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Picking Our Way South

 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 being able to make Opua without tacking, which I'm not overly enthused about.


Best case scenario based on GFS

After all the miles we've covered, it would be nice to have a straightforward run into New Zealand, but the weather seems determined to make us work for it.

For now, we'll keep heading south, watch the forecasts and see how much ground we can cover before the southerly arrives. Hopefully, the GFS has it right, but there's still a fair bit of weather between us and Opua, so we'll just have to see how it develops.

Trying to forget about the weather for 5 minutes. 

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