Stewart Island runs at its own pace. Oban — the island's only settlement, population around 400 — sits on Halfmoon Bay on the northeast coast and is the kind of place where everyone knows everyone, the pub does good blue cod, and the sandflies are a fact of life rather than a surprise. Beyond Oban, 85% of the island is Rakiura National Park — remote, largely trackless, and almost entirely accessible only by water. We were here for the beaches, the birds, and the ability to light a fire on a remote beach at the bottom of New Zealand and eat well while doing it.

Oban also brought a change in crew. Bruce's kids Hugo and Mila came aboard — the kind of addition that immediately raises the energy level of any boat — and we welcomed Jorja, who joined as a new crew member in circumstances that tell you something about how voyages like this tend to work. We had first met Jorja in Milford Sound, where she was working at the dive operation and had filled our cylinders. We got talking, as you do. The season was closing in Milford, she was keen to get time on a sailing boat, and we needed extra hands heading south. It was the kind of arrangement that sorts itself out quickly when the people involved are the right ones. By Stewart Island she had become a genuine part of the crew — the photo on Ocean Beach tells its own story about how quickly that happens on a boat this far from home.

Ocean Beach

Ocean Beach is one of the great beaches of New Zealand's south — a long sweep of sand on the island's southwest coast, facing directly into the Southern Ocean with nothing between it and Antarctica. It is accessible only by a multi-day walk through the national park or by sea, which means it receives a fraction of the visitors that its quality deserves, and looks exactly as a beach at the bottom of the world should: wide, wild, and entirely unhurried.

The beach runs for several kilometres in both directions and was, for the entirety of our visit, entirely ours. The Southern Ocean rolls in from the southwest in long, steady sets — not the confused chop of the Tasman but proper deep-water swells that have been building since Cape Horn. The sand is hard-packed near the waterline and gives way to softer dunes behind, backed by low coastal scrub and the beginning of the national park forest. It is, in the most uncomplicated possible way, a magnificent beach.

The Rock Pools

The rock platforms at the northern end of the beach hold some of the best rock pools we encountered on the voyage — clear, undisturbed, and stocked with the kind of marine life that only accumulates when nobody has been poking around in them. Anemones, sea stars, urchins, small crabs, and fish that had clearly never learned to be wary of large mammals peering at them from above. The sort of place that takes a long time to leave.

The Birds

Stewart Island holds one of the healthiest populations of tokoeka — the Stewart Island kiwi — in New Zealand, and they are famously active during the day here in a way that mainland kiwi are not. The beaches are a productive foraging ground, and sightings are common enough that locals treat them with the easy familiarity of a bird that is simply part of the landscape rather than a rare encounter. The shore birds were out in force — oystercatchers, dotterels, and an assortment of waders working the tide line with the focused efficiency of birds that have this beach to themselves most of the time.

Port Pegasus — Waiting Out the Gale

The Southern Ocean has its own schedule, and it reminded us of this fact in Port Pegasus. Bruce and Greg were aboard when the gale came through — a proper Southern Ocean blow that made the decision to stay put entirely straightforward. Port Pegasus is one of the finest storm anchorages in New Zealand's south: deep, well-sheltered, surrounded by the hills of Rakiura National Park on all sides, with the kind of holding that lets you sleep while the wind does what it wants overhead. Outside, the Southern Ocean was doing its thing. Inside, the burled wood of the saloon was warm, the kettle was on, and there was no particular reason to be anywhere else.

Port Pegasus to Oban — 15 Knots and Three Reefs

When the window opened we left for Oban, and what followed was the single most exhilarating sail of the voyage. The wind started at 30 knots — brisk, manageable, the kind of breeze that puts a smile on a helmsman's face. Then it built to 40. Then 50. Then gusts to 60, which is genuinely serious, the kind of number that demands respect and precise sail trim and a skipper who trusts his boat. The lee shore of Stewart Island itself was providing something invaluable: flat water. With the island blocking the swell, Matariki III was flying through confused but relatively flat seas on staysail and three reefs in the main, perfectly balanced, absolutely in her element.

The speedo touched 15 knots. More than once. A 68-foot Oyster at 15 knots in 60-knot gusts on a lee shore at the bottom of New Zealand is not a sedate experience. It is a controlled, purposeful, heart-in-mouth experience — every system on the boat working exactly as it was designed to, the hull carving through the chop, the rig loaded and singing, the wake a white line behind us stretching back toward the Southern Ocean. It was, without qualification, the best sailing of the entire voyage.

Paterson Inlet — Swimming with Sea Lions

Paterson Inlet delivered one of the finest wildlife encounters of the entire voyage. Greg, Mila, and Hugo were in the water when the sea lions arrived — two bulls, large and entirely self-possessed, who had decided that these particular humans were worth investigating. What followed was 20 minutes of sustained, deliberate play: the sea lions circling, diving underneath, surfacing close enough to look you directly in the eye, and blowing bubbles in faces with the cheerful irreverence of animals who know perfectly well they are the more capable swimmers. There was no ambiguity about the nature of the encounter. They were playing. They chose to be there, they chose to engage, and they chose when it was over.

New Zealand sea lions — rāpoka — are among the rarest sea lions on earth, with their main breeding population concentrated on the subantarctic Auckland Islands. Stewart Island holds a small but growing population, and encounters like this one are one of the reasons the island's waters are increasingly significant for the species. They are the largest of New Zealand's three fur seal and sea lion species, with bulls reaching up to 450 kg — which you become acutely aware of when one is turning leisurely somersaults around you at close range.

Greg and Mila also had sea lions as company when they dived — animals that had no obligation to stick around but apparently found the spectacle of scuba divers interesting enough to watch from a respectful distance, occasionally coming closer to inspect what the humans were doing with such apparent effort in water the sea lions treat as effortlessly as air. It is a particular kind of privilege, being observed by something that is more at home in your environment than you are.

On a better day we climbed Bald Peak — the high point above the southern anchorages, rewarding a steady pull up through the national park forest with views that justify every step: the labyrinth of channels and islands that make up Stewart Island's south coast spreading out below, the open Southern Ocean beyond, and on a clear day the sense that the world simply ends somewhere out there to the southwest.

The descent was less triumphant. Greg's phone went into the bush somewhere in the last few metres before the tender — close enough to the water that it should have been findable, far enough into the undergrowth that it absolutely was not. An extensive search established two things: the phone was definitely in there somewhere, and the Stewart Island bush is not interested in giving things back. It remains there, presumably still taking photographs of nothing in particular, somewhere in Rakiura National Park. Oh well.

Abraham's Bosom is a sheltered cove on the south coast — the kind of anchorage that earns its name by holding you warmly while everything outside stays unsettled. We brought the tender ashore, collected driftwood from the tide line, and lit a fire on the beach. Before we had even started cooking, the wildlife had taken an interest. Two sharks materialised alongside the tender in the shallows — not threatening, just curious, frolicking is genuinely the right word for it — circling and surfacing within arm's reach while the crew watched from the beach with the slightly disbelieving attention that unexpected wildlife always commands. Then, from the bush line above the beach, a fur seal appeared. She had been sitting there watching us for who knows how long — observing the fire, the activity, possibly making her own assessment of the menu. Eventually the noise and the smoke became too much for her dignity and she made her exit: not quietly back into the trees but decisively, off down the beach at full gallop, disappearing around the headland with the purposeful energy of an animal who has decided she has seen enough.

The southern sky put on a performance. Bruce produced food from what appeared to be nothing, as he reliably does, and the evening settled into exactly the pattern that a remote beach at the bottom of New Zealand at the end of a long voyage ought to produce: fire, food, cold air, good company, sharks in the shallows, and nobody else in any direction.

Rakiura had given us everything — sea lions in Paterson Inlet, a gale blast to Oban, a lost phone in the bush, sharks at the beach fire, and birdsong from a predator-free island at the bottom of the world. But the voyage was not finished. The anchor came up and we pointed the bow north — a long way north, back up the coast to Gulf Harbour, back to the world we had left weeks and hundreds of miles behind. The return passage awaited.