Yacht Delivery Blog

 We turned south at 8am this morning, and the weather forecasts are still a little higgeldy-piggeldy. The ECMWF is definitely looking a bit more dramatic, with much stronger gusts and an earlier change to southerlies. The GFS, while not exactly appealing, is definitely my preferred model, with the low appearing further south and the gusts looking considerably less concerning. The next obstacle is a strong southerly change coming through either on Friday, according to the ECMWF, or Saturday, according to the GFS. Obviously, I'm hoping for Saturday. The plan is to get as far south as possible before the change arrives. After that, the best I can hope for is to be able to point the boat towards Opua and make some progress in the right direction. What I'd really like is to be able to aim for Opua with the apparent wind at least 60 degrees off the bow. The further away from the bow the better, as far as I'm concerned. Unfortunately, I think we may have to settle for not even bei...

 This is a two-for-one special because I didn’t manage to write a post yesterday. I started one, but spent so much time looking at the weather, waiting for updates, reassessing things, considering options and trying to work out how to get to Opua as quickly as possible while avoiding any strong winds that the blog just became a long list of possible scenarios. Not particularly entertaining reading, and not much fun to write either. It does make you think about how things have changed. Back in the day, we would have left Tahiti and essentially been sailing blind unless we could pick up a weather station on the HF radio. We would probably have sailed straight into any poor weather and dealt with whatever happened. Now we can zoom in on a pixel on the chart and get 16 different agencies’ opinions on which direction the wind will blow from, how strong it will be, how long it will last and exactly when it will start and stop. The problem is that they don't always agree, and ...

 There was some hope that the forecast would change, as it did a few days ago, but it’s stubbornly sticking to much the same pattern. We have a front bringing some northerlies, followed by a small low bringing southwesterlies, and then a high-pressure system bringing southerlies. It’s all happening at exactly the wrong time. Any of these systems arriving in a different order probably wouldn’t affect our arrival time too much, but with everything lining up as it is, we may have some decisions to make as we get closer to New Zealand. Of course, no matter how much we obsess over the weather updates, it isn’t going to change anything. We’ll try to position ourselves to take advantage of the wind shifts, keep out of the strongest winds and keep on keeping on. At some point, the forecast will stop being something in the future and start being something we have to deal with in real time. This was before I thought we had to have cold beans and dry noodles for the next 5 days. O...

 The forecast changed slightly in our favour yesterday, with the low-pressure system forming further south, but it has now gone back to showing much the same thing as two days ago. Both weather models are showing essentially the same, and it’s anyone’s guess whether we will make it into Opua before the headwinds arrive. The wind is back around the east, with about 18–20 knots apparent and 23 knots true, gusting occasionally to 26. We have two reefs in the main and the full headsail, making around 7.5 knots and a little more when we get a push down the waves. This morning we had one reef in the main then the wind picked up to 26 knots, so we put another reef in. Then it calmed off and we had to head south to keep the sails full. Forty minutes later it dropped away again, so the headsail was furled. Then the wind disappeared completely, so the main came down. Another 45 minutes later, the main was back up and we were cracking on again. It’s all very good exercise, if nothing else. Th...

 We had the main down during the night as it was pretty breezy and looking squally on the radar. At first light, things were looking a little tamer, so I decided to put it back up with two reefs in. And then just as we are about to pull it up I noticed, by a chance of one in a million (I hope), the halyard was snagged on the tang fitting for the stay right at the top of the mast. Hmmmmm. It was a bit of a head-scratcher, so we had to do a bit of surgery and unthread the halyard, tying fishing line to the end of it so we could retrieve it. The plan was to get the wind on the port side and motor, allowing the wind to help pop it off the tang. Next came the difficult bit. I climbed up onto the boom and, with absolutely perfect timing, a delicate flick of the wrist and a well-timed wave coinciding with a sudden gust of wind, absolutely nothing happened. It turned out that a delicate wrist and good timing weren't quite enough. Apparently, what was needed was a subtle blend of brute forc...

 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...