May 25, 2022

On our passage, our anemometer failed (the wind sensor that tells us the wind speed and direction). This wasn’t a great problem but I really missed it and while Cyndi was amazing at guessing the wind speed from conditions (verified with a hand-held anemometer we have aboard), I wasn’t as good.

I also really missed the true wind direction and speed calculated from the apparent wind speed and direction and the boat course and speed.  Getting a new sensor was a priority in New Caledonia.

AltoMarine to the rescue. They run a great marine electronics store in Noumea that sells B&G and Simrad gear. They’ve helped us before and they came to the rescue again.

But the sensors have changed. B&G has a new line called the WS300 series. We decided to go with the WS320 despite my reservations about a solar powered, wireless sensor at the top of the mast.

It seems that while this series isn’t new, the marketing and marketing materials are using the chaos marketing theory – tell your customer nothing and let them work it out!

A Bluetooth receiver is also needed, pictured below…

I was reluctant to use a wireless sender. I was even more reluctant to use a Bluetooth device for this. I bought it anyway for about $900 USD.

The installation was pretty easy. It is assumed that the receiver should be mounted outside, in clear view of the sender on top of the mast. Some posts on CruisersForum.com suggested that it might work mounted below decks so I thought I’d start there.

I printed a little box/mount so that I could fasten it to the top of a cabinet.  The  receiver slides into the box which is two-sided taped to the top of the locker. The signal seems to go through the deck just fine.

So far, so good. The signal is shown to be between 50 and 70% signal strength. It initializes pretty quickly and the data looks solid. We have a six day passage coming up soon so we can see how it works with extended use.

B&G claim that this unit is a new, more reliable sensor. From what I see, it is exactly the same as the sensors that have only lasted me two or three years, with the addition of a little solar cell. I hope I get more than three years our of this! -Rich

May 23, 2022

We haven’t tasted it, but I have my doubts. That’s 5 liters for about $95 USD.

That’s at the local supermarket. Rum punch anyone? -Rich

Update: We might need this today. It’s really, really windy here today with gusts in excess of 30 knots. Legacy is bouncing all around her berth. This is from the remnants of cyclone Gina as well as a very serious low pressure system coming from Queensland. We’re sure glad we’re not out on the ocean today!!!

May 22, 2022

Here are our posts on our PredictWind tracking site during the passage, along with some pictures…

We Survived Another One!

Fri May 20 2022

27 55.981s 169 39.367e

Bumpy, Bumpy, Bumpy

Tue May 17 2022

Our days of gliding across a glassy sea are over. The wind is on the nose and wind waves are starting to build. The wind is still pretty light, but when has anyone known me to miss an opportunity to complain!

Only 367 miles to go!

30 00.875s 170 57.187e

Glassy, Glassy, Glassy

Mon May 16 2022

And needless to say, motoring. The wind is down to less than 2 knots now as we motor through the subtropical ridge. All is well out here. Better than well as we’re settling back into this routine faster than we would have expected after three and a half years with no passages. (We took one cruising season off to stay at an Airbnb in Hawaii and then Covid happened.)

It is great to be out here again! Maybe we’ll even fish this afternoon, though there’s still so much good food in the refrigerator and the clock is ticking on its freshness.

31 54.337s 172 09.301e

Lovely Conditions (for those who don’t mind motoring)

Sun May 15 2022

We’d take this light wind passage with a lot of engine time over a passage with too much wind any time. It’s getting warm and it’s comfortable with pretty flat seas (we rolled more at our mooring in Russell). The only complaint I can think of, if I have to come up with one, is that for the past 24 hours or so, we’ve had a knot of current against us.

33 31.313s 173 12.119e

Off to New Caledonia

Sat May 14 2022

We left yesterday from Opua, bound for New Caledonia. We should make it in about 7 days total, arriving Friday afternoon 20 May. Our first 24 hours have been a little bit uncomfortable with some confused seas, motor sailing in light wind.

Today is much smoother but the wind dropped to 3 knots an hour ago so we’re motoring. We knew we’d have to motor a lot in this light-wind window we

took. We don’t mind.

May 21, 2022

…drinking good French wine and eating the good French cheese (also some serrano ham and tuna sashimi).

Sorry we didn’t post anything before we left. We ran out of time for even some of the most essential preparation tasks. Lots of things fell through the cracks, including a farewell post.

We had a pretty nice seven day passage to Noumea. We’ll post a lot about it in the next few days, but for now, it’s off to the store for more wine and more cheese.

-Rich

February 17, 2022

It had been nearly a month since we left Auckland. At that point, we had a grand plan to sail around New Zealand’s south island with stops in the exotic and remote Auckland Island and Chatham Islands. Two and a half weeks later, we’d abandoned that plan and were heading back to Auckland.

As we passed Brown’s Island not far outside Auckland’s harbor, I thought back to the bright and sunny day we sailed off on our Big Trip. I was so excited and wondered what adventures lay ahead.

Now on this cloudy afternoon, watching Brown’s Island go by the opposite direction, I, much more weary, was still wondering the same thing: What adventures lay ahead?

At first glance this may seem like a sad situation, but our tails weren’t between our legs and we were in good spirits. We may not have gone far, but a lot had happened nonetheless.

Often when I look back on life, I can pinpoint a moment that changed everything. It’s usually not obvious at the time but easy to see in retrospect. In this case I can look back to the moment where our internet popped back after being out of range, and Rich told me the news that Omicron had gotten loose in New Zealand.

It still remained to be seen whether it would get a foothold; so this news in itself didn’t cause us to change our plans. What did cause the initial change was looking at a period of difficult weather. We decided to stop in the city of Tauranga and make good use of this downtime by getting some boat work done. This was a good decision as, for two weeks, we watched potential weather windows appear and then slam shut.

During this period, Omicron did get a foothold and spread rapidly. This meant, in essence, sanctuary in New Zealand had ended–we were as likely to encounter Omicron here as anywhere. Meanwhile Australia was preparing to open its borders. Now we had gone from having time to fill (which inspired this trip) to feeling the press of time as it looked like this would be our year to head out into the big world again. Suddenly it felt like, in moving south, we were headed in the wrong direction. We’d started feeling the call to go north.

At our first opportunity, we went back to Great Mercury Island, sat out cyclone remnants at Great Barrier Island, and had a lovely stop at Waiheke. Below, a few miscellaneous photos from this part of the trip, stuff that didn’t make it into galleries, mostly amazing cloud reflections from Great Barrier Island but a couple from Waiheke Island.

We did have some trepidation as we headed back into Auckland, the hotbed of the outbreak. Would our first “adventure” be getting Omicron? But we’re vaxxed and boosted and if we don’t want to spend the rest of our lives in hiding, we’ll have to start taking some chances and hope that fate will be kind. Meanwhile, we needed to make preparations to head to Australia, wrap things up in Auckland, and start getting the boat ready for an open-ocean passage.

I will mention one lesson learned on this trip. When we left, I hoped to do regular updates in this blog and add in more video. The fact we returned to Auckland in February but I am only now (in May) finishing posting about this trip shows I fell pretty short of my goal. Yes, it had been a busy time, but you know what? It’s ALWAYS a busy time.

It’s a fair amount of work to edit video, photos and to write posts, and we aren’t nearly on the level as those who really do a profession job with their vlogs. The fact is cruisers like Gone with the Wynns, Expedition Evans, and Onboard Lifestyle (our three favorites) have taken on a tremendous amount of work to do what it is they do, and we take our hats off to them. Even if we were to do a fraction of what they do, it would take too much time away from trying to live the life we’re posting about.

Rich actually keeps current, and our drone photos and video provide him with a lot of inspiration to post frequently when we’re out and about on our boat. I lag behind but sometimes diverge to talk about something current. We’re going to try some new things in the future; so we’ll see what develops. For now, it’s time for new adventures!–Cyndi