May 13 – 20 , 2022
Above is a video that consolidates clips from every day of our passage except the day we left and the day we arrived. The day we left New Zealand, we were both so exhausted from pulling everything together for the last-minute passage that we couldn’t summon the energy to film yet more video of the New Zealand coastline. I’ll sum that day up by saying we left midday and motor-sailed in 6 to 12 knot winds from the SE, with bumpy swells that made it hard for us to move around, especially since we didn’t have our sea legs yet.
I started taking video on Day 2 after waking up at 9am to wonderfully smoothed conditions that just continued to get better. We were still motor sailing and ended up doing so through most of our passage.
We did have a couple nice days of sailing and could have done more if it hadn’t been for the frequent and frustrating current against us that brought down our speed. Since we wanted to beat the low that was deepening into Cyclone Gina (only 25 knots of wind so I don’t know what made it a cyclone), we needed to keep our speed up.
We have no video from our final day as there was very little of it: we arrived before dawn. We had started to feel the effects of the low coming as the water was getting bumpier. Conditions became somewhat nicer once we entered New Caledonia’s lagoon, but we still had three hours of motoring to the marina where we’d be staying. After a bit of frustration trying to figure out where our slip was, we were tied up to enjoy the early morning hours.
Is this video typical of a passage between New Zealand and the tropics? No. Usually conditions are more boisterous, especially since it’s typical for yachties to want more wind so they can sail and not burn a lot of fuel.
Of course, everyone’s ideal is to sail on a broad reach in approximately 15 knots of wind, but since that’s not going to happen for 7 days straight, one has to make choices. In our case, we’d rather spend more money on fuel and listen to the engine for days on end in calm seas versus enduring the discomforts that generally accompany higher winds.
Overall I’d say this was a pretty nice passage, but then I slept through some hours of difficult squally weather that Rich, up on watch, had to contend with. One of my favorite things about this passage was the full moon. Between that and the gentle warm breezes, it felt really nice to go outside at night.
–Cyndi
Notes from Rich…
About 26 seconds into the video, you can see one of only three ships we encountered on the passage. It’s really hard to see visually but clear as day on AIS and radar. This is why we don’t bother with visual watches and rely on technology instead.
About 40 seconds in, you can see our heater snorkel. We have an Espar hydraunic heater for both cabin heat and hot water. It’s cold leaving New Zealand and we ran the heater a lot. We use the metal snorkel to keep seas out of the exhaust.
1:15 – We have solar panels on our dodger and a big one on our bimini. When we have the main up, the dodger panels are almost always shaded and produce very little power. Thankfully, the 327 watt Sunpower bimini panel gives us a lot of electrons.
1:34 – You can see that our deck light is on. Since we don’t keep visual watches, we leave it on just to make ourselves more visible. We don’t have to worry about it affecting our night vision – we can see the radar screen just fine, and besides we always use a guard zone with an alarm.
