Land of the long white cloud
25 November 2019
Bob & Lesley Carlisle
Wednesday 7th November: We’ve finally made it all the way to the Customs and Immigration Quay at Port Denerau, with fuel and water tanks filled, the larder replenished and ready to go; actually, the larder was quite sparse as New Zealand has a long list of things that can’t be imported – fresh fruit/veggies and meats in particular – so no point storing-up for much beyond the 10-12 days we expected the passage to take.
Unlike our more usual Tradewind passages heading generally west, the route to NZ takes us a thousand miles south, out of the Tradewind belt and into the very edge of the low//high pressure systems which circulate the globe in an unending succession, below the great capes. It was the requirement to mess with this potentially heavier weather, which seemingly since forever has had us saying: “No, we’re not going down to New Zealand.” Even today as we set sail, I’m still trying to recall what/why/when we changed our minds? Though lots of advice/local knowledge on how to deal with the weather systems has no doubt helped: Accepted wisdom seems to be that in a small/slow yacht, you will have to deal with one low pressure system, so ’time’ your passage so that you rather than it, chooses where you meet each other; north of latitude 30*S and just west of New Zealand saw us setting sail and aiming for ‘John’s Corner’ a notional point in the ocean at 30S/173E, some 350 miles NNW of Opua, our final destination.
We made reasonable progress for the first couple of days and we’d come up with a cunning plan, to run around the back/west end of a high pressure system where we could pick up the tail of a low-pressure trough and ride that down to at least 25S, perhaps even further (departure in Fiji was at about 18S and Opua’s at about 35S, so 17-degrees/1000 miles) where we should be able to run into the next system rolling through. We had of course missed the single flaw in our passage plan: What to do if we lose the wind from that low pressure trough? That’s what happened early on Saturday 9th; the trough had perhaps moved east faster than predicted, we’d set a course perhaps a little too far west to maximise our period in the trough? Whichever, the result was we were completely and utterly becalmed with no prospect of any wind where we were for at least a couple of days, and even further away than that to the south, so no point our burning precious diesel in ’chasing’ the wind and so it began:
Two days completely becalmed – we actually drifted NNW by about thirty-odd miles on a foul current – and the wind when it did finally arrive blew F2 from almost due south; as the alternative was to just keep drifting the wrong way, we hoisted sail and did the best we could: In the next 24-hours we covered eighty five miles, but for the most part were going across the wind and current, so by the end of it we were only fifteen miles further south. Progress remained dire, but we were at least going in the right direction.
Tuesday 13th: Finally got a decent ‘sailing breeze’ after the last few days we didn’t care that it came from a little too far south for comfort nor that it arrived along with some nasty seas rolling up from a southern ocean blow; we were on the move at least. It was frustrating though, having to reef/slow the boat down and ‘waste’ some of that precious wind once we started bouncing and slamming into those north-going seas; they were ‘boat-breakers’ though and our rule number one on offshore passages is ‘protect the boat’. Whilst sticking to the rule we worked the breeze as best we could and when we parted company with it come the weekend – does the wind only work Mon-Friday around here? - we’d clawed our way down to latitude 25S.
Becalmed once again, but via our own weather downloads, the weather reviewing/advising which John Boyle once again supplied us from the UK and messages from the boats just leaving Fiji, we knew there was once again, no wind to the south and what was due would appear from the north – still no point in our motoring anywhere. This second becalming was a little less frustrating, perhaps we were now just inured to it? Then again, by Monday morning we did get to move just a bit, albeit in a ‘hurry-up and wait’ sort of way: The winds were ’filling in’ from north of us – the bigger faster boats who’d just left Fiji yesterday and today were all making 150-180 miles a day in 15-20 knot winds! – we meanwhile would get 6-8 knots of breeze on the very southern edge of that same weather system, on which we’d edge steadily forward for 8-12 hours, until we had once again ‘outrun’ the wind and floated around for 8-12 hours whilst it caught us up once more. We’d hoped/expected to be arriving around now, but still have almost 500 miles to go!
We continued working the breezes as best we could, with John keeping a close eye on the weather further afield as we approached and finally passed below latitude 30S; we’d now reached the area where we didn’t want to be meeting any deep low pressure systems, the aim/intention being to cover this last 300 miles just as fast as we could; that in part was one of the reasons we’d been so reluctant to burn diesel without a positive gain earlier on, we wanted the ‘run for it under engine’ option available to us now; except of course, it didn’t work!
Weds 20th November: The wind picked-up a solid F4/5 southerly last night, we knew it was coming so just reefed well down and rode it out sailing back and forth across the wind and wicked seas that they’d kicked-up, we did get a bit further south, but not by much. Come this morning the wind had settled down to just F2/3, but it stayed resolutely from the south and now seemed the time to start that motor and just force our way south to Opua. We tried, but not for long: The wind had dropped substantially but not the seas, they were down a bit, but not to the extent that we’d have expected. In noting this anomaly in our next set of emails we discovered (albeit a bit late in the day) that southerly winds off New Zealand, even light ones, invariably kick-up nasty short, sharp, steep seas and that’s just what we had now, we could –after a fashion – sail into/across them, but if we tried to use the engine (Moon Rebel’s not a great boat under engine, especially into head winds or seas) we could barely make 1.5 knots and the motion made even me feel ill.
With the southerly winds/seas forecast to continue for a week (what happened to ‘weather systems across NZ are always on the move’?) we were at no immediate risk from a low-pressure ‘blow’ but neither could we make much progress; a couple of ‘experts’ even suggested that we bail out and instead sail west to Norfolk Island, but that was over 700 miles away and Opua, albeit up wind/sea/current was now barely 200M to the south. We decided to give it one more try and spent Wednesday and into Thursday working as hard as we’ve ever done, keeping the boat absolutely hard on the wind, carrying all the sail we safely could (it was still ‘sea state’ that dictated) and tacking back and forth to best suit any slight changes in wind direction; it was boy-racer stuff and thanks to finding a favourable current giving us negative leeway and holding us nearer to the rhumb line course, we managed to force ourselves a further 70M to the south. With less than 120 miles to make, we weren’t backing-off now!
We never found such a helpful current, but we continued working the winds as best we could, when the wind dropped right off for a period on Friday we got something from the engine – still too lumpy & bumpy directly into the short confused seas, so treated it like sailing and tacked across them. We didn’t make much progress, but got sufficient that by the time the wind returned in strength (F4/5) come the evening, instead of having to reef down/ride it out, as we had on Tuesday, we could close the New Zealand coast and get sufficient lee from that to keep punching forward.
Saturday 23rd November: Not more than an hour after dawn and the wind once more just stopped, not eased, faded, or settled, but just stopped like a tap had been turned off. Well wind-Gods, that’s just too little too late, we can see the entrance to the Bay of Islands, we’re close enough under the NZ shoreline that the seas can’t reach us – we needed to move offshore to clear the entrance shoals – and we still have loads of diesel left. Battered, bruised and absolutely knackered (both us and Moon Rebel) we dropped the sails and motored steadily into the Bay Of Islands and down the Veronica Channel to Opua, arriving at the Customs and Immigration Dock about 1235, almost exactly seventeen days after leaving the Fijian dock at Denerau.
Crossing the Atlantic (1900M) took us 18 days whilst the eastern Pacific (34 days/3600 miles)too, we also deemed ‘slow’ and ‘light winds’ passages, but 17-days for less than 1100 miles from Fiji to NZ sets a whole new standard for slow and this was the one where we were anticipating getting strong winds, perhaps even having to heave-to and sit out a gale! But in seventeen days, the wind never reached/exceeded 17 knots for even seventeen hours, indeed I suspect it didn’t blow F5 for even seven hours!
We had great plans for cleaning/preparing Moon Rebel for the rigorous New Zealand Department of Agriculture arrival inspection, but after almost five days of beating to windward we were just knackered and Moon Rebel too was showing the strain. We managed showers for ourselves and a quick clean-up and wipe around on Moon Rebel as we motored in, but by the time we arrived we still couldn’t have made a very impressive impression; not least with the fore-cabin cushions and bedding hauled out and tied down on deck to try and dry them out; perhaps unsurprisingly beating to windward in big seas has unearthed a few leaks we didn’t know that we had.
Whether we were cleaner than we thought – relatively at least, as I gather that we aren’t the only ‘damp and battered’ looking yacht to arrive in the last day or so – or perhaps the Officials just took pity on us, but the whole clearing-in exercise went without a hitch and took less than an hour, whereafter we moved a couple of miles back up the bay to anchor off the town Paihia (that’s Pie-Here) I guess that the half hour run back to Paihia wasn’t really necessary, but when we arrived in Northland NZ coming eastabout in 1988, our first stop was at a campground just north of Paihia, which we could see from the anchorage. A couple of celebratory beers, a can of cassoulet (it didn’t get confiscated?) and a handful of crackers, then we fell into our berths for a solid eighteen hours of sleep!