It's all about timing. Like moths to a flame the New Zealand bound Pacific cruisers are all congregating either here in Tonga or Fiji, all poised to make the leap south into the wild oceans.

Wild if they weren't flat calm for the first half of the 10 day, 1,200 mile trip.

Timing is everything. As previously mentioned the highs and lows come barrelling across the Southern Ocean, turning north to cross the top of New Zealand, right into the cockpit of us lot trying to get south.

Get it right and leave on the top of an incoming high and you have a jolly reach in the sun down to Minerva Reef where you wait for the next system, anchored in the middle of the ocean. Remember the rim if the tea cup analogy? Well, apparently Minerva's rim is, other than on dead calm days and low tides, permanently awash and you can't tell where reef begins and ocean ends. Other than writing off any chance of a coffee and wifi ashore, with luck, on calm days you can walk on the reef. On rough days you get washed into the ocean and eaten by sharks and if it's really rough, the anchorage gets untenable with the ocean just washing clean over, pounding the anchorage and you get washed onto the reef, and, well, get eaten by sharks.

So, confusingly, the supposed best passage plan is to head for Minerva in one's nice high and wait there while the Front ahead of the following low passes overhead. Now, to me, a Front means bad weather yet the experts say to go and park yourself in the middle of a shark infested reef strewn "tea cup". Sounds a bit like being told to go and stand under a tree when there's lightning coming.

So, like pretty much everyone afloat here, or everyone except Jonas, the single hander from Sweden who doesn't have a radio and can sail off in his 27ft Allegro at any time in blissful ignorance, at 08:00 every morning we're gathered around the wireless like its September 1939 and we're waiting on the scratchy broadcast from Gulf Harbour Radio, down in New Zealand to give us the latest on the Front.

However, knowing the upper level trough, which reaches from the Australian Bight to Vanuatu that is driving the quasi stationery disturbance into to the inter tropical Squash Zone isn't a busting lot of help. To me anyway.

So, after spending hours on the laptop downloading weather files and studying their progression as the systems move across the ocean and seeing how the animated graphic showing our little boat moving across the isobars at our plugged in estimated 6 knots we're still none the wiser.

I think we'll just follow Jonas.