Port Gore

Scream spent the first night of our Christmas holiday in Port Gore.  We had intended to travel all of the way from Wellington to Guard's Bay, but despite a wonderful and long day flying our cruising chute we weren't traveling fast enough to make the distance before dark.  We had a lot of bottom growth slowing us down, but honestly there just wasn't much wind and we received little current assistance traveling through Cook Straight with the tide.

The windward side of Cape Jackson was becalmed, so we were quite surprised to find 15-20 knots of wind blowing out of Port Gore.  It took about an hour to motor against this into Waimatete Bay.  If we had been a little smarter we could have used this wind to our benefit and arrived in Guard's Bay only a little later than we got to our anchorage at Waimatete.  We tucked as deep into Waimatete as we dared, still in 20m well past the 17.1m marked on NZ  chart 615.

We spent the night under the cliffs, with northerly back eddies gusting at us at 20 knots, despite the 15 knot southerly forecast.

Port Gore is scenic and unspoiled.  There are tall cliffs and hills with native brush and birds.  There is no sign of humanity, and no cell service.  VHF signal was quite weak tucked into our anchorage.

We left early the next day.  The northerly gusts lasted all night, but once we were in the western half of Port Gore we were becalmed, and saw variable 5 knots for the rest of the day.

In short, we recommend avoiding anchoring in Port Gore.