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YIT Passage Posts

December 29, 2018

We made it! We’re in New Zealand. For those that haven’t seen our passage posts on YIT, here they are, from earliest to latest…

Wed Dec 19 14:37 2018 NZDT
Run: 1.3nm (2.4km)
18 16.42S 178 04.15E

Bula from Fiji, and “from” Fiji we shall try to go. We are leaving tonight around 5 PM local time, bound for Opua, New Zealand. Good bye Fiji. We love you!

Thu Dec 20 9:45 2018 NZDT
Speed: 5.8knts
Run: 107.9nm (195.3km)
Avg: 5.6knts
24hr: 135.4nm
19 39.859s 177 19.157e

Weather: wind ESE 7, seas SE 1m, cloud 80%, bar 1015.

This was a really nice start to the passage. Last night we motor sailed in light winds and we’re still at it this morning. So far, we managed to miss the SPCZ that was descending down on Fiji, with only a few drops of rain and occasional lightning far off in the distance over Viti Levu.

Fri Dec 21 8:06 2018 NZDT
Speed: 5.8knts
Run: 149.9nm (271.3km)
Avg: 6.7knts
24hr: 161nm
21 36.645s 176 17.851e

Weather: wind ESE 8, seas ESE 1m, cloud 20%, bar 1013

Still motor sailing in really pleasant conditions. The sky has cleared quite a bit, the sun is warm but not too hot (yet) and the seas pretty flat. Request: Lets just leave the conditions like this for the rest of the passage, but maybe with 15 knot winds so we can turn off the engine!

Sat Dec 22 8:15 2018 NZDT
Speed: 5.8knts
Run: 521.8nm (944.5km)
Avg: 21.6knts
24hr: 518.6nm
23 58.61s 175 55.405s

Weather: wind ENE 7, seas mixed 1m, cloud 5%, bar 1014

Still motor sailing in very nice conditions. Passed the Tropic of Capricorn so maybe it’ll be little cooler today (it was hot yesterday). We’re making very good time with almost a six knot average for the trip so far. Helped out by a nice current yesterday that turned a bit against us this morning. Oh well. We’re doing very well on fuel making over 11 nautical miles per gallon (sorry metric people!). We can’t motor all the way to Opua, but we won’t need to, wind is coming, maybe tomorrow.

Sun Dec 23 7:27 2018 NZDT
Speed: 6.0knts
Run: 577.8nm (1045.8km)
Avg: 24.9knts
24hr: 597.7nm
26 21.777s 175 13.226e

Weather: wind NNE 11, seas N 1.5m, cloud 20%, bar 1015

Another nice passage day motor sailing in light wind and calm seas. It’s getting a little rougher now as the north swell has built a bit. We’d probably be sailing if it wasn’t for the rolling around that dumps the air from the sails. I thought the sky was clouding up last night in advance of the front ahead but it’s cleared this morning. The full moon has been amazing, as bright as I’ve ever seen it. We’re making great time. It looks like we might be in late on the 26th or early the 27th. Fingers crossed.

Mon Dec 24 6:48 2018 NZDT
Speed: 6.1knts
Run: 158nm (286km)
Avg: 6.8knts
24hr: 162.4nm
28 31.050s 174 21.680e

Weather: wind NNE 13, seas N 1m, cloud 100%, bar 1014.

Still motor sailing even though the wind is up a bit, but it’s right behind us. It’s clouded up and been raining quite a bit the last few hours. It’s a little rolly with the still small swell right behind us. We could probably gybe and sail but we have the fuel to motor sail and it’s nice to keep our speed up. We will be glad to have some quiet once we finally turn the engine off though.

Tue Dec 25 7:57 2018 NZDT
Speed: 6.5knts
Run: 158.7nm (287.2km)
Avg: 6.3knts
24hr: 151.4nm
30 43.496s 173 38.120e

Weather: wind 23 WNW, seas 2m W, cloud 10%, bar 1012

Merry Christmas Everyone!!! Well, our days of pleasant motor sailing are over. We had about eight ours of pleasant sailing yesterday, then the front crossed us. Wind went form 20 knots from the north to a 20 knot southerly within about 5 mintues. This made for interesting seas! Flying along now in very uncomfortable seas, heading for North Cape to try to get in the lee of some of the wind and seas. It’s 220 miles ahead still. We hope to make Opua the morning of the 27th. We’ll see if that happens.

Wed Dec 26 7:48 2018 NZDT
Speed: 6.5knts
Run: 156.9nm (284km)
Avg: 6.6knts
24hr: 157.9nm
32 53.122s 174 27.379e

Weather: wind SW 18, seas 2 meters and confused, cloud 100%, bar 1013.

It wasn’t my best Christmas ever. Maybe worse than the time I got a turtle-keck sweater from my parents instead of the erector set I wanted! It seems to be getting better now with the wind dropping and the seas confused but calming a bit. We have 137 miles to go to the Bay of Islands area.

Thu Dec 27 6:57 2018 NZDT
Speed: 6.2knts
Run: 110.1nm (199.3km)
Avg: 4.8knts
24hr: 114.1nm
34 28.606s 174 21.212e

Weather: wind S 15, seas S 1m, cloud 20%, bar 1017

Sailing Sucks!!! I hate boats!!!

Thu Dec 27 23:06 2018 NZDT
Run: 59.4nm (107.5km)
Avg: 3.7knts
24hr: 88.2nm
35 18.901S 174 7.36E

We’re in and tied up but I have to say, we’re not happy to be back in New Zealand! We had the worst customs experience ever. This lady just seemed to have it in for us.

New Zealand, what’s up? You seem determined to make it harder for cruisers to visit (and spend their money here) while Australia is opening the welcome wagon. I am regretting the decision to come back to NZ (a place we have always loved!).

And what a horrific passage. Yep, there were five nice days off motor sailing but the last three days were really terrible. As weather windows go, we choose poorly! (And to make all that effort to get here, only to be treated so incredibly bad by the customs official!)

More soon on the passage and the customs official who was so awful on our NZ arrival.

Happy New Year everyone!

“Have you applied for citizenship yet?!”

December 18, 2018

It seems that each year when we linger in the tropics, and that’s most years, there’s a new running joke from our friends. In Tonga a few years ago, every message we got ended with “Turn out the lights when you leave!” This year, it’s all about our citizenship status.

No, we have not applied for citizenship in Fiji (yet) is the answer, but we would if we could, and we really do plan to go south for cyclone season, but we’re just not seeing weather we like for the passage. Yea, we could get there but it wouldn’t be fun. Below is today’s ECMWF grib.

We’re at the green marker here in Fiji and want to go to the red marker in New Zealand. The big red and blue mess is a low with an attached front between us and where we want to go. If we wait for it to pass, then we also have to wait for the strong southerly winds to pass (the weather moves left to right here). By the time all that passes, there’ll be another low just like this in our way. Lather, rinse, repeat.

We’ve even started to think about going to Australia this year. While it’s a little better weather-wise, it’s still not all that easy.

Why are we so picky when the 300 other boats in the fleet have already made the passage? We don’t like discomfort. We do this for fun and getting banged around out on the ocean is not our idea of fun. And as Cyndi’s written before, we’re probably just one bad passage from quitting this silly cruising stuff. As it is, even with the mostly good passages we’ve had, there’s a point on almost every passage when I say “no more!” Then, like child birth (I suppose), I forget the suffering and we do it all over again. I’m afraid that one of these declarations will stick and we’ll have to find something else to do with our lives. (I’m already checking out property in Hawaii.)

And while you make your jokes about our citizenship applications, we’re really enjoying it here. At Pacific Harbour on the south side of Viti Levu, we’re probably in the coolest (or at least, least hot) spot in Fiji. The days are pleasantly warm and the nights sometimes cool enough to warrant a blanket. We are surrounded by natural beauty, great food and wonderful Fijians. Life is good! Very good!-Rich

Tiny House?

December 12, 2018

Rich here. I’ve been giving some thought to the “what’s next?” question and I think it might be a tiny house – maybe not the one above, but something small. After all, we’ve really lived in a tiny house for the past seven years and been just fine, but I do feel like I need a little more space than Legacy has.

It’s got me thinking a lot about issues with living in small spaces. I read r/TinyHouses on Reddit (if you don’t know Reddit, you should!) and there are lots of discussions about floor plans and building techniques but very little about storage issues. We have all the storage space we need on Legacy (certainly not all we’d want!), but when the storage space gets small, it seems to also get inconvenient.  Take the locker below for example:

(Please try to ignore the water damage on the slats! We do.)

This was designed as a hanging locker but not only do we not have anything much to hang, we don’t have the luxury of using all this space to hang what we do have. Instead, it’s filled top to bottom with stuff. Important stuff.

This is fine if you want the mask and snorkel on the left side, but the storage goes all the way down to floor level. If we want the bag of extra alternator parts at the bottom, everything else has to come out first. Aaargh! (I’m prompted to write this post because I just went digging for our extra cell phone holder – at the very bottom!)

We’ve all seen pictures of the ideal mechanics tool drawer like the one below – shallow drawers where everything has its place and is very easily accessed. As space gets smaller, this kind of thing doesn’t seem possible. Picture the tools below, rearranged into a shoe box, along with the tools from six other drawers. Get my point?

On an actively cruising boat, versus a tiny house, there’s the additional problem in that the amount of spares required pretty much equals a whole additional boat. (Sometimes I think we should just tow a spare yacht behind us!) I know you need spares and supplies to maintain a house, but it’s a different issue when the hardware store is a short drive away and a dripping faucet won’t sink your house. And then there are sheds: magical land based creations that really have no equal on a cruising boat. Here’s the closest we’ve come to a shed…

Our v-berth is a little more disorganized than usual as we haven’t been at sea in a month. It’ll be neater, but still crammed when we head for New Zealand.

Our v-berth pretty much has the same issue we have with our deep, hanging locker. I often need stuff from the bottom, back bins. That means lifting the top bins off while bent over into the v-berth as far as I can stretch. And then I dig all through a bottom back bin just to find that the pipe cutter I desperately needed isn’t there. Really infuriating. To mitigate that, we’ve started keeping a photo inventory. I’ve tried but I’ve never been able to keep a written inventory current. With a photo inventory, we just snap pictures of everything in a bin or locker and dump them into a folder on the computer with names like “Bow Bin 1.” Now I dig through the photos before I dig through the bins. Much easier.

We have a pretty small boat and while smaller makes some things easier and less expensive: lighter lines, smaller less expensive winches, smaller dock lines and so forth, smaller hasn’t made the storage issue any easier. No matter the size of the cruising boat, you pretty much need to carry the same spares and the same living necessities (assuming the same number of occupants). My pants aren’t any smaller living on a 38 foot boat than they would be living on a 46 foot boat. (Yea, yea, I know, less pizza! 😉 ) Except for the shed option, I’m sure this is the same with a small house.

Oh well, semi-rant over. Legacy has actually worked out very well for us and mining the bottom of a locker for our extra bag of coffee is a small price to pay compared to how she allows us to live. (Again, maybe this would be the same with a tiny house?) -Rich

Rainstorm in Pacific Harbour

December 2, 2018

This is everything a tropical downpour should be – torrential rain complete with lightning. Unbelievably, I slept through this. I’m glad Cyndi got some video. – Rich 

Note from Cyndi: Last we wrote we were enjoying a 2-day hotel stay in Suva (see the update at the end of the Watching and Waiting post). This was a godsend in that not only was it especially hot, but we had both caught the flu. Being sick is no fun, but being sick in the heat is even worse; so being able to rest in air conditioning really helped. 

Unfortunately the heatwave lasted longer than the stay; so we decided to take the boat back to the coolest place we know in Fiji: Pacific Harbour. It was indeed better, but still pretty hot. Checking Expedia once again, we found another great hotel deal, this time at the Pearl Resort overlooking the marina where our boat is sitting. Still sick with the flu, we opted for a 4-night stay (the deal was just that good). 

Now, we’re back on the boat, and it’s finally comfortably cool again. As I write this (Dec 9, 2018) we are still not 100% but are well on the road to recovery. I will note here that what we caught was the Fujian flu (not to be confused with Fijian). It’s a rather nasty bug sweeping the country that seems to be hitting children particularly hard, with deaths in Fiji, the UK and Spain (and those are only what I’ve read about).  I read somewhere that when a flu sweeps through a warm area like the tropics, it’s likely to be a particularly hardy and virulent bug in that flu viruses generally prefer cooler temperatures. In conclusion it’s probably worth making the extra effort to get the flu shot this year. –Cyndi