Six Days Across

Well, we're hot to get down to Stewart Island, and I'm not going to spend too much of this beautiful day online.  So the elegiac descriptions of our passage across the lonely Tasman will have to wait - for now, I'll just share the eye-candy...


I'll begin with the tooth that brought in six dollars – Australian dollars, nonetheless, which are worth more than the dollars from a certain God-fearing nation that we all know.

I asked the Tooth Fairy about this price, and she defended herself by saying a), that it was his first tooth, and b), that he is six years old.  Make of that what you will.  The good news is that Elias also lost his second tooth on this passage, and he was very happy to find "only" one dollar under his pillow for that one.

And, how's this for yachtie kid worldliness.  Elias, excited at putting the first tooth under his pillow, says to his mom: "I wonder what currency the Tooth Fairy will pay me in!"

Us, motoring away from Hobart.  Eric is looking fine here...

...but he soon went green.  The poor kid starts every passage with a glass stomach.

And so the drink rack in the cockpit soon sported anti-nausea meds and pedialyte.

But after those first two days he came right.  The sea was still calm, and the boys played through the days in the cockpit.

Knights on horseback, pursuing a dragon.

The boys' happiness, though, takes constant tending by two sleep-deprived parents.  Alisa gave me permission to post this less-than-flattering photo - I think it captures the parental vibe pretty well.

On the best afternoons, as I stood in the cockpit watching the always-the-same, always-changing scene around us, I felt enormously privileged to be in the Southern Ocean.

 White-bellied storm petrel (I think we saw black-bellied as well).

 Buller's albatross.  I think these might be "mollymawks" in New Zealand.  It was Alisa who ID'ed these guys.

 White-headed petrel.

 White-headed petrel.

 The wandering albatross, grand eminence of southern waters.

As we approached Puysegur Pt., the southwestern corner of New Zealand, the weather went a bit rough - and in a way that's a good thing, as Puysegur Pt. is that sort of place where you're quite glad to have weather that's only a bit rough.  Poor Eric started puking again.  For a two-year-old, he's quite good at hitting the bucket.

 Our first view of New Zealand - aka Aotearoa.

 And dawn the next morning, just outside of Bluff and north of Stewart Island.

~~

And, well, that's all for now.  Pictures really are such poor things for telling a story, but they are certainly quicker than words, and we're off for a sail.  More soon, and we'll continue to update our position with the tracker...

Here We Go

Classic timing - we waited and waited for weather on the trip to New Zealand, and now we might have waited a day longer than absolutely ideal.

But, no matter - we're ready and eager to be at sea and of course, as with the start of all big passages, a bit nervous.

Our time in Australia has been great, and now it is nearly in the past.  We look forward to what our time in New Zealand might bring.

Customs is due to check us out of the country at 9 tomorrow morning, and then we'll be off.  I've added a map to the sidebar of the blog that should have our location updated regularly, so you can follow our progress across the Tasman.

Time to get some sleep.

Peace/out, Mike

Too Swell

Well, that's the problem with paying a weather expert to tell you the right time to leave port - he might also tell you that it's the wrong time.

Our momentum was building for a Sunday departure to New Zealand.  The weather forecast looked good.  We had coordinated with the local Customs office for a weekend checkout.

(Aside:  Three Customs officers came by the boat the other day to say hello - and caught me on the dock, in exam gloves, giving the inside of one of our head pumps its annual clean out.  Sorry I can't shake hands, I said.  But you really don't want to shake my hand right now.

First time I've ever seen folks from Customs look just a little nervous when they were talking to me.)

As I said, we were gathering steam to leave Australia on Sunday.  But then we got Bob McDavitt's advice - don't go now, swell will be too big for a comfortable crossing.

So we're holding off.  It's easy for me to look at the various swell forecasts online and think that things wouldn't be too bad.  But of course we're thinking of the boys, and there's really nothing rushing us, and the reason we're using a weather router for the first-ever time is to get an informed outside opinion on the best time for the crossing, so we're happy to listen to that opinion.

The sea still awaits.  But we're going to wait a little more.

All Swell

The car sold two days ago, and Alisa closed out our post office box yesterday.  That just about wraps up our tangible connections to Tassie.  We've been in Hobart for a year, but we didn't settle in.

Yesterday we bought 677 liters of diesel fuel, topping off all three of Galactic's tanks.  With our young crew, we'll be very happy to tag along on a high-pressure system across the Tasman, even if it does mean days of motoring.

Just our sort of big fat high appears to be approaching from the west right now.  We had nearly made the decision to leave on this coming Sunday, but our weather guru Bob McDavitt counsels patience, pointing out an inconveniently large Southern Ocean swell that will be around early next week.  We're pretty keen to go, but also happy to take the advice we're paying for.

Sunday's forecast - that might be our high, coming in from the west. 

I was incapacitated by a migraine on the night of our unplanned, cyclone-enforced stay in Melbourne last week when we were flying up to Queensland.  Something about getting four hours of sleep the night before we left, finishing up boat jobs and packing, and then the next day shepherding two little kids through the exigencies of a cancelled flight and the resulting patched-together day in a city we didn't know must have been enough to trigger it.  It was the first migraine I've had in a year, would have been a very bad development halfway across the Tasman, and was a good reminder of the importance of being well rested when we set off for New Zealand.

So I've put a moratorium on starting any new boat projects in the days before we leave.  There will be plenty to do just with getting everything ready for sea and taking care of a few of the little jobs that keep the boat moving.

The sea awaits.

Vacation Disassociation

Everyone around the marina in Hobart has a third-hand horror story about awful weather that befell someone on a Tasman Sea crossing.  So when you're dock-bound it's easy to think about what might go wrong - marinas are like that.  But now that the actual event is close at hand (we hope to leave some time next week), the crossing is starting to seem like a more reasonable.proposition.  There have been long windows of good weather lately, and the first boat that we know of to make the crossing this summer left Hobart a day or two ago.  We've been getting the boat well prepared, and we've enlisted Bob McDavitt, the sailors' weather guru in this part of the world, to help us to call the weather.  Aside from the part that entails parenting while being sleep deprived, I'm quite looking forward to the trip.

So the Tasman Sea is in our near future.  But meanwhile we're still up in Queensland, visiting my folks and getting in as much swimming as the leftover surf from cyclone Oswald will allow.

While we're still here it's pretty hard to think of the whole adventure - the remaining boat jobs, and dealing with customs, and troughs and lows and fronts and sea state, and what we'll find when we get to New Zealand.  Time enough for thinking about all that once we get home to the boat.