Here we go again. Day 4

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Another great day of sailing on this big blue lagoon. Nothing much happened, Very un-eventful. A little struggle during the previous night with the port chart plotter, I pressed ‘display off’ and it would kindly remind me to to press a button to enable the display in bright white letters. Its pitch black out, I wanted to turn off the display to preserve night vision, but every 2 minutes, a bright message would say press here to turn on the screen.. Who designs this stuff? So next I tried, stand by mode, at least that standby mode lasted around 5 minutes before coming back on? B&G can do better, The starboard one had a different issue months ago, but worked through that one with support, now need to remember or contact support again to figure out the magical reset sequence.. The new NEON based chart potters do not compare with the previous versions. Enough there back to sailing.

Tried our hand and trolling today, after news that friends just landed a Mahi, the elusive fish that mostly escapes me. I even had fresh new lures the guy at the shop said were good for Mahi Mahi.. No such lock so it was a trolling day, not a fishing day. To be fair, it’s going to have to be a fast Mahi to see and catch the lures at 8+ knots, like today.. Should have put the larger lures in, but didn’t want to catch a tuna that dives deep then clean it. So just sailed along peacefully.

With no excitement from the trolling lines, We resorted to working, or more correctly volunteering Christine’s copious time. She signed us up to study the world one droplet of sea water at a time. We toss a torpedo looking weapon off the back of the boat and tow it for a bit, hope that a shark doesn’t mistake it for lunch, then pul it in to see what lurks in the waters around us. I have asked If I can paint the torpedo to look like a giant lure to attract and serve as a flasher / teaser and get reminded this torpedo is for science, my toys are just toys. I do as I’m told, occasionally. Christine does all the work of collecting the samples and logging them to the Citizens of the Sea app, and when we arrive we will turn over the samples for the real scientists to make discoveries of what lies beneath or within our oceans. This is part of our daily routine on passage.

Picture of part of the process as we left New Caledonia

Damn the TORPeDNA! Launching the Citizens of the Sea collection unit.

And Yes, we do play Tom Petty on the stereo during this process.

All in all another good uneventful day. Few miles closer to the destination, 300 or so, looks like 2 more sleeps out here on the ocean. Tomorrow is shaping up to be an engine day, but before we get there a frontal band has to cross our path. Possibly rain and 30kts gale force winds.

Sausage / Egg / Bagel for breakfast and another crowd favorite Pulled Pork quesadillas for dinner.

Here we go again. Day 3

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Another night another motoring night. Winds fell off again, they must have had a party to attend else where, say 30 miles behind us our 2 boats we left Noumea with made up some ground on us over night. We can’t have that. Hopefully daybreak will be different.

Into the darkness with our spreadsheets we go

Switching into night mode, the newly drafted quaterback wasn’t sure what he was in for. I changed the screen brightness which for unknown reasons rebooted the screen, the autopilot got upset that his playbook was changed from white to red and stated He simply didn’t know what to do so sat down. A few wise words like, it will be okay, or red light is the new white, and even a you got this, and he jumped right back into actions .

Well makes you wonder where the fault is, something is still not quite right with the auto pilot. We keep our track shoes on so either one of us is ready to jump in at moments notice and take over, should the beeping of sound terror starts. No spring actions were needed this evening he played well all game.

Daybreak and, sails up and it was off to the races. Well really just happy to turn the engine off, and splash splash along. Making comfortable speed, under a gray day, no rain, but just really overcast. Then somewhere around 2pm, I finally realized the sails were not well trimmed. So a tweak here, a tweak there and 8kts was our standard. Great sailing, just needed some blue skies to go with it.

The wind steadily increasing decided to take some canvas down before going into the night, had checked the radar and Norfolk island and there was some rain going to be crossing our path. So prudent to take a reef.

All well on board
Crossed the 1/2 mark, 430 miles left
jambon wrap for lunch, and pulled pork quesadilla for dinner

ps. Feels like this should be day 4, it maybe or just looking track.

Here we go again. Day 2

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Somewhere in the dark hours the perfect winds changed their tunes and shifted into the direction we wanted to go. Not terribly strong but enough to make us head due south when we need to go east too. Gave up when we started getting blown Southwest and decided to put the sails away and turn on the motors and went back to study the forecast. No where was this what was supposed to be. We ended up 20+ miles off course, so burn some diesel till the weather reads its forecasted playbook.

At the same frustrating point, the auto pilot started being finicky and decided he did want to drive for longer than a few minutes at time. He would start his shift and then poof, take his hand off the wheel and yell, I can’t take this any more.. His yelling sounds vaguely like a truck backup alarm. That made it kind of hard to sleep.
Little bit of investigational therapy, nothing seemed to calm his anxieties. And one last chance, but that didn’t work, so he got benched and the backup quarterback was brought on into service. I had signed the backup in NZ, but never finished. Luck would be on our side, I had finished the wiring and commissioning in New Caledonia, signed the contract and dotted the I’s. So with a flick of a switch, Mr Finicky can pout all he wants while sitting on the bench, so long as the backup QB is ready for the long game of 700 nautical miles.

Morning brought the elusive wind shift, and we hoisted sails and were back in a groove again. The backup QB keeping the team together and reeling in the miles. The forecast again said 4-5kts, we had 14-15 and clear blue skies, a perfect sailing day with reasonable calm seas for ocean sailing. Maxed out at 10.7knts of boat speed according to the GPS log.

Upwind sailing at sunset

All well on board,
About 650 miles left till New Zealand 🇳🇿
Big breakfast of bacon and sausages, gotta eat it or customs gets it. Lots of naps during the day, and some good old Cajun Gumbo for dinner.