Month: May 2014

May 17, 2014 at 27 deg, 40 min south, 178 deg, 22 min west.

Plans change.

Plan A… leave Tauranga, sail to Minerva Reef, then to Tonga. A little later… A low heads to Minerva. Scratch that.

Plan B… Skip Minerva, go direct to Tonga. A little later… The low looks like it’ll move to Tonga as we get there. Scratch that.

Plan C… Direct to Tonga but go really slow. A little later… The low slows down. Scratch that.

Plan D… Hove to – just stay put and wait for the low to pass. A little later… The low looks like it’ll curve southwest towards us. Scratch that.

Plan E… Head to Minerva. The low should pass by the time we get there. Fingers crossed, we’re heading there now. It’s two days away. Lots of time for things to change and for us to implement plans F, G, H, I, J, K, L and M. -Rich, one of the two at sea – the other one’s sleeping.

May 14, 2014

Looks like some bad weather is set up to meet us at Minerva Reef. We don’t want to play! We’ve changed course and are headed straight to Nuku’alofa, Tonga – our Plan B. For now, we’re still motoring along with no wind and flat, beautiful seas. Delicious! Our position is 31 deg, 14.8 min South, 178 deg, 46.3 min East steering 016 magnetic at about 4.7 knots.

May 13, 2014

We’re at sea, motoring, on a beautiful flat and glossy ocean. The weather is getting warmer: We no longer need our long underwear nor my red knit watch cap. We have 534.8 nautical miles to go to North Minerva Reef and we’re slowing down a bit so we make it there Sunday morning after a little low pressure cell passes through. Cruising is fun when it’s like this!

Position: 32 deg, 11 min south, 178 deg, 15 min east. -Rich

May 10 2014

We’re minutes away from sailing away from New Zealand… well, motoring away actually as this New Zealand flag shows the lack of wind right now.

We’ve had a wonderful stay here. We truly love you New Zealand; your land and your people!

We’re heading for Minerva Reef. It’s about 7 days north of here. From there, we’ll try to get to Nuku’alofa, Tonga if the winds cooperate and if not, Savusavu, Fiji. We’ll see. -Rich and Cyndi

May 4, 2014

As part of our preparations to get back to sea, I am again trying to find a way to send blog posts via our available communications systems: HAM radio and sat phone. If you see this, it is working via a fast little email program called i.Scribe through my gmail account. This is my first step in getting posts to work via satphone.

An important key here is using a firewall program that will help keep all the windows crap from eating up bandwidth. I’m using the free version of Zone Alarm with everything blocked except i.Scribe. I’ll post more once I get the kinks worked out.

While we’re here, I’ll give you an update. Legacy is hauled out for bottom paint and some minor fixes. We go back in the water tomorrow (Monday) and then we start looking for that elusive, perfect weather to get us to the tropics. -Rich