Friday, November 8, 2013

Tacking to New Zealand

Something happened to the weather forecast yesterday. Instead of the two days of light headwinds that we had been expecting, the forecast charts now show SIX days of southerlies between us and our destination - and not all of them light.

We left Fiji pretty much just because we felt ready to, and because we had a clear window to arrive in New Zealand in a spell of settled weather. (The main trick on this passage is to avoid copping a low south of 30 degrees South.) We told each other, and anyone else who asked, that we weren't too picky about the weather otherwise.

It's too late to revise that attitude now, though the idea of tucking into Minerva Reef and waiting for the southerlies to pass was gazetted.

We're not going to do that, so we've resigned ourselves to a slow, and expensive passage. If it were just Alisa and me, we would suck it up and sail as much as we could. But with the boys to consider, and especially Eric's seasickness, it's much the better solution to reef the main, roll up the jib, and motor into the wind - slowly, and at the cost of much fuel, but reasonably comfortably.

On the bright side, we caught an oarfish-sized mahi mahi yesterday.

~~
At sea...
..no internet!

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