Yacht Delivery Blog

 Well, Ocean Breeze is tied up in the quarantine area of Mackay Marina as we wait for ABF to come and do the clearance. We were just informed that ABF won’t be here until the afternoon, so we have some time to clear up. Biosecurity will be here early tomorrow morning, I hope, so we can get the boat put into a berth, have a night’s rest and then go to the airport so I can do the whole thing again on a Lagoon 450 from Tahiti. The blog was skipped yesterday as morale wasn’t as high as it should have been when approaching land. From the entrance to Hydrographers Passage to the marina is around 90 nm, so it’s a fair hike. The first section of Hydrographers Passage was pretty uncomfortable, with waves and spray, but we had the current with us, which gave us a nice push in the right direction. Unfortunately, the current was opposing the wind, so it picked the waves up. We got through the narrowest section before the tide turned against us and then had several slow hours with u...

 It’s been pretty breezy since yesterday, with gusts over 30 knots and waves coming over the back of the boat into the cockpit. My socks got wet which was annoying. There are some very impressive waves, but it’s impossible to take a photo of a wave because they always look four times smaller in a photograph. You end up with a picture that makes it look like you’re sailing on a slightly choppy lake. The weather has impacted our arrival time into Mackay Q berth for clearance with ABF, and it’s now looking like Saturday evening around 7pm, so I have no idea if ABF will clear us then. I suspect we will have to wait until the following day. I had been expecting over 10 birds to turn up, and around sunset they started flying around the boat, no doubt eyeing up a spot to land while looking for a snack before they turned in for the night. And then they all disappeared. We didn’t have any birds. I was pleased about this. We have had to reef the headsail very heavily as the wind is al...

 Gosh. My feathery nemesis returned with six of his friends. For some reason, they all decided to sit on the windward lifelines with the output end facing inwards. Initially, they were sitting aft of the shrouds, which meant any fishy output would be blown all over the cockpit and, more importantly, me. So I spent a good two hours whacking them with a stick and poking them in a delicate area (still using the stick!) every time they came back. They really didn’t like it and got quite angry. And let me be very clear: these are not Walt Disney birds of the forest, smelling of berries. They are wild, vicious predators the size of a backpack and they stink of fish. They slowly moved forwards and spent the night sitting near the bow. Some hills are not worth dying on, so I was happy with the compromise and only gave them a whack if one of them forgot the rules and moved aft. We have blustery conditions with two reefs in the main and heavy reefs in the headsail. There is...

Well, the last 24 hours have been interesting. And I don't like interesting or exciting when I am sailing. I like boring and repetitive. Exciting generally means something terrible is about to happen if you're not careful. It turned out the water pump we replaced yesterday isn’t an exact drop-in replacement as they said it was, which was actually a good thing in a way. We can now confirm that we do have a plumbing issue and we are losing water somewhere. The intermittent cycling of the original pump had largely been put down to a faulty diaphragm, and the new pump worked perfectly, which of course reinforced the original diagnosis. And the original diagnosis was correct. But we now know there is a faulty diaphragm in addition to the plumbing issue. We had already investigated the suspected leak and didn’t find anything. It’s extremely hard to find dripping water in a wet bilge, and you can’t hear it because we are surrounded by splashing water. So it was with some horror that ...

 We had a great day sailing yesterday, with 15–18 knots of breeze and the wind sitting around 100 degrees apparent. Yesterday was a day of emotional peaks and troughs, as we had an extremely exciting encounter with a superyacht which was also heading to Mackay. It came past us at around 12 knots.  The reason for the excitement was that it was something else to look at, and it soon disappeared over the horizon, with Ocean Breeze gallantly chasing along behind at a steady 6.5 knots. Poor wee thing was trying her hardest! It has been nice to have a few days of sunshine and blue sky after all the cloudy, rainy and cold weather earlier in the trip. It is also definitely getting warmer, which I hadn’t expected. I expected it would get cooler as we approached Mackay. After spending so much time in jackets, long trousers and socks, it’s quite nice to be back in conditions where you can actually remember that we are supposed to be sailing in the tropics. On the ...

We made good miles yesterday, averaging 6.5 knots over 24 hours, which gives us 156 nm, so not too shabby. I have another note to add to my area of general knowledge concerning the buying of bottled water, in addition to my previous discovery that 'eau gazeuse' means sparkling water, which was discovered 12 hours after leaving port on a previous passage. The new information is that water “fortified with extra calcium and magnesium” makes milk curdle. It’s a strange discovery to make at 2am in the pitch black when you’re having a coffee to keep alert and suddenly think, “Hmmmm, something is not right. Is this lumpy lemon milk?” We have now begun the process of threading through the reefs above New Caledonia. They extend for miles, with only small patches of clear water before you approach the next set of reefs, and then the next set, for hundreds of miles. I think I mentioned in an earlier blog that sailors used to name places as a form of navigational information, and the names...

We got the anchor down in the quarantine area in Port Vila right on sunrise and then had to wait for a few hours while everyone woke up. We called a few times on the VHF and sent some emails to see if anyone was awake, but didn’t get a response until 9am. We had to take the boat to the fuel wharf to deal with the authorities because we don't have a dinghy, which I think actually made things easier, even if they didn’t want to admit it. It meant they could all come when they had time and didn’t have to get a dinghy out to the boat or synchronise their trip with other departments, which is a considerably more complicated operation. The biggest blow of the day was that I didn’t get to go to the supermarket. Instead, I was busy filling in forms, going to the ATM to pay a bill, going back to the ATM to pay another one, getting a form from one office to take to another, and dealing with the fact that no one could understand why we only wanted fuel and water and were leaving immediately. ...

 We are 2nm off the entrance to Port Vila and just waiting for daylight to go in the bay to anchor in the quarantine area.  So there wont be a blog as its not the time to be staring at the laptop. But we are hoping to get the entry formalities completed first thing this morning and if all goes smoothly we are aiming to leave this afternoon - finger crossed!

Things on board are going well, with everyone settled into their rhythm of watches and daytime naps. I never thought in my life I would ever say I am looking forward to going to the supermarket, but after the outrageous prices in French Polynesia and the scarcity in Tonga of anything more exotic than Spam, I am really looking forward to the supermarket in Port Vila! The breeze has been up and down, giving us periods of motoring and steady sailing. A big plus is that we have been seeing patches of blue sky and even some stars at night, though it’s still far from tropical. At this point, blue sky is becoming an event worth mentioning. Charles Dickens had a similar writing spot We are on track to arrive first thing Friday morning and, in fact, will have to slow down a little to make sure we don’t arrive at 3am. The area to anchor in Port Vila while you wait for clearance is squashed in between a few reefs and I would much prefer to arrive in daylight. The long-term weather fo...

 It’s funny how one thing leads to another and you start pulling the thread and everything falls apart. I follow two broad rules: “picking it will only make it worse” and “it’s not going to get more broken if it’s already broken”, and I interchange them as I see fit.  In this case, however, I had to make up a new rule: “It’s not quite broken, so let’s pick at it and make it worse — but not so much that it actually gets broken". Yesterday we noticed the AIS screen on one of the instruments said “No AIS”, which was a bit of a head scratcher as it had been working a few days ago — we had seen traffic, so we knew it was working. A bit of troubleshooting showed all the wiring was good, but the AIS wasn’t showing on the network menu of the chart plotter. Something must have happened when we reset the chart plotter, and this was the thread that started to get pulled. It ended up with us having to stack the small stools from the saloon on top of each other and climb 3.5 meters into th...

 It's still not tropical or warm, and I don't regret buying a fleece hoodie in Tonga. I actually wish I had bought a woolly hat as well. What's saving me at the moment is a pretty classy move - Crocs 'n' socks. There was a moment of horror yesterday as Fiji was fading into the distance. I turned the Starlink on and it took forever to come online. When it finally did, there was a message saying, "You seem to be in an unusual location – check your subscription." I looked out of the window. We were completely surrounded by water and definitely at sea on a boat, and I thought, this isn't unusual I'm always at sea on a boat. It would be unusual if I was in a desert. It turned out I was right. It wasn't unusual, and Starlink started working, which was a double-sided result as now we can get weather and communicate, but I still have to think of things for the blog. Plus, our deadline for arriving in Mackay is zooming closer, and that is also Starlink-...

 These posts start to become like 'Ground Blog Day' as there isn't a lot to write about when your sailing like this. The wind was pretty light during the night, and we ran with one engine and the headsail to try and grab a bit of extra speed - by extra speed I mean 1 knt so around 2kph! There were a few ships coming up and down the channel, and it was nice to see the lights of Suva as we went past. Around 6am, we gradually got a few extra knots of wind as we cleared the islands of Fiji, and we are now running downwind with just the headsail and surrounded by big grey clouds. Its good to be away from the land and reefs again and in to open water. The islands do add a new dimension and its something to look at. But as I have said loads of times 'all the wrecks are on the rocks' so its definitely more relaxing to be away from charted objects labelled "2 miles further". Plus its 499nm to Port Vila which is very exciting. We aren't going exactly the right w...

 Everything went as planned yesterday, and we had a great trip through the passage between the reefs. We were in the lee of the reef, so the waves were minimal, and we made great time. We exited the other side around midday and carried on through Fiji waters.   There is a large swell running from the south, and the surfers in Fiji must be loving it. It's gentle enough, and the space between the waves is so large that it's not really noticeable to us unless you look out of the saloon window and suddenly see just how big the swells are. The wind died down as we approached the reef yesterday to around 16knts and during the night at times was dropping below our threshold of 10knts apparent and it was great (and much safer!) to start the engine by pushing a button rather than twisting some wires together or getting a screwdriver depending on which engine we wanted to start. We have around 125 nm until we clear the islands of Fiji, with a few obstacles in front of us to ...

The breeze eased off yesterday to next to nothing, and the forecast was showing a southerly coming up at around midnight. We were 175 nm northeast of the reefs at Fiji that stretch all the way down the eastern side. If we had continued on our same course, we would have had strong headwinds going through the pass and would have been in a poor position when we exited the reefs to sail through Fiji. So, with full tanks and trusty new water pumps on both engines, it was time to do some strategic motoring. You may have seen the course change as we started positioning ourselves for the breeze, and then another course change when the wind started. It was a few hours earlier than expected, but it didn't really affect our overall plan. It was pouring rain almost all night, with gusty winds up to around 25 knots, but it has settled down now to 18 knots from the SSE. I'm hoping it starts to come around to the south as we get into Fiji waters. We also had a bit of an adventure with the cha...

 Well, two important things happened yesterday – we left Vava'u, and it went on the list of places I don't want to go back to. Getting anything done was next to impossible. Even shopping was a struggle. One shop would sell garden forks, tomatoes, tin openers and pasta. The next had washing machines, tinned tuna, bacon and hoodies. The next would have bread, random car parts, noodles and size 6 boots. Since I needed to get some engine work done and didn't have a dinghy, getting to and from the boat was tricky. I found someone who was willing to rent me some dock space for a few days as he didn't have a boat on it. He came up with a daily rate of AU$900 a night. So that didnt happen. I managed to hitchhike a few times with people in dinghies, someone lent me what I called a 'wet bum' kayak for three days, and someone else eventually lent me a rowing dinghy. So somehow I managed to get around and get the things done that needed doing. We had the engine parts we nee...