We ended up having extraordinary luck today, not just with the weather, but with wildlife as well. First, we saw a school of bottlenose dolphins swimming about in Crooked Arm. Doubtful Sound has a permanent population of bottlenose dolphins that is currently at about 63, and that never leave the Fjord. They were mostly just showing their dorsal fins while swimming along, but we saw one jump out of the water and do a flip and several do smaller jumps. There were also two that came to within about 15-20' of the boat, but only Evan saw them (of the two of us). The captain shut off the boats engines to observe them for about 15 minutes. The dolphins love to ride the bow wave of the boat, but it is not good for them to be distracted by this (because they should be using that time to eat or socialize) so it is regulated and the captains are not allowed to have this occur. Good thing we brought the binoculars, so that I could watch them while Evan took photos.
We then sailed further in the main channel of the Fjord/Sound out towards the Tasman Sea. At the mouth of the Fjord/Sound, we stumbled upon at least nine Fiordland Crested Penguins. Said to be the rarest penguin in the world, at least by the guide, (note from Evan: Ilona was ecstatic). We then turned around and headed back into the Fjord/Sound and slowed to look at an island where the Spanish explorers made landfall with the assistance of Captain Cook's charts (more on him later). Doubtful Sound is the only place in New Zealand with spanish names for features.
When Captain James Cook (who was a lieutenant in the royal navy at the time he was exploring New Zealand) sailed by Doubtful Sound, the crew and naturalist on his ship badly wanted him to sail up to explore and resupply water and food, but Cook, being the wise seaman that he was, correctly determined that the prevailing winds in this area blew from west to east (inland) and decided that it was unwise to sail into the area because he may not have the wind to maneuver back out; and thus he named it "Doubtful Harbor." Several years later, the Spanish were exploring this area and came to the same conclusion, but sent the long boat into the fjord to explore. They were the first Europeans to enter the Doubtful Sound and thus named many of the islands and features. These names were lost to history until the last 50 years when the Kiwis officially recognized the Spanish names. While we were slowing to look at the plaque to commemorate the Spanish, we stumbled on the third member of the trifecta, the New Zealand Fur Seal (we only saw two of them though). We were told by the guide that it is extremely rare to see all three in a single trip. The dolphins they only see about once every two weeks, and the penguins they rarely see during this time of year as they are molting and stay hidden. He told us that we should all go and play the lotto when we got back.
We headed back through Doubtful Sound, with one stop to drink the water dripping into the Sound that had been filtered through the mountain flora, which gives it a bit of a brown color from the tannins in the trees. The captain nosed the boat under the waterfall with a whole group of people on the bow with paper cups given out by the guide. We got a bit of a soaking, but it was entertaining nonetheless and we were (mostly) prepared for a wet day with our rain gear, so no big deal. Once our boat docked in the Sound, we re-boarded the bus to head back across the pass, again with a few stops along the way. Before boarding the boat back across Lake Manapouri, we went to visit the hydroelectric power plant, a part of the trip that made Evan ecstatic! I'll leave him to write further about it.
This is very technical, sorry.
The building of the Manapouri power station is considered one of New Zealand's greatest engineering achievements, even though it was built by two American construction companies. The guide told us how easy it was to remember when this occurred, as it paralleled almost exactly the Beatles' prominence from 1963-1971. The need for the power station was due to an Australian company's need for power for an aluminum smelter on the coast south of Invercargill. The original plan for the power station in this area was to build a dam, raise the lake level 30 meters (about 100 ft), and produce electricity the traditional way. This was VERY unpopular amongst the kiwi public and they petitioned the government to not allow this and were thus successful (unlike similar efforts in Yosemite decades earlier). Since they could not raise the lake level, they came up with an ingenious plan - which was the first time in the world that this was done - to use the existing mountains as a dam, which kept the lake at it's natural level. They would divert the outflow of the lake using a dam on it's natural river. They then would put the turbines and generators just above the level of Doubtful Sound and carve tunnels out of the mountain to transport the water straight down from the lake about 175 meters through the turbines and then out the "tailrace" tunnel 10 km to Doubtful Sound.
Bechtel Corporation was contracted to build the power station, and Utah Construction & Mining Co. was contracted (or possibly subcontracted) to dig the tunnels and build the road over Wilmot Pass. If you know your history really well or are a construction nerd like me, you will recognize both of these companies from the construction of the Hoover Dam. They were part of the "6 Companies" consortium that was established to construct the dam, and it's tunnels. Methods developed during the Hoover Dam tunnel construction were still being used by Utah Construction nearly 30 years for this project. I already mentioned the 10 km long "tailrace tunnel" for the outflow of water, but there was also a 2 km access tunnel down to the machine hall so that the equipment could be delivered, maintained, etc. as well as the machine hall itself which was carved out of the mountain 111 meters long x18 wide x39 deep. All the rock that was removed for all these tunnels was then used to build the Wilmot Pass Road (and excess was deposited elsewhere nearby and used to make the concrete needed for the station). The road was necessary to deliver the massive power generating components. It was decided that even though it was possible to truck the components from an existing port to the lake, then float them across on a barge, it was quicker and more cost effective to build the road at a cost of $80/square meter. Some of the loads that were then hauled across that road were upwards of 300 tons and required two trucks pulling up the steep grades and a bulldozer pushing then acting as dead weight for the descents. 1800 men were employed for the 8 year duration of the project from all over the world, specifically nations with tunneling and mining experience like the US and Chile among many others. They were housed in an old trans-Tasman steam liner that was mored in Doubtful Sound during the project and in the 30s was the height of luxury, but was pretty shabby by this time.
Above is a model of the station, where the yellow spiral is the access tunnel, the vertical blue lines are the penstocks delivering water from the lake to the turbine, the blue on the bottom in the back are the tailrace tunnel(s) and the white are various water calming and emergency evacuation tunnels. After the power station was opened, the anticipated power generation was not achieved because of greater-than-expected friction in the tailrace tunnel. Around the turn of the century, a tunnel boring machine carved out a second tunnel parallel to the original in about half the time, with no need to line the tunnel with concrete because it was such a clean bore, unlike the original tunnel carved out by blasting.
Even though it may seem like it, I did not enjoy the power station more than the rest of the day, but it was very interesting and just capped a great tour.
After the boat back across the lake we grabbed a bite to eat and packed up so we could get up really early to drive back and explore Queenstown.
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