sites for scuba diving; and to another place to swim with dolphins.

There were several locales for hikes: a failed silver mine, hidden waterfalls, an old lighthouse and a small, abandoned fishing settlement.

Breaksea Girl carried 20 scuba tanks and diving gear. Divers were dropped off in crystal water at the foot of cliffs where marine life flourished.

I began scuba diving in the 1960s and long aspired to dive for black coral. But it lives in waters too deep for my skills. In the New Zealand fiords, the largest black coral forests in the world thrive at reachable 80- to 135-foot depths. This is because heavy rain and glacial runoff create a permanent, slightly tinted freshwater layer above the heavier, salty seawater. The tinted fresh water cuts the sunlight available to marine life, restricting it to the top 135 feet.

Scuba divers can experience this rare sight. Descending slowly through the boundary between the fresh and salt water is visually comparable to descending through a layer of lightly tinted oil into clear water. A distinct, visible boundary, like a sheet of clear plastic, undulates where fresh water overlies salt. Our grandson, Sean, designated photographer and a rated master diver, regretted not having a submersible camera.

Sea life was abundant: rock lobsters, mussels, sponges, corals and schools of fish of the subtropical, cool-water and deep-water varieties. Blue cod, with their huge eyes and wide mouths, were large and numerous. Our environmental concerns were tested by visions of lobsters and cod as table fare. But on Breaksea Girl, nothing may be taken out of its environment.

By the fifth day, our conversations reflected that we had learned much about ecology in the fiords. The information we had absorbed coalesced into an understanding of the imperiled balances within a barely stable ecosystem and the many, often minor, unsuspected forces that can undo that stability.

Ironically, the rain forest wounds itself. In many places, the fiord walls are scraped bare by tree avalanches. The weight of the lush vegetation becomes so great that the thin, wet soil layer releases from the steep granite. Then, like snow avalanches, gathering masses of trees and soil sweep away everything, leaving scarred cliffs that need hundreds of years to become reforested.

Our first five days were spent exploring Preservation Inlet, Chalky Inlet, Dusky Sound and Breaksea Sound, fiords that cut 12 to 30 miles into the coastline. On the sixth day we made the three-hour run from Breaksea Sound to Doubtful Sound, the ship’s home fiord. Strong southwest winds had roused the Tasman into 9- to 14-foot waves--a “moderate condition,” according to the maritime radio weather service. With sails set and motor running in a following sea, we made good speed.

We spent the last two days in Doubtful Sound fiord, which has two major navigable arms. During our next-to-last night, while we were in a sheltered anchorage, a storm front moved through. Rain and hail briefly clattered on the deck. We arose to a scene of snow-covered mountaintops ringing us on three sides, and a blue sky to the west signaling fair weather to come. We had been advised to bring rain gear, but we needed ours only when spray from the bow wave blew onto the deck.

On the final morning, we sailed the Crooked Arm in what the skipper called “some of possibly the most beautiful scenery on Earth.” If it was not, it did not miss by much.

We debarked at Deep Cove, were met by a bus and returned to the ferry, crossed Lake Manapouri, exchanged e-mail addresses, said goodbyes and caught a comfortable bus to Queenstown, where an icy martini awaited, followed by a late supper and a wide bed.

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GUIDEBOOK

Cruising the Kiwi Fiords

Getting there: United Airlines and Qantas fly from Los Angeles to Queenstown with a connection to Ansett New Zealand airline in Auckland. Round-trip fares begin at $1,087. (Air New Zealand does not connect through to Queenstown.)

Getting around: Fiordland Ecology Holidays, telephone/fax 011-643-249-6600, Internet https://www.fiordland.gen.nz, operates year-round. Sailings this year start at $315 per person for three days, up to $650 for seven days. Scuba gear rental is extra.

We made land arrangements, including an apartment rental in Queenstown, through Fiordland Travel in Te Anau, tel. 011-643-249-7416. Lodgings in Te Anau run from a high of $75 for a double to $8 per night for backpackers. The agency also books fishing, hunting and other tours in and near the park.

Queenstown, the birthplace of bungee-jumping as a sport, has more upscale hotels and restaurants than Te Anau. Queenstown also offers skiing, snowboarding, skydiving and white-water rafting.

For more information: Tourism New Zealand, 501 Santa Monica Blvd., Suite 300, Santa Monica, CA 90401; tel. (877) 9-PURENZ (978-7369), fax (310) 395-5453, Internet https://www.purenz.com.