What a morning sunrise. Not for the view, but for the squalls, lots of em. Driving rain, woke up (rather rudely I might add), to ease the sails and get drenched with cold water as the squall snuck up on us.
The radar was on, was supposed to warn of impending troubles,but I had noticed in the night when a cargo ship crossed our guard zones that no alarm went off. Figured I’d investigate in the day light. Well here we are, barely daylight and I should have investigated. So the fresh shower was my procrastination reward.
The radar has so many settings, over the years I probably have tweaked them all, either to show more I show less. I figured it was time to return to factory settings. Voila, all better was showing the tops of every wave in the ocean (not helpful), so a few tweaks for offshore sailing and we are back in business.
After a few hours of “dodge-squall” the skies cleared up and a nice day of sailing was in store. At our nightly SSB radio check in we were happy to report we knocked off 200 miles toward our destination since the last check-in. Yahooo, rocking along.
One bit of breakage, our jib/genoa car said he was tired of holding the sail and let go. The sound is like a guitar string, boing. This is happened on our first trip down to NZ, and once long ago. With some creative macrame(lots of rope and knots), a temporary fix was in place just waiting for a break in the 25knot winds. Added a new bolt, added lock-tite, but it doesn’t seem to be holding. I painted the top with some of Christine’s electric blue toe polish and can see the nut slowly backing off.
Fix part two, is a back up block ready to handle the job if Mr Lazy jib car gives up again.
I think the painters tape will hold, Right?
More weather, wind and waves scheduled for the night watch. Should be fun. Go sailing, it’s all cocktails and sandy beaches…😀
All good, running along, knocking out the miles. 775 left till Point Resolution Vanuatu.
Happy: Launched the boat successfully, back in the water and went smooth, everything worked and no water where it shouldn’t be, like “inside” the boat.
Blasted: on the way down river we got Blasted with big winds and driving rain, that might as well have been icicles every time we looked out for the channel markers. Good thing for heaters, they thawed everything out when we finally found some pseudo shelter in 30 kts of wind in the dark. Not good conditions to try and navigate in the confines of a marina.
Happy and Soggy:
Happy to have made the marina, a day late but on a beautiful morning after the deluge all night.
Soggy: The beautiful day turned to rain just as we were approached the dock to tie the boat up, Soggy again which continued off and on all day.
Happy and Sad:
Happy: Happy to be heading out sailing on to new destinations in search of the perpetual summer of the tropics.
Sad: Sad to leave a slew of wonderful, friendly, helpful, generous people of New Zealand behind. We didn’t say goodbye, as we might just do another trip down in a year or two when our visa status resets.
Happy and Broke:
Happy: Happy to leave the dock, course the wind picked up just as we cleared customs and headed to the dock for some duty free fuel for the next adventures
Broke: Having not visited a fuel station since leaving Fiji, some 6 months ago, our girl was plenty thirsty. All good.
Happy and Holy washing machine:
Happy: Happy finally heading down the river and setting sail for Vanuatu some 1015 miles away.
Holy Washing Machine: The timing leaving the river was terrible, wind versus current, sent everything bouncing about the boat. You think you remember how this works, then the washing machine tells you otherwise.
Wait… do we remember how to do this?
We make it out of the washing machine. Start to get set to raise the mainsail, and with all the washing going on the main halyard (rope that raises the sail) got stuck around the front of the mast. Some full on cowboy rodeo skills and the rope was free. First time that happened. Our friends on a boat that was just ahead of us also had a mainsail issue. Both of us got it sorted without drama except on WhatsApp.
A super nice sail up the coast of NZed with the island providing the protection, small seas decent wind, sunny skies… perfect champagne sailing. Minus the champagne as we have a LONG way to go. Damn!
Sure enough, we clear Cape Bret at sun down and veer away from the protection, the waves and wind pick up. It’s not bad tho, the first 6 hours were a perfect way to get into the groove, and we are just grooving.
Boat is cruising along nicely with 1 reef in the mainsail, and full Jib. We found a reasonable course direction to play nice with the waves and wind. Had a quick sleep and just now under 900 miles left.
The weather in these parts can be quite the mess. So we were looking, as many other boats for nice weather windows to leave the ‘cyclone area’ for season and go somewhere “safe” ..
Well I guess there is no really cyclone/hurricane safe place. The systems will just be called by different names to lure you in. We will probably be dealing with typhoons next as we go further west. Ugh,
Anyway, waiting for weather is an extreme exercise in patience, boredom, itchy feet, mental stability all play a role, which might explain things.
In Fiji, we were waiting and watching, a Tuesday looked good – but further looking had winds on the nose. Then a Friday looked good, but had a constrained finish, had to arrive before the following Friday. So why not Thursday .. hmm maybe some on the nose, similar to the Tuesday that we passed on. Then Lola started to swirl around and make noise about coming to Fiji.
Cue “The Clash”, “Should I stay or should I go”.
Leave Thursday so there is a buffer on the Friday deadline. We did this trip last year in nice conditions and it was a 6 day trip, the models were showing 9-10 days for the Thursday or Friday departures. Doing math and redoing math and checking with weather people and routers etc.. It’ll make your head spin. Weather router said, “doable”, not a warm fuzzy by any stretch of the imagination. Doable did sound, well doable.
Thursday got the call, a few other boats were leaving, others were staying. Thursday did have the allure of a couple nice days at the beginning, to get your feet wet on the long passage, And running “away” from the future Lola that was brewing near by gave a bit of weight to Thursday departure. So we cleared customs and departed just after lunch.
Thursday evenings updated forecast after we left, had future Lola (had not be named yet) coming on our path. Ugh more math, double check dates. Want to turn back, more math, nearly 100 miles into 1100 mile trip we could turn back easier than the 90% left in front of us. Decision was, wait till next forecast, continue on. Whew.. next forecast kept future Lola north and not following us. Still had the Friday constrained by cold front from the Tasman sea.
Christine will have her own view of the passage, but for me, a couple nice days for decent sailing, a couple days of pure crap into the winds with demoralizing VMG (progress to destination) followed by a couple good sailing days, and still a looming Friday constraint. So we kept pressing hard and making forward progress with eyes on arriving Thursday, ahead of the Friday cold front. Amazingly enough that Friday constraint has been in the forecast and never wavered one way or another for over a week. We calculated we needed a 6knot VMG (to make 6nm every hour toward the destination) to make it by Thursday. Boat can be going 10knots and only making 3kn VMG which is what was happening on the ‘crappy’ days, where we sailed 80 miles off course because of the wind direction. We made it.
Lola did materialize and did start her way south, kind of regrouped into the forecast you see below. This forecast is for Monday, the boats in the picture should all be in on Friday or Saturday at the most. Just in time to hunker down. Hopefully we will be nicely tied up to a good strong floating dock by Thursday evening awaiting the Friday event that has now tuned into a possible bigger deal with the addition of Lola remnants.
Predicted forecast for Monday.
We averaged 7.3kn for 1200 miles, used a bunch of diesel, broke the jib car, but we made it before the deadline, now time to sleep, clean, secure the boat for 50 knots of wind in the marina.
As the crow files the passage is 1100, we did this in 160 hours so we made 6.8nm per hour as the crow flies. Our VMG goal of 6nm is what we needed to make our Thursday arrival. The 7.3 average was over the entire distance the boat went, of 1200 and change.
Arriving in the darkRounding the Whangarei heads at day break
