The word of the day is: calm
27 April 2016 | The southern ocean
Colin
Today has been calm and mostly sunny. We are about 75 miles off the East Cape of NZ and motor sailing in 6kts WSW of wind. We tried the spinnaker for a few hrs this morning which worked well as long as the wind stayed above 8 kts. Unfortunately the wind wouldn't cooperate. Amazing what a few kts of wind from the right direction can do for boat speed. So, now we're motorsailing again, bound for an imaginary mark in the southern ocean 200 miles away which we hope will position us to sail east under the next high pressure cell with favorable winds. We need to be careful not to stray too far north too soon or risk getting stuck in the southern trade winds which blow east to west. These would prevent us from ever getting to Tahiti. Instead, we sail east in the southern latitudes just above the roaring 40's until we are almost due south of Tahiti, or the forecasts predict that we can lay it. Only then can we turn north towards the warmer latitudes. Fortunately we took aboard a lot of extra fuel for this trip...