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A view of from the summit of Mount Victoria, Wellington - Cook Strait stretches to the right (west).

The Cook Strait ferry Arahura in the Marlborough Sounds.

Location of Cook Strait

Cook Strait lies between the North and South Islands of New Zealand. On its the north side stands the city of Wellington; on the south side lie the Marlborough Sounds and Cloudy Bay.

Two large bays, Golden Bay and Tasman Bay, flank 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 the 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 strait.

In good weather one can clearly see across Cook Strait. At its narrowest point only 23 km separate Cape Terawhiti in the North Island from 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 position directly athwart the Roaring Forties means that the strait funnels westerly winds and deflects them into northerlies.

The strait has an average depth of 128 metres.

The strait takes its name from Captain James Cook, the first European commander to sail through it, in January - February 1770. In Māori it has the name Raukawa or Raukawa Moana. Raukawa may mean "bitter leaves". ^[1]

When Dutch explorer Abel Tasman first saw New Zealand in 1642, he interpreted the area of Cook Strait as a bight closed to the east. He named it Zeehaen's Bight, after the Zeehaen, 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.

Māori accounts tell of at least one swimmer who conquered the strait (Raukawa) in 1831. Following the crossing by Barrie Devenport on 20 November 1962, many successful swims across the strait have taken place.

• Encyclopaedia of New Zealand link

1. ^ A. W Reed, The Reed Dictionary of New Zealand Place Names, Reed: 2002, page 99

Coordinates: 41°13′46″S, 174°28′59″E