Mythbusters: Drunk Uncle Edition

We all have one. The uncle who corners you near the grill, a craft beer in one hand and a half-eaten sausage in the other, ready to set the world to rights. This summer, after a few hazy IPAs and a glass of Pinot, he’s fixated on the Cook Strait ferries.

He’s heard the "Clifford Bay nonsense," and he’s not having a bar of it.

"Bollocks," he declares, “I have heard it all before - it’s all a fantasy."

Rather than letting him ruin the vibe, here is your cheat sheet to gently, but firmly, dismantle his rant, without spilling your drink.

The Claim: Every time it has been looked at, they turn it down. The Government did a report in 2012 and said it wouldn’t work!

The Rebuttal: Actually, the report said it was a real winner. The Government of the day said it could patch up Picton cheaply. Only they didn’t, and they can’t. And yes, it was consented before. But these are back in the past when the economy and population were smaller. Back in your day, Uncle, they had the time to load the Hillman Hunter into a sailing for the summer holiday. Today, it’s the need for speed in a modern economy.

The Claim: "The Clifford Bay journey isn't that much quicker. Besides, it's not really 3 and a half hours to Picton, because that includes docking the ferry."

The Rebuttal: "Hang on, Uncle. You’re only counting the time on the water. The ‘3 hours saved’ isn’t magic ferry speed; it’s geography."

Pour him a glass of water and explain the math. The saving comes from the total trip.

Yes, a direct sailing to Clifford Bay cuts about an hour and a half off the sea voyage.

But the real game-changer is on land. Road traffic has a shorter journey. By docking at Clifford Bay, you bypass the slow, winding drive out of Picton and the elevation over the Para Swamp. You are delivered straight onto the flat plains south of Blenheim. For a truck driver or a family heading to Christchurch, that cuts 2.5 to 3 hours off the door-to-door journey.

And Clifford Bay means state of the art, purposely laid out marshalling yards can be developed which handle bigger volume with more space and technology. It will work like an Uber: you get a park allocated. You are monitored and drive on the ramp when directed. You show up, you drive on. Done.

Picton is still using the crammed carpark and using a 'temporary' Portacom as the terminal which was built to last 5 years but will now need to last 60 years. The port is already so choked trucks have to park down the street, that will get worse with the larger new ship. That’s the Government's 'Minimum Viable Product make do with what they have, whether or not it is efficient.

We aren't just saving sailing time; we make the journey efficient.

The Claim: "There are no safety issues, it is calm! There is no history of accidents in the Marlborough Sounds, besides the Sounds are beautiful so that's what people go for."

The Rebuttal: "It’s calm until a 200-metre ship meets a 10-knot tide in a 300-metre gap at Tory Channel. Remember when the ferry ran aground last year, luckily managing to find the only sandy beach in the vicinity? The Minister of Transport said in November there were 23 incidents over the last five years."

Acknowledge his point: the Sounds are beautiful. But that is exactly why massive rail ferries shouldn’t be in them. The Tory Channel entrance is one of the most treacherous maritime choke points in the world. We haven't had major accidents recently because our pilots are highly skilled, not because the route is safe.

And as for "calm"? Residents and iwi have for decades campaigned against the ferry wakes tearing up the foreshore, destroying kaimoana beds and eroding the very beaches tourists love.

Moving the ferries to Clifford Bay is the ultimate environmental act, it saves the Sounds for the dolphins and the boaties, rather than treating a pristine ecosystem like a heavy industrial highway with all the inherent environmental, navigational and safety risks. The tourists should be doing high value stuff like cruising around on boats and fishing, not ploughing through waiting for the ship to dock.

The Claim: "Clifford Bay is exposed to the weather. There is no harbour and it's very windy and bleak. There is nowhere to shelter and dock a ship."

The Rebuttal: "We have this thing called engineering, Uncle. It’s amazing."

He’s right that Clifford Bay is exposed, in its natural state, but it is protected from the South by Cape Campbell.

But we don’t park ferries on the beach. A purpose-built port will use breakwaters and modern engineering to create calm water for safe berthing. This isn’t 1890; we know how to build ports in open water.

The Claim: "Picton is a safe anchorage. It's always been safe!”

The Rebuttal: "They have problems there and it’s a wind tunnel. It can be hard work to dock there."

Wind is a major factor in Picton, as the steep sides push the breeze down the channel. In 2021, a ferry took 12 hours to dock - https://www.stuff.co.nz/travel/travel-troubles/124266056/ferry-berths-after-strong-winds-cause-12hour-delay"

Modern ships are designed for open ocean swells, not for doing three-point turns in a narrow ria. As the ships get bigger there is even less room to manoeuvre in Picton.

The "rough" Cook Strait crossing happens either way; the difference is that at Clifford Bay, you dock straight away instead of dragging the voyage out for another hour.

The Claim: "Clifford Bay has no accommodation or restaurants. If the ferries cancel, everyone is stuck there. Picton, at least, has motels."

The Rebuttal: "They're building a transport hub, not a resort. And Blenheim is right there, just up the road. And people can get home faster."

Remind him that Picton’s "thriving accommodation" is often overwhelmed when ferries are cancelled, leaving people sleeping in cars anyway. Clifford Bay is 30 minutes from Blenheim, which has an airport, hotels, and plenty of capacity.

Picton has only limited capacity. It's telling that the big fast food chains have never set up shop in Picton, but there is a McDonalds in a tiny town like Taumarunui – because it has a sufficient volume of traffic.

Most people drive straight through Picton and little money stays in the local economy. The local retailers in Picton realised that when the cruise ships started coming.

More importantly, this is a chance to build a modern terminal from scratch, not a windy Portacom. We can have purpose-built marshalling yards, proper EV charging, and efficient rail links. Why patch up an old terminal in a constrained valley when we can build a world-class gateway on flat land?

And new infrastructure will pop up around it. You only have to look at the development of Auckland Airport to understand that.

The Claim: "But what about Nelson? They would have to drive further and they are disadvantaged!"

The Rebuttal: "Yes, for the minority of traffic heading to Nelson from Clifford Bay, it’s 25 minutes longer on the road. But they have already saved 90 minutes on the faster sailing. Net, people save over 1 hour on the trip from the North Island to Nelson.

While it is only a 20 minute difference, but you don't design a national highway for the detour. Nelson gains as the South Island economy grows because of more efficient transport links."

But the vast majority of freight and travel which creates the "economic mass" of the South Island - is heading south to Christchurch and beyond.

We are fixing the supply chain for the whole nation.  

The Claim: “The hills when you drive out of Blenheim are not that bad, it's just a 10 minute hill.  The hills outside Picton is only 200m high and the cost of going up is balanced when driving down it!”

The Rebuttal: "Uncle, you're right that we can't bulldoze the Southern Alps. But Clifford Bay deletes Dashwood Pass and the Picton Elevation from the trip entirely. We go from climbing four mountains to climbing two. Bad news if you want to be Ed Hillary, not if you want to save fuel.”

“Let’s be clear: dismissing major passes as "10-minute hills" is the kind of logic that works in a hatchback but kills a logistics company.”

There are two major passes between Blenheim and Seddon. By moving the terminal to Clifford Bay we don’t just bypass the town of Blenheim; we completely delete Dashwood Pass, a significant climb that slows heavy freight and burns fuel, from the freight journey.

Fun Fact: Research shows that on gradients of 4-6% (like the Elevation), the extra fuel burned going up is roughly 140% higher than flat driving. You do not recover that fuel going down; you burn brake pads and retarders instead. Trucks hitting the Picton Elevation are doing so on "cold tires" and often cold engines, immediately after leaving the ferry. This creates maximum emissions and wear before the journey has even really begun.

The Claim: "There is no electricity to start with, and no space to park trucks and to store freight"

The Rebuttal: It's right next to State Highway 1 and the main rail line. There are major are power lines out there for the salt works, which is a big industrial site.

Marlborough Lines (MLL) operates a network that extends to Lake Grassmere, which is immediately adjacent to the proposed Clifford Bay site. The Dominion Salt Works at Lake Grassmere  is a major industrial site covering 1,416 hectares and has sufficient grid connection to support heavy machinery and pumping. They host a 660kW wind turbine and a Tesla Powerpack battery system (250kW / 570kWh) which feeds excess power back into the grid.

And as a bonus Clifford Bay has an abundance of flat land unlike Picton which has lost rugby grounds and significant river banks for significant construction. Picton still has the largest road vehicles parking outside houses and cricket grounds all the way out of town even before the arrival of even bigger ferries.

Clifford Bay allows us to lay out the marshalling yards on a greenfields site, ensuring they are large enough to enable growth in the regional and New Zealand economy. In Picton they have a "maximum reuse" plan which means old sheds will be in the middle of the congested site, which was designed in the Sixties for smaller ships. Purpose built logistics hubs - like the Ruakura Inland Port are the key to ensuring our inter-island link is built for this century.

The Claim: "Tourists love the experience, they come to have a pie and coke and see the Sounds!"

The Rebuttal: "The ferry is currently a "forced tour" so you see the Sounds but you can't get off the ship. You are locked on the vessel for 3.5 hours. A yacht in the bays would be nicer. For a family on a tight itinerary, or a tourist who suffers from seasickness, that extra hour and a half of slow steaming is a barrier to doing other things."

Clifford Bay gives them back time. So, what can they do with it?

Clifford Bay sits on the edge of the Awatere Valley, right on the doorstep of New Zealand’s premier wine country. Rather than a windy car journey out of Picton, you can drive off the ramp, and within 20 minutes, you can be sitting at a cellar door in the Awatere or Wairau Valley with a glass of Sauvignon Blanc.

We are effectively moving the South Island’s wine region three hours closer to Wellington. That turns a rushed "drive-through" into a leisurely long lunch. Wellingtonians will get to the Marlborough Wine Festival faster than Martinborough. 

The same logic applies to Kaikoura. For many visitors, seeing a sperm whale is a bucket-list item, but the 2-hour windy haul from Picton often makes the drive to Kaikoura a tiring slog on top of a 3.5 hour sailing. By deleting the Picton-to-Blenheim leg and shortening the crossing, tourists hit State Highway 1 fresh. They arrive in Kaikoura earlier, with more energy and more daylight to get out on a boat.

And if we move the heavy ferries to Clifford Bay, we free up Picton to offer genuine eco-tourism. Tourists can actually get on the water in kayaks, yachts, or smaller tour boats where they can see the dolphins without the roar of heavy marine diesel engines.

Tourists are here for a good time. Given the choice between three extra hours on a boat and on the road or three extra hours tasting wine and watching whales, they will choose the destination every time.

The Claim: "Building a brand new port out at Clifford Bay means starting from scratch, and that site has absolutely nothing there - no horizontal infrastructure like water pipes, roads and power lines. Why would we start from scratch when we already have a working town with all those services in Picton!"

The Rebuttal: Actually, that means that we can build it to modern standards and in the optimal location. Not shove it in where they can find a gap. That means efficiency to get people and freight straight off and moving, not having to shuffle things to get them out on the road.”

Critics argue Clifford Bay lacks existing infrastructure like water, fuel, and roads. This is our greatest strategic advantage. It offers a blank canvas to design state-of-the-art facilities fit for 2060, not working around 1960. We can install modern micro-grids, hydrogen fuel storage, and high-speed marshalling yards without navigating around heritage buildings or existing congestion. We won't be constrained by the steep hills or the residential noise issues.

Inheriting 50-year-old infrastructure is a liability. "Maximum reuse" would lock us into patching up antiquated systems forever. A greenfield build allows us to do it right, for the next 100 years. We face a clear choice: invest in a future-proofed gateway or continue throwing good money at a "patch-up" of the past.

The Closer:

"Look, Uncle, the Government is about to spend nearly $800 million just to patch up Picton and leave us with the exact same slow, winding, vulnerable trip we have now. That’s the real ‘bollocks.’"

"Clifford Bay gives us a faster trip, a safer drive, and it gives Picton back to the locals. Now, go and refill Aunty's glass!"