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!
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.
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.
