LONG WHITE CLOUD: SailBlogs

Making the most of the wind....

Paula — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 13:46:00 -0600

We are making good time since leaving South Minerva yesterday. We have had good winds from the south east and although we had various wind strengths we have managed to sail throughout the night. It's fine, not too cold (yet) and we have 611nm to go. (View Post...)

On our way home....

Paula — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 21:24:00 -0600

We left South Minerva today at 1100 hrs in good south easterly winds @18-20 knots. We are making good speeds (8.3 knots on the GPS) and we haven't even got our genoa out as we figure we don't want to stress LWC and break anything on this our last leg home. Our friend Mike on Arielle is beside us to the east and a boat is on our track, behind us so we'll have lights around us tonight...something we are not used to at sea. Forecast is for lighter winds tomorrow so we want to make the most of the air while we have it. Could be a patchy trip with boats ahead of us doing quite a bit of motoring. (View Post...)

20 miles nearer to home....

Paula — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 18:20:00 -0600

We had a great sail today from North Minerva to South Minerva Reef. A beam reach and we flew....shame the weather forecast doesn't have this for the rest of the passage home otherwise we'd be tempted to just carry on. We had a spectacular dive on the outside of North Minerva Reef yesterday...clear visibility, stunning coral, heaps of fish variety along a steep drop off but interestingly no sharks or large pelagic's. We are watching the weather very carefully and think we'll be heading south in the next couple of days...the Highs in the Tasman, combined with a deep low to the east of NZ promises strong head wind off the coast of northland in a few day which doesn't make for good sailing into New Zealand. We would rather wait a couple of days in the hope they dissipate before we get there. (View Post...)