Category Archives: Passasge

Farewell to the Kingdom

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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

Let’s go club in’

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The guess to go east worked out. The weather guys woke up from their night out and started following the program. A little late, but at least it’s in the ballpark.

They must have been still a bit hung over and just to start the night off right jumped right into a Jäegermeister shot! Just as it got dark the first squall came out of the darkness. No rain, so radar didn’t pick it up. I saw a darker spot in the sky and reduced a little more sail. Just then, Whoosh, winds were up and we were making course changes to reduce wind on the sails. Just as in any club, gotta watch out for those Jäegermeister shots, we will call this one the Warning shot.

The warning became appreciated a few hours later.

The moon rose and the stars remained hidden, I guess it was going to be one of those kinds of parties. The weather guys must have made a connection at the club. A long white cloud appeared in the sky and so did the winds. The 80’s music playing was “Duran Duran, hungry like a wolf” and you can just see the dance floor flailing about at warp speed. Now thankful for the warning shot, just a little course change can take the edge off. Of course, now no longer going the correct direction. After what seemed like forever out on the dance floor, the DJ played the breather song. Probably something by “Bryan Adams”. Back on course.

Like any good DJ, the process is repeated again and again all night long.

At day break, the Roxbury closes and it’s time to see what you couldn’t quite see in the club last night.

Morning looking good, some breaks in the sky. Still breezy, and bouncy. 250 miles to go, or put differently 1 or 2 more club nights.

Club gear! or staying warm and dry leaving New Zealand

Migration to Tahiti

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The migration from the Gambier Archipelago to the Society Archipelago is about 900 nm if we were to go direct.  However, we decided to head north toward the Tuamotus Archipelago then west toward the Societies which ads several hundred miles and days to our journey.

The first leg of this migration is from Taravai, Gambier to Tahanea, Tuamotus.  This passage is roughly 664nm direct and should take us 5-6 days.  The predicted forecast is for light winds, little rain, long, rolly seas.  We put up our largest spinnaker (200 square meters), since we were anticipating light winds.  We call her “Big Bertha” and she is super colorful   Usually, we take down our spinnakers at night and just run the “working sails” (main and jib) as a “just in case”.  But the winds were super light at 6-8kts and predicted to stay that way all night.

Night 2 – dun dun dun

Matt wakes me up around 2:00am announcing a pending storm.  We need to douse the spinnaker and raise the working sails.  I grab a rain jacket and make a quick trip to the bathroom.  I should have skipped the 2-minute bathroom break.  By the time I got to the deck, the wind gusted to 26 and blew out our sail.  Insert all sorts of explicates here!  We rush to the bow to pull the sail out of the water. 

Yes, Matt could have doused the sail by himself and I could have peed my pants.  Both options would have saved the sail.  Hindsight is 20/20.  But the good news is that none of the sail pieces got caught on the dagger boards, rudder, or prop!  We will try to repair her in Tahiti.  She is 22 years old. Farfugnuggin!  The lower left photo shows you where the sail ripped.

The top two photos show you the huge wind shift and gust of wind.  The bottom right photo is the parasail that we put up afterwards.

On our 5th night, we had a guest on board.  A silly, dirty boobie.  It is so hard to be mad at these birds as it is clear they are tired and just need a place to rest before continuing on their own personal migration.  But man, oh man do they leave a nasty mess!

Part I of the Migration: Gambier-Tahanea

  • Total Miles to Destination:  664nm
  • Total Miles Sailed:  710nm
  • Top Speed: 11.0kt
  • Average Speed:  6.1kt

Notes:  Super beautiful sail with the light wind coming ENE and the seas coming from ENE to E.  The seas were large at 2m, but they were long and lazy and came with long intervals in between.  We ended up sailing 46nm out of our way to maintain the wind speed.

Don’t miss our blog post “Ta Ta Tahanea” where we explore this stunning atoll for the last time.  Coming up next week.

Tahanea to Fakarava

This is the shortest part of our migration.  The tricky part is trying to time the outbound passage through the Tahanea pass with the inbound passage through Fakarava.  Unfortunately, it just does not work out.  So, we decided to leave Tahanea at the midnight outbound slack time with the hopes of arriving at the Fakarava inbound around 9a-10a in the morning. 

Typically, we don’t like to transit the passes at night because you cannot see what the water is doing.  Is it truly inbound or outbound current?  Are there standing waves?  What are the eddies doing?  Too many unknowns.  But we have tracks from a previous transit and a wee bit of the moon light and forged our way out with no issues.

The winds were light at 10-12kts from the East on a perfect beam reach.  We started with full working sails (main and jib) and were making a respectable 5-5.5 kts of boat speed.  At dawn, we lost the wind, dropped all sails and motored.  We hoisted our spinnaker but that only gave us 3kts of boat speed, so we took her down and reverted back to the motor and the jib.  This would ensure we arrive during incoming tide in Fakarava.

Super peaceful and beautiful passage to Fakarava.

Part II of Migration

  • Total Miles to Destination:  48nm
  • Total Miles Sailed: 55 nm
  • Top Speed: 11.0kt
  • Average Speed:  6.1kt
  • Total time at underway: 11 hours

Fakarava to Tahiti

We had light winds predicted for this trip.  We left the North pass at 3:00pm and had 238nm to Papeete.  An expected 2-2.5 days.  Since we did not want to arrive at night we decided to just go with our working sails.  We set them up wing on wing which means the main on one side and the jib on the other. 

We could have flown our spinnaker or parasail but then we would arrive at night – and what’s the point in that.  So, we enjoyed a nice, slow, leisurely paced sail.

Sugar Shack under sail using the spinnaker (this is our medium sized 150 square meters spinnaker as the large one (200m) was ripped on the way from Gambier to Tahanea.

  • Total Miles to Destination:  238nm
  • Total Miles Sailed:  246nm
  • Top Speed: 9.3kt
  • Average Speed:  5.5kt
  • Total time at underway:  1 day and 20 hours

I ended up writing separate blog posts for Tahanea and Fakarava so be sure to read the next few weeks to catch up on our adventures on these two atolls.

A celebration and sad farewell to the Gambier Archipelago. (see passage post).   The migration began 25 Feb. in Gambier and ended on 26 March in Tahiti.  Our blog posts run 10-12 weeks behind our adventures.