New photo albums - at last...
03 December 2012
We heard you Dave... and since we can no longer pull the excuse of having no internet access, we have posted three new albums on Picasa:
Niue,
Tonga, and the
Sail to NZ. Enjoy - and stop nagging us ;-)
Arrival!
23 November 2012 | Tied up at the Q dock at Opua, Bay of Islands, New Zealand
Tied up to the Q dock at Opua at 2115 local time tonight after a perfect sailing day. At 0200 last night we finally emerged from under that stationary front and within a few minutes the wind picked up to a steady 20kn+ on the beam. It settled down a bit in the early morning and we had great day on a beam reach, averaging close to 6kn. We made landfall around 2pm and sailed into the Bay of Islands just before sunset. Hard to imagine a more beautiful finish to this passage (and - in a way - to our journey here that started from the US East Coast a year ago). Now we need to clear in tomorrow morning, figure out some berthing/mooring arrangement for a few days and then look forward to a visit from Seabright on Sunday. All is well aboard, stay tuned...
Less than 100nm to the Bay of Islands
22 November 2012 | En route between Minerva Reef and New Zealand
Well, it seems that stationary occluded front that has accompanied us the last two days isn't so staionary after all. It keeps slowly dropping south, just enough to stay in synch with us. It appears that every time we get a bit of clear sky and sailable wind the front is eager to catch up and a few hours later we have 8/8 cloud cover and no more than 5kn of wind again. That not withstanding, we did have some nice sailing wing-on-wing this afternoon and are now (0030 local time on 23NOV) less than 100nm from the entrance to the Bay of Islands. With a bit of luck and some wind tomorrow we may reach it before nightfall. As on previous passages we did/do have a daily SSB net again. This time it is the German language "Drifter Net", run by Detlev and Beate on Kira (assisted by Helmut and Kerstin on another boat). They're also underway to NZ currently and have made this trip mutliple times in the past. Amongst other things they provide excellent weather advice. The relaxed passage we've had down here so far is in no small part thanks to them and their guidance in picking a suitable weather window (which was not trivial this year because the weather patterns were a bit different from the usual textbook rules around the time we left). Now we're curious again to meet the "faces to the voices" from the boats on the net in Opua. All is well aboard, stay tuned...