For our first post-ice adventure this February, Joolee and I volunteered as crew for about two weeks on The Fox II. For you sailors, the Fox is a gaff-rigged ketch built in Auckland in 1922. She’s fifty feet long and draws just over 5 feet of draught for making it up New Zealand river mouths, and except for the steel centerboard she’s constructed out of native hardwood kauri. The rigging is vintage stuff: all wooden blocks and timber masts, no fancy metal alloys. She’s spent most of the past 85 years shipping cargo around New Zealand or fishing the South Pacific. For the last 12 years she’s spent the summer making two sightseeing cruises a day in and around Akaroa Harbor.

Her skipper is the ever-chipper Roy Borelli of Akaroa. He and his wife Sarah are transplanted New Yorkers of six years now. Sarah runs Chez la Mer, Akaroa’s finest backpacker accommodation, while Roy spends his days (the summer ones) describing the delights of Akaroa Harbor from the wheel house of the Fox.
And what do those delights entail? Akaroa Harbor cuts deep into the crater of a former 15,000 foot volcano that now forms the Banks Peninsula, so the scenery is some of New Zealand’s best. The wildlife is superlative as well. In our two weeks, we saw a good variety of birds, including regular sightings of blue penguins, petrels, shearwaters and one albatross.

We also saw hectors dolphins everyday. They’re the smallest of the saltwater dolphins, and this pod frequents the waters around the Banks Peninsula. They also seem to like the Fox II. Most days they would seek us out and swim along with us, riding the bow and leaping out of the water to get a look at us. When the deisel engine was cut and we were under wind power, we could hear them surfacing and breathing around us and the tourists and crew always seemed to assume a respectful silence in response. The creaking of wood and canvas and rope and the little bursts of air all around us.

It was a great two weeks to learn the ropes on an old boat, and a great start to our two months recreating after a season in McMurdo.