Category Archives: Passasge

Let us make lemonade

When Mother Nature decides to not follow the recipe in the forecast and gives you lemons you make lemonade. Though I prefer limes for margaritas. We improvise and make do.

We have plenty of dead dinosaur juice, so we are not winning any “green card” awards today. Maybe 1/2 of one, since we are only running one engine to keep knocking off the miles. The original forecast was for lighter winds at the second half of the journey, but what we have here, is a failure to maintain that end of the bargain. Which is perfectly okay because the waves and swell is down too so it is perfectly comfortable out here in this big blue puddle.

Made the best of it, Christine trimmed up my mullet. I took the trimmers to my mane and coiffed a perfect Kiwi mullet that would have fit in perfectly at “Frings” on a Friday night. She wanted to take pictures for proof, but I declined as I didn’t want to upstage Joe Dirt.

Worked on a little cosmetic gel coat beautification from where we replaced the bathroom accessories.

Found some important missing safety pins (split rings) that keep the mainsail attached to the mast, so replaced the worn and missing split rings. Replaced some aging bungee cords that had long since lost the spring in their step.

Removed the base layer of clothing, yup, the lack of cold southern wind it is warming up nicely.

All in all a very nice day on the water but maybe too productive, will have to find more projects for tomorrow as well since there looks to be another 🦖 burning day.

Under single engine at efficiency speed we only make about 5 kts, while burning 3 liters per hour, so we are not winning any races and the last 250 nm will take 2 more nights on the water before finding a place to drop the hook and clear customs. And of course we want to arrive in daylight hours … just a juggling act, toss em up in the air catch as many variables as you can.

First 24 hours to NZ behind us.

Knocked off 172 miles toward the destination, it only cost us 10 miles or extra distance so far. Most of that was leaving Denaru and getting out of the reefs.

Sunny and still warm. A decent run for day one. The squall line that comes in tonight or tomorrow morning will not be too much fun, but it’ll happen.

Beautiful day, can’t see but it’s a little bit bumpy too

We continue to hammer down and keep the VMG toward NZ up, well should arrive before the cold front. COLD FRONT? Why did we leave Fiji? Oh yeah, boat work and cyclone season is in our future.

Broke out the BBQ Chicken Enchiladas for diner. Can’t go wrong with some good ole enchiladas!

All good on board.
922 miles to destination.

Farewell to the Kingdom

Fickle as we are, we have pressing matters to attend to. Just like that crazy rabbit from Alice in wonderland.

Well not really, we had a great time in Tonga but we really didn’t do it justice. Lots of whales, some great anchorages, mediocre weather and great weather but Fiji and a chance to pick up a replacement rudder won the coin toss.

Another unexpected fun in Tonga, was we got to cross paths with new and old friends from anchorages past. Some we hadn’t seen since the Caribbean, others from French Polynesia and beyond.

We cleared out on Friday with a Saturday plan. Can’t leave on a Friday, it’s bad luck, and that would have meant missing a Friday happy hour. Saturday morning came all too soon.

A cruise ship was arriving so no need to stick around. Under way and raised full sails. Soon enough, wind picked up and overpowered the one rudder. Oh my, this is going to be a long 400 miles. Reefed and tweaked, and tweaked, and finally came to an agreement with autopilot.

We agreed, not to give him too much sail to deal with and he would meander down the course, like he was the one that stayed too late at happy hour. One reef in the main and various furls on the headsail and we have some decent balance. With the exception of the quartering seas that induces lots of rudder use, we have successfully knocked out 150 of those 400 miles.

With the exception of the rough waves and winds at the start, why did we chose to leave in a squall?, it’s going well out here.

Cheers.

Lots of company leaving Tonga this morning