Talk about a case of "Hurry-up and wait". Here we are at Marsden Cove Marina, poised to make those last-minute preparations for departure such as setting-up the lee-cloth bed; topping-off the water tank; strapping-down all loose items; moving the life raft to the cockpit; installing jack-lines; and putting all important documents, cash, and computer back-up drives into the ditch-bag (to join the rest of the abandon-ship equipment such as flares, first-aid kit, cans of food and can-opener, space-blankets, etc.) But, this morning (Thursday May 18th), after reviewing various sources of weather information, we have decided to postpone our departure yet again.

Plan D was to leave today, but we had already pushed that back a day to Friday (Plan E) because today was forecast to have some unpleasant winds and waves at the beginning of the passage. And those forecasts have been validated with nasty weather for the last couple of nights and this morning, including a few gusts reaching 40 knots. Several crews that had been planning to leave Marsden Cove today are waiting until tomorrow.

Plan E took a dive this morning when we saw that conditions at the end of our passage would be very rough with waves to almost 5 m (16 feet) as the result of a tropical low (not yet a named storm) that is expected to form near Tonga and then move southeast. Given the uncertainty of whether that low might be worse or further west than currently predicted, and given that we are now aiming to stop at Minerva Reef before reaching the island of Tongatapu, we reluctantly decided that we should continue to wait. Departure on Monday currently looks like a better option for us - Plan F, I believe.

Minerva Reef is a pair of adjacent atolls (forming an 8-shape) about 200 nm south of Tongatapu. There is no land and the tops of the circular reefs can only be seen at low tide, although waves break on the reef during most tidal stages. Apparently, there is good anchoring in sand within the reefs (particularly the northern one) and good snorkeling. Several boats heading for Fiji are planning to stop there so we decided to give it a try. It is easier to stop there when heading north, when the chances of good weather for the rest of the trip to Tonga or Fiji are better than when heading south to New Zealand. We may not arrive there in time to meet boats that are heading out tomorrow but, as you might imagine, the idea of snorkeling on clear-water, ocean reefs is very appealing to us. Of course, as with the remote western Caribbean reefs of Roncador and Bajo Nuevo that we visited in 2009, the trade-off for fabulous snorkeling conditions is that there will be some resident sharks that we will have to treat with due respect.

In preparation for imminent departure, we had made the trip downriver from Whangarei to Marsden Cove on Monday, having topped-off the propane tank and bought the perishable provisions. That morning, we had also taken aboard four grocery-bags full of children's books that Gaylyn on SV Qi, had collected and needed delivered to a Peace Corps worker who is establishing a library in a village in the Vava'u Islands. At Gaylyn's suggestion, I also bought a variety of sports equipment (basket- volley- rugby- and tennis-balls and some cheap cricket-sets) for the village school. It was understood that it might be a couple of months before we get to the Vava'u Islands but that did not seem to be a concern.

Our waiting period is not being wasted (at least, not entirely). I finally managed to get the blog truly up-to-date by finishing the last of the missing posts from 14th September to 2nd October 2016. My next blog project may be to add our inaccessible TripSailor posts from the start of our cruising adventures in 2008 to when I started using Sailblogs.com in San Francisco in 2013. But don't hold your breath waiting for that...I also should tackle a few of my sewing-machine projects now that we have shore-power.



Raumanga Stream Falls

There have been some fun recreational activities as well. One of these was a mystery double-date that I organized on Saturday. It was a beautiful sunny day but because it had rained for the preceding couple of days, it seemed like the ideal time to revisit Whangarei Falls. So with Vandy and Eric, we drove around Whangarei in their car, Baxter. First we visited Raumanga Valley Park which had some modest cascading falls on the Raumangu (a.k.a. Nihotetea) Stream that none of us had visited before (I had found them by chance during my run that morning). After a baguette and brie picnic lunch, we drove to the end of Raumanga Valley Road to see a grass-covered dam that was built at a cost of NZ$11 million to prevent flooding in Whangarei's central business district. Planned after the city center was severely flooded in 1966, the dam only retains any water from the Raumanga Stream if there have been exceptional amounts of rain. Thus, in the parlance of Florida, it is a huge, expensive retention pond.



Vandy, Eric, and Randall in Raumanga Valley Park

We then drove to Whangarei Falls, which did have noticeably more water thundering over them than during our mid-summer visit with Martha over Christmas. After enjoying a walk around the Falls Loop Trail, and inspired by the Raumanga Dam, we drove to the Whau Valley Dam which creates the city's drinking water reservoir. Eric and Vandy had been there before but Randall and I had not so it was a novel twist for the mystery-date organizer to be taken to a mystery site at the end of the date. Eric and Vandy were startled by how much higher the water level was than on their previous visit. With record-breaking monthly rainfalls in various parts of the North Island in March and April, I suppose it should not have been such a big surprise.



Whangarei Falls from above

If we seem to be a bit obsessed with the weather at the moment, perhaps we can be forgiven. For sailors, this obsession is something of an occupational hazard. Let's now see if the weather allows us to stick to Plan F or if we will be enjoying life in New Zealand for even longer.