Yacht Delivery Blog

 It’s been a reasonably quiet 24 hours with not much to report. The wind picked up to 30 knots at sunset and the sky to weather was an unexciting shade of dark grey, with bands of rain and several angry looking red blobs on the radar. Expecting the chance of squalls during the night, we dropped the main, which had three reefs in, and ran with the furled headsail. The wind was pretty far aft, around 120–130 degrees apparent, so there wasn’t much lost in terms of speed by taking the main down. Surprisingly, the wind eased off but continued to be gusty, and we ended up starting one engine to keep the boat speed up in the lulls. Around 3am the engine was shut down and some headsail was unfurled as things appeared slightly more settled. There are still some big waves coming through, though, and it was a pretty bouncy night with plenty of thumps and bangs. We are around 1,300 nm from New Zealand now, and the long-term forecasts are giving me a little bit to consider. Given a steady breez...

 After the drama of yesterday with the dinghy, it’s nice to report nothing else raised its head. It’s been partially cloudy, and I wanted to get some spare power into the battery bank, so we dropped the main, which blankets the solar panels in the afternoon, and turned further north to get as much sun as possible onto the panels for a few hours. We also made some water while the engine was running. Once we got going again, the wind picked up during the late afternoon and we went down to the third reef in the main and heavily furled the headsail, with gusts up in the high 20s for most of the night. By early morning we still have 25 knots from ESE, and the wind has a little more east in it, giving us a good push in the right direction. I took a few turns out of the headsail but we still have the 3rd reef in the main. We are already 800 nm from Tahiti, which is a nice chunk of the trip already done. The long-range forecast isn’t too stable, but broadly shows a good run for...

We are still making excellent time towards the waypoint. I was thinking last night about how the quality of the blog deteriorates as the passages progress. There is only so much I can write about wind direction and sea state before it all starts to sound the same, so it partially becomes a form of mild entertainment for me to come up with a daily tale.          It's not all mermaids and rainbows  To be honest, I always hope nothing happens to write about, because if it isn’t boring sailing, it usually means something has gone, or is about to go wrong, which I prefer to avoid. Anyway, I have got something to write about. The bridle that holds the dinghy in the davits snapped last night and the back end of the dinghy was dragging in the water. This isn’t just a dinghy. It’s more like a little speedboat with a centre console and a 30hp motor, so having the back end hanging in the water was not ideal. It was a huge mission to get it back without any...

 We managed a very impressive 98 nm in 12 hours from noon until midnight, so we are certainly making some progress towards NZ. And that was a straight line from a waypoint so the reality would be a little more taking into account our track isn't straight. We are also now over the honeymoon period and into the teething problems, which is exactly what you would expect when you fly to a boat you’ve never seen in your life and leave two days later to sail thousands of miles. The view from my head scratching spot as I try to think of blog material.  Most “normal” people would spend months getting ready for a passage like this and becoming very familiar with the boat. Of course, in the process they would also discover what needed seeing to before the passage. We don’t have that luxury, so we are finding things as we go. One thing we have discovered is that the stitching on the stack pack has suffered some UV damage, and the straps holding the lazy jacks are starting to f...

 We’ve been running off the wind, with it sitting around 130 degrees apparent and occasionally coming around to 100 degrees, in 20–25 knots of breeze. The forecasts are largely similar, other than the ECMWF showing more wind, which is always nice to see when you’re trying to decide how much sail to leave up. I had been thinking about putting in the third reef, and yesterday at sunset I was having a look outside. There was a large patch of rain and squalls over to our starboard side, the sky was grey and looking behind didn’t look much better, and the wind was sitting at 22–25 knots. I was humming and hawing. There is an old sailors’ saying that if you think you should reef, then it’s probably too late already. And then there it was — a gust of 27 knots, which convinced me. So, with the third reef in the main and back on course just after sunset, we settled in for a gusty night. There is another sailors’ saying which, in this case, is probably more applicable than the on...

We flew into Tahiti and arrived at the boat at 4am on the 30th, and we left yesterday, on the 2nd. It was a bit hectic getting everything ready. We have to go through all the cupboards, check the spares, tools and equipment, read the manuals and understand how all the systems operate, as well as go shopping to provision for the passage. Then there are the authorities to deal with, getting cleared out and getting all the paperwork sorted and of course the French invented bureaucracy. And now, entering New Zealand means complying with the new biosecurity regulations, which essentially mean the boat should never have been within three miles of any water ever, as that seems to be the only way to meet the standards they have set. First impressions of the Lagoon 450S: Its awesome. It’s a huge step up from the 440. The living areas are very comfortable, but more importantly for me, it’s a very solid platform for working and feels very stable underfoot even in the larger waves by M...