We are approaching New Zealand after three days of beautiful sailing, even having Johan pull in a mahi-mahi. The forecast since we departed Minerva Reef has changed somewhat to show a greater increase wind speeds than predicted when we left. We have spent much of the last 48 hours gathering information from weather routers, other boats, weatherfaxes, grib files, and discussing it at length with routers and boats. It is definitely not the old days where one stuck one's head out and looked. The Commanders' staff had a meeting today and changed their initial recommendation to heave it (ie slow the boat down and wait) to one to go ahead and heave to as needed. This is mostly based on the fact that after the ENE blow from behind, there will be W and SW winds which we would have to bang into (really hard). So we are tightening down Hannah, organizing our communication and food, getting out cold weather gear, and getting psyched. We will post here upon arrival in Opua. xoxoxo Tracy, Steve,and Johan

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We are going today!

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We got up ready to go. Winds were 1.5kts gusting to 2.2kts. Minerva Reef blue is a color both opaque and transparent at the same time. We could see down 65' to the marks in the sand from our anchor chain. K & B brought over grib files, which are raw weather data, not the usual charts we use for decision-making which have been drawn by a meteorologist with a brain. We had expected very light winds, but it looked like absolutely no wind for 36 hours. Although prepared to motor for a while, we were really concerned about using that much diesel and not having it for other critical weather situations and decided to stay. So did everybody else. We all know that we face a challenge, as pretty much nobody gets to NZ without winds to 40kts, but that the forecast still puts it NNE and we can take it aft of the beam just fine. The spirit of yacht clubs and Jimmy Buffett drifted in the pass. We went over to Winddancer, whom we had not seen for some time, who had just arrived at dawn and pretty soon we were drinking beer then rum punch with sides of popcorn before noon. Turns out so was everybody else. People we hardly know called to ask us over for rum shots and fish. Dinghies are going everywhere to dive and snorkel. We set Johan up with K & B to snorkel; they just did a course with Reefcheck under the auspices of OceansWatch. Then he will be off with the savviest spearfisherman of the lot (last job monitoring elections in Afghanistan), who came by to ask how many fish we wanted because everybody wants to spearfish but nobody wants to take more than they can eat or give away. Folks are digging around for spare tips because they have dinged theirs up. Other than make a batch of brownies, there is no work to be done. Just wait lazily in a most exquisite place.

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