Cook Strait

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The Cook Strait ferry Arahura in the Marlborough Sounds.

Cook Strait is the strait between the North Island and the South Island of New Zealand. It was known for centuries as Raukawa Moana by Māori but takes its current name from Captain James Cook, the first European commander to sail through it (January - February 1770). On its the north side lies the city of Wellington, and on the south side, the Marlborough Sounds and Cloudy Bay.

Two large bays, Golden Bay and Tasman Bay, lie on the South Island coast immediately to its west, and the North Island coast to the west recedes towards the giant curve of the Kapiti Coast and South Taranaki Bight. To its the east the South Island recedes, the coast running south-west after reaching the headland of Cape Campbell. The North Island's short south coast stretches along Palliser Bay, terminating at Cape Palliser. The Wellington suburbs of Owhiro Bay, Island Bay, Houghton Bay, Lyall Bay, Rongotai, Moa Point and Breaker Bay face the Cook Strait coast.

In good weather one can clearly see across Cook Strait. At its narrowest point it has a width of 23 km (between Cape Terawhiti in the North Island and Perano Head on Arapawa Island in the Marlborough Sounds). Counter-intuitively, at this point the South Island's coast lies further north than that of the North Island.

Regular ferry services run between Picton in the Sounds and Wellington. The strait often experiences rough water and heavy swells due to strong winds, especially from the south. New Zealand's geographical position directly athwart the Roaring Forties means that the gap between the North and South Islands funnels westerly winds into itself and deflects them into northerlies.

The strait has an average depth of 128 metres.

[edit] European History

When Dutch explorer Abel Tasman first saw New Zealand in 1642, he interpreted Cook Strait area as a bight closed to the east. He named it Zeehaen's Bight, after one of the two ships in his expedition. In 1769 James Cook found that the strait formed a navigable waterway.

Cook Strait attracted European settlers in the early 19th century. Because of its use as a whale migration route, whalers established bases in the Marlborough Sounds and in the Kapiti area. From 1840 more permanent settlements sprang up, first at Wellington, then at Nelson and at Wanganui (Petre). At this period the settlers saw Cook Strait in a broader sense than today's ferry-oriented New Zealanders: for them the strait stretched from Taranaki to Cape Campbell, so these early towns all clustered around "Cook Strait" (or "Cook's Strait", in the pre-Geographic Board parlance of the times) as the central feature and central waterway of the new colony. By the same token, traffic on the Strait resulted in a number of shipwrecks.

[edit] Swimming the Strait

Māori accounts tell of at least one swimmer who conquered Cook Strait (Raukawa) in 1831. Following the crossing by Barrie Devenport on 20 November 1962, many successful attempts on the strait have occurred.