Hope you’ve had a great week!! Here’s our second “week in review”, to keep you better in touch with how our weeks look. Working onboard Faith means a lot of variety – which we love – and thought it’d be nice to try and share with you what this looks like.
This week:
We’ve been very excited to re find a letter and photographs from Cuthbert Willan’s daughter, written to Faith’s previous owner back in 2012. We lost it for many years, only to find it last weekend. Thrilled to now know how Faith came to be named, and that she had been marked out on the family lawn in white paint during design and planning!!
We farewelled our truck project, to make way for more time to dedicate to Faiths restoration. Great to see it being used and enjoyed already by one of our wonderful wooden boat owner supporters.
We’ve enjoyed some wonderful groups onboard – families, travelling couples, locals, kids (who enjoyed our onboard activity and colouring book), a hens party, and exclusive cruises – in addition to our standard departures. You’ll see just how personalised our trips are with Megan working her storytelling magic recounting Faith’s history, and sharing her knowledge of the Fiordland National Park.
We’ve been incredibly spoiled by some very generous passengers leaving us some very considerate gifts and thank you cards after their cruises with us. Thank you so much for going the extra mile to show your gratitude, it’s been a very humbling week. Excited to visit The Redcliff, one of our amazing local restaurants.
We made a big boo boo with one of our bookings this week which was distressing – but can’t thank our passengers enough for being amazing to adjust their timings to accommodate our mistake. We’re always the first to put our hand up to own anything we’ve got wrong, but thank you again for being so understanding. We took the opportunity to gift lunch to a local childrens group enjoying sailing and time in the water at the local yacht club. Lovely to be able to give back to our community.
We had some very strong winds again this week, although plenty of sailing days. It was wonderful to see one of our previous skippers – Paul – out on his sailing boat, built by his own hand. We visited the deepest part of the lake at 422 metres, and marvelled at the peace and quite of this part of the fresh water South Fiord
For the first time in 10 years, we were lucky enough to see a red deer and her fawn in the park from onboard. Mixed emotions given that they’re not the best for the health of the park due to how much they eat, but very cute, and very special to see wildlife up close.
A little less time restoring this week due to lots of cruising, but still managed to sneak in some hinge polishing and prep for the bars which sit over the deck hatch glass. We also replaced our hardworking jug for a new one which whistles when it’s boiled. Here’s hoping we get a solid 10 years out of this one too.
We had a wonderful “flyby”, by our friends Erica and Chris at Cruise Te Anau with their vessel Flyby. Turns out I didn’t video the best bit, but caught the tail end of a very cool pass in some very trying conditions. Can’t wait for the next one!!
Right, back to work!!
Cheers,
Adam and Megan, and our team from Fiordland Historic Cruises
