February 2017 – SV Raynad

February 28, 2017March 22, 2017

2009 & 2010 – NEW ZEALAND, Sharing Raynad with family

PHOTO GALLERY Dec 2009 through April 2010

Jodie, John and Scott overlooking the bluffs on Mercury Island, NZ

Jodie and Scott had a blast jumping out over the waterfall into the pool below

After getting dropped off on the beach, Kris gets set for a run

Burns enjoys quiet hours of sketching aboard Raynad

Skip enjoys a cigar in the cockpit after a great steak dinner aboard Raynad

OCTOBER 2010 Safe ARRIVAL back in NEW ZEALAND!

SV Raynad docks safely in Opua, NZ – Kris & John celebrate at 2 AM

Journal From Sea Passage: Fiji to NZ

S/V Raynad at 19:20 South/176:42 East COG 181 mag

John and I headed out at about 12:30pm yesterday from Lautaka with terrific NW winds and seas for sailing in the first 4-5 hours making headway to the pass out of Fiji at ave 7.5 knots. Immediately after exiting the waters of Navula Passage we hit gusty 30 knot SSE winds and raucous seas. Anticipating higher winds we had already put a reef in the main before coming through the pass and taken in the Yankee leaving the staysail. Weather continued to build with new squalls nearly every 30 mins, so we put a 2nd reef in the main and settled in for a rowdy night on the ocean. Despite the squalls, we only got light rain and no thunderstorms. Fortunately the seas are now more consistent and the winds are steady 20-25 knots, still hoping for the waters to calm a bit, but reports are that we are in the middle of a low. Boats 4-5 days south of us are experiencing very light winds and the reports are for 15-20, so we’ll be optimistic for some more comfortable and speedy sailing in the days to come.

10/23/2010

We had a much more restful night and even got some decent sleep. The seas calmed down quite a bit yet the winds were strong enough to keep us at speeds of 7.5-8.2knots which was great. Unfortunately they’ve cranked up again this morning with quite a bit of chop making the ride much less comfortable, but we are still holding on to good speeds using a bit more sail. Had a lovely full moon last night and the sun came up about 5am – so my 4am – 7am watch was very nice:)

10/24/2010

We’ve made good time overnight having had winds between 20-30knts – a bit rough and certainly causing great efforts to move around the boat, but all is well and we are happy to be closing the gap between us and Opua. Two position reports have been filed since my one earlier this morning did not go out. We’re having trouble getting connections with the radio winlink sources.

10/25/2010 – Our current position is 26:0.2 South/ 175:38.6 East. Our speed is 7.5-8.0 kn, our magnetic course over the ground is 190 degrees. Winds have been steady 20-25 kt with gusts to 30 kt. We estimate that we are about 540 nautical miles from Opua. All is well onboard, except we both long to do something, even sit, without having to continuously brace ourselves. It’s an expedition just to go from one place in the boat to another! John and I share watches 7am-1pm/1pm-7pm/7pm-11pm/11pm/3am/ 3am-7am and “hot berth” our sleep on the sea berth in the companionway which gives us a good wall to lean against and good lee clothes to keep from rolling out. John grazes away at ginger snaps, granola bars, and re hydration drink mixes between eating through the fajita-burritos, soup, bean salad, etc that I pre-made for the trip. I pretty much stick to the prepared foods and water/diet soda. We just made first contact with another boat, a catamaran called “Christina” which is sailing near the horizon on our starboard side.

We just realized that the link between our GPS and the reports wasn’t working right and I’ve been resending the same report with a different date! Sorry, and I’ve been so diligent too. I’ll manually enter the data and keep posting at least once per day. A reminder you can go to: winlink.org and click on position reports and our call sign: KL1ZM and you’ll get a map showing our position and a little comment:) Hope this helps.

We continue to sail along at great speed, reaching 9.0kts last night and averaging 8.0kts using winds of SSE 20-28kts. Near full moon last night after a lovely sunset and now we’ve just had another great sunrise. It’s always so good to see the sun come up and especially this morning since we also see a nice patch of blue sky perhaps coming our way from the SE. Surprisingly we are now sailing parallel to another sailboat! Cristiana is a catamaran that was anchored near customs in Lautoka at the same time as us. We invited them over for happy hour(ha!) We’ve not gotten that close of course and we thought they’d be long gone by morning, but about 5am I spotted their tricolor mast light, so they are still just over the horizon on our starboard side. Kind of nice to have company. Seas continue to be a bit rough but Raynad does a great job keeping steady on the water and throwing off the water. We’ve had a few big ones come over the top and annoying spitters hitting from the side, but have not had to put the boards in which is great. Crew are all well and getting along:)

10/26/2010 -Position is: 27:47.27 South / 175:24.33 East on a course of 169 magnetic. We measured 448 nm remaining to Opua, NZ. Difficult to type with the boat bouncing around. These are great winds for making good speed and we are ahead of schedule,unfortunately, the the sea state has grown making our ride in the boat physically challenging – it’s a real workout just to brush your teeth:) This weather system has grown to be more than we’d counted on, but there is still hope for a smoother ride as we near NZ where the winds are supposed to drop back to 15kts or even less – a bit of motoring wouldn’t be bad if we’re able to walk without looking like a couple of drunkards! We are really looking forward to our arrival and the ability to be stationary for a bit and get a full night’s sleep.

10/27/2010 – S/V Raynad continues to make good time sailing in 15-20 kt winds this morning with a boat speed of 7.5. Although raucous for us, the squally stuff we endured yesterday and last night (winds 20-30 kt, seas 2-3 meters,) sped us along at 8-9.0 kt with an average of 8.5 kt so we definitely took a chunk out of the distance to Opua. All are well onboard, still married, no injuries, no happy hour though so we’ll have to make up for that on our arrival in Opua – might need a bottle of champagne for this one!

10/27/2010 – We only have 110nm (about 14-17 hours) left before we reach Opua. Land will look and feel SO good:) It’s great that we’ve made such good time, because we’ve both had enough and are looking forward to our arrival in New Zealand. We had some company last night by way of a large fishing boat which literally crossed our bow- wouldn’t acknowledge any of my radio calls, nor slow down, nevertheless we took a sharp right and they zoomed on by – we could see the total surprise on their faces as we passed so closely, under full sail, clearly they hadn’t a clue we were there!?? We now have another fishing boat in the distance and three sailboats. This is quite unusual since we’ve done most of our passages so far without seeing a single boat. The winds have continued to blow between 15-35 kt, although they started from the SSE and have now moved around fully to NE, so we are on a broad reach into the Bay of Islands with speeds mostly 7.5-8.5kts. Several times we clocked over 9.0! Sorry to say that we have had some fatalities on this trip -flying fish! Last night John was smacked in the face by a flying fish and this morning there are several more decorating the deck-big fat ones too:) Michael and Suzanne still hold the funniest flying fish story, one flew over Michael’s head and kept going right on down the companionway – if he’d had a frying pan down there, it would have landed ready to cook! If we were in a survival situation we’d eat them, but they’re just chum for the other fish or birds this morning. As always, the sea birds have been lovely to watch as they soar gracefully past the waves or dart around like fighter jets, these birds have always been great company and amusement for long watches.

I’m off to bed now. We did longer watches last night so each of us could get a solid 6hrs or so of rest and my watch started at 11:30pm. It’s 8am now so I’m ready to snooze…even had lentil soup for breakfast:)

10/28/2010 – Well we are on our last 50nm into Opua, the finishing mark of our first trip around the Pacific. Upon leaving the protected waters of Fiji, the going became really rough and I got sick for the first time on Raynad, probably part queasiness/part anxiety since we hadn’t expected such extreme weather, plus not expecting to depart so quickly, I’d drunk and eaten far too much the night before – argh! We just reefed down and let Raynad do her thing plunging through the waves and fighting the slop – the first night was the worst part and each day it got a bit better. We’ve had strong winds 15-30kt throughout the trip and seas up to 4 meters, yet the boat soars on ahead making a super fast passage between Fiji and NZ. We reached 9.2 kt several times and are averaging about 7.5 kt. This is also the first trip where we’ve encountered much traffic. Just now we have a sailboat about 2nm to the right of us. We had the fishing boat last night and two other sailboats on other days. Lots of people are heading to Opua as this is the end of the safe season for cruising in the islands. We will finish our passage with a lovely downwind sail, the seas have calmed over the past few hours so even with only 12 kt of wind we are still making 7.5 kt of speed. Now I must worry a bit about NZ customs seizing my food. Because I over provisioned the boat, plus we left Fiji early, so we have several packages of steak, mince and schnitzel in the freezer, some packages of cheese..etc. I’m hoping that they’ll let me keep it since it was all purchased in New Zealand. We’ll see. We have no fresh fruit, veges, etc left on board. Our expected arrival time to the quarantine dock is about 1am, so I’m assuming that they’ll board our boat about 8am tomorrow morning, but they may have 24hr staff due to the high volume of boats coming in.

John just called out “Land-Ho!!” So it looks like we really are nearly there:)

10/28/2010 1:30AM – WE MADE IT!!!!!!! One thousand and twenty six nautical miles behind us. We picked the perfect weather window and did an 8 day trip in 6 1/2 averaging 170 nm per day!! with a best daily run of 196 nm. Better than that, our marriage survived the storms and we’re more in love with our boat than ever:)

Champagne, champagne, champagne at 2am on the “Q Dock” (Quarantine) and a 7am rise to face the customs team who will likely confiscate all of our remaining food supplies including steaks, popcorn, nuts…..argh!!! I’m trying to steal myself for this – should have left it with the poor islanders, but then we didn’t realize that we’d be back quite so soon. The only good news here is that they will also take our garbage because it might contain “hitch-hikers”.

It was a great trip – would we do it again? Ask us tomorrow.

Off to bed

John and Kris

February 28, 2017March 22, 2017

2010 – TONGA

KINGDOM OF TONGA: Our first South Pacific Island cruising destination

ARRIVING IN NUKUALOFA – TONGA

After 9 days at sea, including leaving NZ in a storm of 35-55kn winds, we made our way safely into the calm waters of Tonga anchoring at “Big Mama’s” across the channel from the capital of Nukualofa.

Boatloads transit between the islands and capital of Nukualofa

We had two very unique experiences while here: attending the King’s Cathedral service and chancing upon a regional gathering of representatives from all of the islands of Tonga, the music was magnificent! A full brass orchestra and every voice raised in multilevel harmony- an absolutely breathtaking spiritual moment to behold.

Pageant participants on “Red Night Gala” as a benefit for AIDS

Secondly, we attended an extravagant festival, “Miss Tonga” a week long event to pick the cross-dressing diva. These “ladies” are remarkably gorgeous!

KELEFISIA

AHH! This is exactly what we had in mind when we signed the dotted lines and started out on this sailing adventure – only took us 6 mos to get here! Kelefesia is a true paradise – Raynad is bobbing gently in the slight ocean swells while anchored in absolutely crystal clear, turquoise waters surrounded by coral reefs, rumbling surf, and yet safely nestled in next to the quintessential tropical island, nearly deserted with white sands, palm trees and even some artistically sculpted bluffs. Truly amazingly beautiful:)

Fortunately a “shepherd” already anchored at the island came out in his dingy to help us safely navigate through the reefs and coral into this small bay. It’s an incredibly treacherous approach which is not charted at all and the one guide book with directions was absolutely wrong in that the writer leads you right over a huge coral head! All of this island group is only basically charted, so we must only travel in good light and favorable weather conditions

Raynad anchored between the coral reefs of Kelefesia Tonga

Immediately after dropping the anchor, John and I both went over the side to snorkel around, not just to look at the fish, but also to check the anchor and location of the boat. We have a very impressive and huge tower of coral about 35 feet off our stern! No joke- this tower literally comes up out of the sands for about 50 feet – it’s a little disconcerting to be so close, but we are safe and the anchor is well dug-in to the sand. We’ll stay here for 2-3 nights as long as the weather stays settled before heading further north to other islands. It’s really magical to swim around the coral, kayak and beachcomb.

Our friends have a third inflatable kayak which is now “mine” to play with and take care of as long as we cruise together- isn’t that great!?!? They caught a mahi-mahi on our way into Kelefesia yesterday which they shared for dinner last night and lunch today-mmmm, excellent. I’ll reciprocate with a dinner on our boat of NZ steaks – not as good as fresh fish, but nothing to apologize for. We eat and drink well on this cruise, at least while the supplies last.

Uonukuhihifo

Funky names here, but Uonukuhihifo just about outdoes them all! We decided that it’s more like “Uno Kow hihi..” because much to our surprise we arrived at this uninhabited island to find one black cow on the beach!?!? Very weird…upon further investigation and several attempts to circumnavigate both islands which are connected by a sand spit, we now realize that it’s actually 5 cows: a bull, mother and calf and two other females AND there is at least one pig.

The pig, “Wilburette” actually sort of came out of the jungle and tried to be friendly, I think that she wanted our footsteps to disturb the sand and help her find crabs or whatever to consume. It was obvious that she has some piglets stashed away somewhere. Anyway, John got several pictures of the cows and we had a wonderful morning exploring around the beaches and reefs. We are the only people here – just us, the cows and pig, plus a flock of gorgeous little terns.
We’ve decided to have our happy hour on the beach and watch the sunset over the volcano, Kao, which is still active and occasionally spits out some steam. Should be a nice change from the cockpit views.

Namuka Iki:

Tongan churches have such uniquely colorful designs and extravagant architecture even in small villages

After a stormy and unsettled night at Kelefesia, winds up above 25knots in this “fair weather” anchorage and towering coral head just off our stern and coral reefs breaking around our little boat, kept us both up much of the night periodically re-checking the anchor and basically imagining the worst in the darkness of night, we navigated our way back into deeper water and had a fast and fun sail up to Namuka. Now with the anchor safely embedded in the expansive sandy bottom and no coral nearby to worry us, we are enjoying a relaxing afternoon–happy hour started at 2pm!! Just to be sure, I donned my mask and snorkel to check out the anchor and surrounding reefs. Lots of lovely fish and interesting coral, but nothing too close:)

Our friends Michael and Suzanne caught a lovely 15lb tuna on the trip up, so it’s sashimi and BBQ fish on their boat to continue the cocktail/dinner hour(s).

Tomorrow, we make a short trip over to Uiha and Tatafa where we’re hoping to catch a Sunday morning service and hear more of their music. It’s supposed to calm down, so maybe we’ll get to do some more kayaking and maybe even a drift dive/snorkel through the pass.

VAVAU

Well at last we made it into Vavau, but oh my what a trip it was!! We lifted anchor in Unoleva about 10am after having given the kids in the neighboring boat about 200 liters of our super water and waving them good-bye as they set out toward New Zealand. We left with winds at 15-20 knots which was the prediction for the entire area, but as we sailed onwards they just kept increasing with average speeds of 25-30knots and gusts of up to 42 – once we hit the open seas, they too kicked in with high, rolling and sharp waves. Good ole SV Raynad held the water well and I was much relieved to be sailing in this wonderfully built boat:) With such strong winds, even with a reef in the main and only the staysail out we averaged 7.2 knots of speed and almost literally blasted our way up to the entrance to Vavau arriving at about 10:30pm, Because it was already very dark, no moon due to thick clouds, and still 30+ knot winds, we all decided it was safest not to try and navigate the narrow channels of the islands but to heave-to and stay offshore until the first light. Our sailing buddies were comfortable enough to get 7 hours of sleep as their boat bobbed around, but John and I split 2hr watches throughout the night to watch for other marine traffic and to keep an eye on exactly where the boat was traveling to (even hove-to she moved at 1-1.5 miles per hour.) We made our way into the protected bays of the Vavau group with the sunrise. Needless to say we are relieved to have safely arrived and John and I are both pretty tired – it’ll be an early night for us.

The Vavau group is quite different from the Ha’Apai group. Large bluffs rise about 500ft straight out of the water and look a bit like flat top mountains with bushy trees and lots of palm trees towering through. The waterways are very deep, so we don’t have the coral heads to worry about so much here. We are on a mooring line in the harbor of Neiafu, the capital city of the Vavau Island group. On our first visit to town we tried to check on times for church services tomorrow (none found – we’ll just have to guess,)booked some scuba diving for Monday, and bought some fresh fruit (including one that looked like a large custard fruit, but had larger seeds and was bit tart – after removing the seeds I blended it with milk, sugar and vanilla to make a smoothie and it was really pretty good! Of course I also bought another watermelon (yumm), two bags of limes and a case of beer.

The young folks whom we had over for drinks the night before we all left Unoleva pretty much decimated our beer supply. They were very grateful though and lots of fun to socialize with for the evening – it was quite lively and filled with laughter. They REALLY liked the hats made by John’s Mum (Betty).
The two girls wore theirs constantly and the last thing they shouted as their boat moved away was a big Thank You for the hats. I’m sure they will be most appreciated as they head south toward NZ where they are in the heart of winter. At least they are all good sailors in a good strong, yet fast boat and the captain Will, is really a very responsible and knowledgeable guy. He actually got his British Yacht Masters certificate at age 17 and had competed in the Fastnet races since he was 14. He and John really got along well and he spent a fair amount of time on our boat swapping computer programs/software and loading some great movies onto my laptop. I finally was able to do a washing this afternoon and wouldn’t you know it…just after they were all pegged out on the lifelines, it started to rain!I’m just hoping enough sun will come out afterwards – last washing they same thing happened and our entire forward cabin looked like a Chinese laundry!?!? It’s been so muggy and damp, we haven’t been able to get things to dry.

John and I went diving today and it was wonderful. The coral is quite beautiful and on one of the dives we swam through a coral fan forest, a magical experience of yellow coral fans wafting in the currents of the waters and we swam through valleys between them. There were alot of corals that we hadn’t seen before and it was very colorful unlike many areas in other parts of the world where the coral is dying and bleached. We also saw some sharks, tuna, razor fish and many others unique fish that we hadn’t seen before.

We actually had thought last night that the dive would be canceled due to some super high winds blasting through the bay where we are moored. They measured as blasts up to 40 kn and pretty steady at 20-30, about 3 boats broke their moorings and several had to move and re-anchor closer to the head of the bay. John and I were up several times re-checking our own lines until oddly about midnight everything went spookily quiet. We awoke this morning to a lovely sunrise and calm waters, so the dive was a go. It’s kicked up again, but so far not as extreme.

February 24, 2017March 3, 2017

SV RAYNAD – Island and Ocean Adventures

WELCOME TO THE CRUISER’S LIFE! John & Kristy have been sailing around the Pacific Oceans since 2009. The following posts are of the journals we’ve kept and some of the many photos we’ve taken. ENJOY!

sv RAYNAD anchored among the beautiful white sand motu (islets) and green/turquoise/blue waters of Tahaena Atoll in the Tuomotu of French Polynesia

Gazing across the white sands observing at a distance the nesting Booby and Terns. A magical experience found in very isolated areas of the Tuomotu, F.P. and accessible only by private boats.