See also
Doubtful Sound (NZ)
Packrafting NZ

A few days after paddling Doubtful Sound we rented another hardshell double at Abel Tasman NP, at the top of the South Island. A much more popular kayaking location, a string of sandy, aquamarine bays and beaches punctuate wooded granite headlands dropping to the sea. Less rain-drenched than Fjordland, the vegetation here has a more Mediterranean appearance.

Blink and you’ll miss it Marahau is the main access point, serving visitors to the park. Here they have a really good system of water taxis which can drop or collect paddlers / walkers at any number of idyllic, granite-sand beaches along the NP’s sheltered east facing coastline. Most are walking all or parts of the 60-km Abel Tasman Track back to Marahau (as we did one day, below), staying at designated basic camp sites, if needed. 

The Aquataxi operation is very slick: passengers board the motorboat on its trailer in the yard (below left), get tractored down the road to the beach and backed into the surf to head up the coast with various drops offs and collections, and of course a drole commentary. Returning to Marahau, a tractor waits axle deep in the surf, the boat takes aim and rides onto the submerged trailer, gets clamped down and we’re all driven back to the yard.
It got me thinking something similar would work well along the Jurassic Coast and the Southwest Coast Path between Weymouth and Swanage in the UK to save circular walks. It’s true there’s a bus, but boating the coast would be loads more fun to or from a walk. I imagine rougher weather for nippy beach launches, plus a host of red tape kills this idea stone dead.

The rental agencies offer the same service with their kayaks, but on day-paddles get you to paddle out from Marahau before bringing you back, where getting dropped off first to paddle back would be more fun.
But with your own paddle boat, a taxi can drop you at the top of the park (below) to make your own way to Marahau. We may have struck unusually good weather again, but as we saw it, this would easily be doable in a packraft. Each day a late morning northerly sea breeze wafts you back down to Marahau.

The reason the rental outfits require you to set off from Marahau is to give you a detailed safety briefing (left) before watching you set off in a plastic sea kayak. The boats were well equipped with a spare paddle, bilge pump and flare, but despite the demo of the technique, righting a 50-kilo double full of water, then getting back in and pumping out sounded quite daunting.
On a day like today that was exceedingly unlikely unless you messed up a beach landing (or were in a tippier single; see below), but even then there are plenty of water taxis bombing around to help out if needed. I also spotted some double SoTs, much shorter and slower for sure, but which could be covered in a 5-second safety briefing: ‘Fallen out? Silly Billy! Clamber back aboard; paddle on ;-)’

After the safety briefing, they took us to the beach and watched us get in and acclimatise to the Mission Eco Niizh 565s (18.5’). It was a similar classic to the Necky we used in Doubtful, except it was no less than 77cm wide and weighed a massive 55 kilos in the extra-rugged outfitters version designed to be knocked out for years by rental operators and their clients.
But once on the water the Niizh had one big advantage over the Necky: a much better car-type pedal arrangement for the rudder, not the Necky’s awkwardly angled, self-folding side pegs. The action was much more taught and responsive too; we both found it much easier to track straight in the kayak without continuous micro-adjustments.

You can feel quite smug in your untippable, bath-wide, Eco Niizh double, but I don’t think I’d have been quite so sanguine once greased up and stuffed into a Shearwater single (above right) which, at 4.8m, is nearly as long, but 61cm wide and with a notably smaller hatch. They do look great though, like a proper sea kayak does.

I took the GPS this time but we only clocked 8kph flat out, though could easily sit on 6-7kph. I suppose that’s normal for a relatively wide and very heavy double where no amount of extra effort will overcome its shape and mass. As with IK doubles, two paddlers don’t add up to more power, just a potentially greater range.
The Mission felt less uncomfortable too, but we only had a morning to spare here.

So now I can vouch that Abel Tasman would have been one spot where lugging my TXL packraft would have paid off. With loads of storage in the side tubes, relatively sheltered conditions, coastal path access and even water taxis to hail if it all gets too hard. A sail could even catch the afternoon sea breeze and on the way you might pass egrets and stingrays (left), except this in predator-free NZ, not Australia, so the stingrays don’t even sting.