Category Archives: Passage

Passage Time: Fiji to NZ 2023

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Bula!

Matt and I are on passage again.  We will be leaving Fiji and heading back to New Zealand for cyclone season. 

Matt will be live blogging during this 7-9 day passage so I have suspended our previously written blog posts.  They will resume in early November.

Hopefully we will have beautiful days where we can fly this beautiful parasail, but most likley we will be flying our working sails.

Click here to read out our last voyage from Fiji to New Zealand in 2022.

The Plan

The plan is always written in sand during low tide.  But we plan to head west as far as possible before turning left and heading south.

We are part of the South Pacific Island Cruising Rally which just means we have access to a lot of resources we wouldn’t normally have as non-members.  It is not a race as everyone leaves on the window they feel safest departing on.

We’ve engaged a professional weather router, signed up for Passage Guardian who will be tracking us, have our amazing friend Donald Anderson tracking us, will be checking in with Gulf Harbour Radio (SSB) daily, and we will be posting daily.  This is in addition to our new to us life raft, multiple ePIRBS, and loads of safety protocols in place.

We are well prepared.  We ave dozens of meals prepared and pre-cooked in case we have rough seas, have stowed everything that needs to be stored, the first aid kit, ditch bag, jacklines, PFDs are out, the dinghy is secured, and the foul weather is out.

Hopefully, my beautiful the angels will be watching over us for a safe passage.

Perfect weather window…

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Well, no perfect weather window for this passage at least does not exist, or rarely does. We lucked into a pretty sweet passage last time we left Fiji for New Zealand.

We waited, analyzed and agonized. Nothing was perfect..

Definitely not a weather window.

We had better already be in New Zealand before the above forecast comes to fruition,, that is a week away. Gives us a week to make this work.

We will be burning some “Dino Juice” (diesel) anytime the wind drops.

On “Our” Thursday, we left around 2pm, 1100 miles to go

All good on board at midnight, keeping an eye on the shipping traffic out here. Cheers, 1021 miles to go. There are also several other boats out here making this run as well, the customs office was very busy today.

Cheers.

Back to the future again

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Just like that, we are in the future again. The dateline is all that separates the past from the future, all this time I thought we needed the Delorean time machine to get to the future. Or just wait around till the future came along.

A good day, lots of wind, a front line, some big waves, couple of sail changes and some napping.

All the boats that are out here going the same direction are all so far away we can’t visually see them, or even on the AIS screen. As soon as they are about 15 miles away they might as well be 100.

Now it’s pitch black, the moon doesn’t rise till almost day break and its 100% cloud cover so nothing to see as we arrive the Eastern Lau group of Fiji. Dodging the small islands and reefs will be the video game of the night watch. Staying 2 Nm offshore of any of these hard things just in case the charts are off is plan. Luckily we have been in these parts before and have some tracks and remember that the charts we have and satellite images are pretty close. .. adding the 2 mile buffer adds to the chances of missing these if something was to go wrong.

Lots of reefs line the path this eve

About 120 Nm left to go, if the winds stay up and the forecast is they should, we can hopefully arrive in daylight. If not, our backup plan is to anchor nearby and clear-in in the morning. of course we have to finish any fresh produce and bacon before arrival. Can’t let bacon go to waste.