The world’s largest passenger ferry shipwreck is sunk just off the coast of the south island of New Zealand, near Picton. As a scuba dive, it sounds like a really cool dive. The local dive companies will even take people into the dining room/ballroom to see the drinks bar, screwed-down tables and the chandeliers hanging from the ceiling. As desperately bad luck would have it, we’re not going to get to see it on this trip as the weather’s too bad.

Rarely, there’s a yacht charter company in the area who hire out their boats for a single day at a quite reasonable price, so we thought that we might do that instead. Except the the winds over the next few days are forecast to change direction and speed from about 20 knots (force 5) to 35 knots (a near-gale force 7!) so we decided against that too.

In retrospect, I guess that we could’ve hung around for a few days for the weather to clear, but hacked-off with the persistent poor weather we’ve suffered in the south, we drove straight to the ferry terminal and booked a boat headed for the north island leaving within the hour.