Today was a fabulous day of sailing! The breeze was a constant 15-20 knots and finally backed to the East so we’ve been on a wonderful beam reach for the last 30 hours or so.
Nope Nothing To See Here
Good Morning, Fiji..
Its 11 p.m. and we are 120 miles out from Suva, Fiji. I’m on watch and will wake Darren up for his watch at midnight. The night is really beautiful. The moon and stars are out, the swell is small and we have a nice 17 knots of breeze out of the NE pushing us along at 7.5 knots..
Every crew has their breaking point and for us it was early this morning at 1AM. After two days beating upwind with the breeze building and seas piling up in all directions we called our upwind quest for Minerva to an end.
Today was by far one of the most defeating days I’ve had sailing. It started out good enough as we were able to sail through the night and made lots of ground up from our course correction yesterday.
We lost the wind again last night. It seems the light patch was following us and since we were right on the edge it started killing our breeze. Poor Delos was rolling around in the swells side to side, forward and backward.
Just as predicted we ran out of wind overnight and were forced to motor. At least the waves calmed down and became less confused making for a smoother ride.
We finally got our Westerly wind shift we’ve been waiting for and had a great day of sailing! So good in fact that we were right on our course and covered as many miles in one day as we did in the previous two.
We set out from the Bay of Islands on Wednesday, deciding that tacking back and forth in the ocean sounded way more fun then sitting at anchor in Opua and risking another low rolling through.
The weather finally broke yesterday allowing us to launch the dinghy and venture ashore. Five days of 30-35 knot winds and nonstop rain had taken it’s toll but we held up well and avoided cabin fever by keeping ourselves occupied.
Wow! Has it really been almost 6 months since we arrived in New Zealand and hung up our sailing and blogging shoes?
I actually wrote this blog months ago, while we were still in Tonga. For some reason I didn’t post it. Maybe I thought it wasn’t relevant, or maybe just too dramatic.
It never rains in San Blas in December. That’s what the locals say. Or, rather, that’s what they said – until the day that we arrived.
Here we sit in our new home at Bayswater Marina in Auckland. The wind is howling outside and the skies are grey and overcast, but we’re tied up with unlimited power and internet so we’re happy.
Brrrrr! Last night I wore gloves, hat, jacket, pants, and even boots. Our blood has definitely thinned out over the past year in the tropics. In Seattle 67F would be a great day to wear shorts!
We are currently 260 miles out of Opua, still making 8+ knots. Should make landfall sometime Friday morning! We have all got our sea legs back and are moving around more. Erin even cooked an amazing chicken-french-onion soup tonight.
Still making good speed to New Zealand. Erin was pretty seasick for the first few days but is feeling better. She left with bronchitis and thinks it might have screwed up her equilibrium. We’re all getting plenty of sleep on this passage, so we’re well rested.
Things finally calmed down a little bit this morning. We awoke to sunny skies, calmer seas, and breeze under 20 knots. We un-furled our sails to keep the boat speed up and made 8 knots most of the day.
With a good weather window we spent our last Paanga on cheeseburgers and cokes at Big Mamma’s yacht club and set off from Nuka’Alofa. The skies were sunny with 20 knots of breeze. As we got out of the lee of Tonga’Tapu the breeze built through the day until we were seeing 25-30 knots with gusts into the low 30’s.