The forecast was for crossing some “troughs” at some point along the way, well we found our first one.
The wind slowed down, way down, the sails just flapped?!? What happened? Forecast said we should have 20 kts of wind. Oh well, roll up the jib, no sense having it flap about. Hmmm what to do with the main sail, it’s already double reefed, it’s. It flapping too much.
See a darker gray on the moonlight night, a head of us. Check the radar, it’s still 12 miles away… on what the heck, store the main sail too. Turn on engines and top up the batteries..
Enjoy the mysteriously calm sea state and watch the batteries charge, no rain, not much breeze..
Check radar, ahh there it is 5 miles out, the radar shows a long blob, and it’s thick too, like 6 miles to go through. Too long to go around, guess we we will have to just get it over and go through.
Yes, the radar alarms were screaming on this one
Hmmm not much more than a sprinkle in the depths of the radar blob. But coming out the other side was a different story.
No wind, jumped to 40 knots, sea went from placid to “where did that come from”. I had lowered the cockpit rain shades, cause no reason to get wet in the placid drizzle, but now a torrential down pour and honking winds, making the shades shudder. Spent the next 20 minutes keeping the new rain shades from beating them selves to bits in the winds.
Eventually the other side cleared and unfurled the jib and sailed with just the head sail till day break. Not nearly the 200 miles day of the previous, but a respectable 170 miles, and no issues to report
The rest of the day was nice sailing, started out double reefs main and eventually shook it out to only 1 reef when the gusts to 25 subsided. Still a big swell was with us all day, it’s sort of going our direction, which helps with the motion.
We should really reach 1/2 by day break tomorrow, 530 miles left to go. All good on board, getting rest and nice hot bowl of gumbo for dinner.
What a morning sunrise. Not for the view, but for the squalls, lots of em. Driving rain, woke up (rather rudely I might add), to ease the sails and get drenched with cold water as the squall snuck up on us.
The radar was on, was supposed to warn of impending troubles,but I had noticed in the night when a cargo ship crossed our guard zones that no alarm went off. Figured I’d investigate in the day light. Well here we are, barely daylight and I should have investigated. So the fresh shower was my procrastination reward.
The radar has so many settings, over the years I probably have tweaked them all, either to show more I show less. I figured it was time to return to factory settings. Voila, all better was showing the tops of every wave in the ocean (not helpful), so a few tweaks for offshore sailing and we are back in business.
After a few hours of “dodge-squall” the skies cleared up and a nice day of sailing was in store. At our nightly SSB radio check in we were happy to report we knocked off 200 miles toward our destination since the last check-in. Yahooo, rocking along.
One bit of breakage, our jib/genoa car said he was tired of holding the sail and let go. The sound is like a guitar string, boing. This is happened on our first trip down to NZ, and once long ago. With some creative macrame(lots of rope and knots), a temporary fix was in place just waiting for a break in the 25knot winds. Added a new bolt, added lock-tite, but it doesn’t seem to be holding. I painted the top with some of Christine’s electric blue toe polish and can see the nut slowly backing off.
Fix part two, is a back up block ready to handle the job if Mr Lazy jib car gives up again.
I think the painters tape will hold, Right?
More weather, wind and waves scheduled for the night watch. Should be fun. Go sailing, it’s all cocktails and sandy beaches…😀
All good, running along, knocking out the miles. 775 left till Point Resolution Vanuatu.
The weather in these parts can be quite the mess. So we were looking, as many other boats for nice weather windows to leave the ‘cyclone area’ for season and go somewhere “safe” ..
Well I guess there is no really cyclone/hurricane safe place. The systems will just be called by different names to lure you in. We will probably be dealing with typhoons next as we go further west. Ugh,
Anyway, waiting for weather is an extreme exercise in patience, boredom, itchy feet, mental stability all play a role, which might explain things.
In Fiji, we were waiting and watching, a Tuesday looked good – but further looking had winds on the nose. Then a Friday looked good, but had a constrained finish, had to arrive before the following Friday. So why not Thursday .. hmm maybe some on the nose, similar to the Tuesday that we passed on. Then Lola started to swirl around and make noise about coming to Fiji.
Cue “The Clash”, “Should I stay or should I go”.
Leave Thursday so there is a buffer on the Friday deadline. We did this trip last year in nice conditions and it was a 6 day trip, the models were showing 9-10 days for the Thursday or Friday departures. Doing math and redoing math and checking with weather people and routers etc.. It’ll make your head spin. Weather router said, “doable”, not a warm fuzzy by any stretch of the imagination. Doable did sound, well doable.
Thursday got the call, a few other boats were leaving, others were staying. Thursday did have the allure of a couple nice days at the beginning, to get your feet wet on the long passage, And running “away” from the future Lola that was brewing near by gave a bit of weight to Thursday departure. So we cleared customs and departed just after lunch.
Thursday evenings updated forecast after we left, had future Lola (had not be named yet) coming on our path. Ugh more math, double check dates. Want to turn back, more math, nearly 100 miles into 1100 mile trip we could turn back easier than the 90% left in front of us. Decision was, wait till next forecast, continue on. Whew.. next forecast kept future Lola north and not following us. Still had the Friday constrained by cold front from the Tasman sea.
Christine will have her own view of the passage, but for me, a couple nice days for decent sailing, a couple days of pure crap into the winds with demoralizing VMG (progress to destination) followed by a couple good sailing days, and still a looming Friday constraint. So we kept pressing hard and making forward progress with eyes on arriving Thursday, ahead of the Friday cold front. Amazingly enough that Friday constraint has been in the forecast and never wavered one way or another for over a week. We calculated we needed a 6knot VMG (to make 6nm every hour toward the destination) to make it by Thursday. Boat can be going 10knots and only making 3kn VMG which is what was happening on the ‘crappy’ days, where we sailed 80 miles off course because of the wind direction. We made it.
Lola did materialize and did start her way south, kind of regrouped into the forecast you see below. This forecast is for Monday, the boats in the picture should all be in on Friday or Saturday at the most. Just in time to hunker down. Hopefully we will be nicely tied up to a good strong floating dock by Thursday evening awaiting the Friday event that has now tuned into a possible bigger deal with the addition of Lola remnants.
Predicted forecast for Monday.
We averaged 7.3kn for 1200 miles, used a bunch of diesel, broke the jib car, but we made it before the deadline, now time to sleep, clean, secure the boat for 50 knots of wind in the marina.
As the crow files the passage is 1100, we did this in 160 hours so we made 6.8nm per hour as the crow flies. Our VMG goal of 6nm is what we needed to make our Thursday arrival. The 7.3 average was over the entire distance the boat went, of 1200 and change.
Arriving in the darkRounding the Whangarei heads at day break
