The trip from Tonga Vava�'u to Opua, New Zealand is roughly 1250 nautical miles and must be respected because of the distance (and time) required to travel. Keep in mind that on a good day Always Saturday can do 150 to 175 miles. Normally we�'ll average maybe 130 miles per day. Long passages in the Trade Winds belt aren�'t as anxiety provoking because no matter how long the passage takes usually the weather is settled. When you head south from Tonga one must pass out of the Trade Winds and into the sub-tropical weather climate. Most weather forecasting is pretty good for a few days but after the forth day, ones ability to predict the weather diminishes greatly. In this particular stretch of ocean lows and highs form off the coast of Australia and march eastward. You can get occasional lows forming in Fiji and if you are unlucky they can create mayhem for several days. So sailor�'s who ply the South Pacific always know that if they wish to get to New Zealand you have to pay the price and take your chance with the weather gods. It is also the beginning of spring so as you approach NZ it can be very cold especially after living in the tropics for a year or more. We set out expecting to sail about 12 days. There is one caveat however and that is that there is a reef about 4 days out that lies directly on the rhumb line that is an atoll with a pass and with protection. We left Tongaas soon as the forecast indicated enough wind to sail as you can�'t motor 1200 miles because we carry limited fuel. The first few days were beautiful with nice wind in a favorable direction and sunny skies with almost no swell. Ideal sailing! On our third day at sea we discovered that we could hardly roll in the mainsail as the drum didn�'t want to rotate. This could be devastating in high winds when you might want to reef the mainsail. If you can�'t get it in you could get flogged and destroy your sail or you could be overpowered and put yourself in harm�'s way. It was like a mirage to envision N Minerva Reef as a place to pull over to the side and make repairs.

You can only see the reef from no more than 4 or 5 miles away. At night it would be exceedingly easy to run the boat up on it and you never approach at night unless you trust your charts and GPS with your life and boat. We slowed down to arrive in the morning and were greeted with an inviting pass into the atoll. This atoll is about 4 miles in diameter, round, and has no dry land. The reef can be walked on during low tide and the harbor is flat but at high tide the swell surges over the reef and the reef disappears leaving only the white water to indicate it�'s presence. What is amazing about this place is that several million years ago it was a round volcanic mountain rising out of the sea. Over the millennium, the volcanic rock eroded away and living coral reef grew up from the ocean floor. So the only evidence that this mountain was here is the living reef that surrounds the lagoon. We motored maybe two miles to the east to anchor where all the other dozen boats were just behind the reef to limit the fetch (waves). It was like a godsend to anchor in 30 feet of sand in the middle of the ocean to rest and do repairs.

Since we have owned Always Saturday for now almost 24 years there are few surprises that we haven�'t had to deal with in the past and lucky for us, the furler was something we fixed years ago. As such, I knew we had a new bearing as a drop in replacement. The next day with some effort and help we were able to disassemble the gooseneck-furler and make the repair. Voilà!

We didn�'t want to loose our sea-legs so we decided to leave as soon as possible. Other cruisers were dinghying to the reef and walking the reef at low tide. The sun was out and the colors were vibrant and beautiful. We decided that the next day would be a day of exploration. The following morning as a daily routine I checked the engine room and found salt water under the main engine. The leak was coming from the seal on the raw water pump. S**t! If left unfixed, using the engine would cause salt water to drop down over the turbocharger and that was unacceptable. Fortunately we had a new pump to drop in and in an hour or two we were back in business. The weather forecast improved and we decided that it would be best to leave immediately. We went up to weigh anchor and the windlass was dead! S**T S**T! We had 180 feet of chain out. After some troubleshooting, it became clear that the culprit was not the windlass but the 200 amp circuit breaker and for that we had no spare!. We used the other winches on the boat to slowly raise the chain and after an hour of toil we finally got it up and secured. We finally departed in the mid afternoon! Our sea anchor was rigged and ready to go in the aft cabin with the anchor rode tied with wire ties up to the bow. We considered it our insurance policy. If the weather got out of hand we could very quickly deploy the anchor and then go below to rest ourselves while we �"pulled over to the side.�"

Keep in mind that we don�'t always do maintenance and some days the boat doesn�'t break down so we do have fun but it is interesting that despite our stringent maintenance on our boat every cruiser struggles to keep going and many have had much more serious failures than we have. We�'ve been luck to be able to fix most of our problems while at anchor but as we speak one boat on it�'s way to NZ has been hand steering for the 800 miles in heavy weather. Despite our difficulties we feel extremely fortunate to have had relatively minor problems and it�'s GREAT to be sitting in harbor now in NZ pondering our trip.

More to follow on the passage from the Crew of Always Saturday