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.