PHOTO GALLERY Dec 2009 through April 2010
OCTOBER 2010 Safe ARRIVAL back in NEW ZEALAND!
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