Yacht Delivery Blog

Well, it's fantastic to be leaving Tual behind and setting our sights on Sorong ! The journey is slow but steady, with the wind hovering around zero knts so let's just say it's "calm" today. It is great to be heading in exactly the right direction but a shame to be motoring, especially since we're totally reliant on the generator to keep those electric motors humming. It's a bit nerve-wracking, to be honest, as we keep a close eye on that recent repair and hope it holds out for a while longer. The thousand or so nautical miles from Port Moresby to Tual were a real test of our patience and a bit of a grind – mostly battling wind and current. So, I'm incredibly happy to be moving in the right direction now, and I am ready to call 4knts a decent speed! It's truly disheartening to be pushed further and further away from your destination by a strong current, watching that VMG (Velocity Made Good) dwindle down. Right now, we're navigating around a g...

Well, this is going to be a brief update, but I don't even know where to start. We arrived in Tual on Christmas afternoon, and I wasn't really expecting anything to happen, but it was nice to be anchored. We were told we would be cleared in the next day. We spent all day waiting for the Quarantine guy to come "in a few hours," "shortly," "he will be there in a while," "he just has to finish something," "after he's had his lunch." He finally arrived on the 27th at 11 am, and I wasn't very happy. I am at a complete loss as to how to explain the level of complete frustration and almost overwhelming perplexity of what happened when he got to the boat. He sat in the cockpit watching videos on Facebook. I wish I could say I was exaggerating, but I looked over his shoulder. Has our addiction to cell phones become so great we are completely oblivious of our surroundings and think it's acceptable to behave like this? It'...

Well, after a few days of calm since leaving Port Moresby, we've finally made it to the entrance of the Torres Strait. We'll be passing Bramble Cay soon and weaving our way through the reefs and islets. It's a bit of a navigational challenge with all the tankers and container ships, but we're keeping a sharp lookout. Hopefully, the current won't be too strong against us. On the bright side, the moon is getting fuller and should be full in a couple of days. That will be a welcome sight as we start heading towards Sorong. A full moon will help us keeping an eye out for Indonesian fishing boats as we get closer. Last night, we noticed a lot more ships on the horizon, all heading towards the same waypoint as us. It seems like a popular route. The wind was pretty light last night, only around 2 knots, but it picked up to a whole 5 knots this morning. The weather models suggest we might have a few more days of these calm conditions. This was taken at midnight and shows ...

Well, we made it out of Port Moresby! Let me tell you, there are only two reasons to go there, and neither of them are worth the risk of getting your head smashed in and violently robbed. You can get fuel, and the steak at the yacht club is the best I've ever had. My strong suggestion - Get extra fuel somewhere else and become a vegetarian for a week. It's just not worth it. We had to wait 24 hours to get checked in, which didn't exactly put me in a great mood. Then, seven customs officers in big black boots and red betel stained teeth came stomping around the boat for hours, pulling apart anything they thought was suspicious. A drawer with tape over it to stop it from sliding open? Suspicious! Anything in a bag? Dumped on the floor and rifled through! They eventually came to our pretty impressive medical kit, which is all organized in plastic boxes. I could just see what was going to happen. The officer goes, "WHAT'S THIS?" I said, "A medical kit....

Yesterday was a day of easy miles. We had a pretty consistent breeze that kept the boat speed up around 8+ knots. But then, around midnight, just as I came on watch, we got nailed by a huge squall! Thank goodness for a good radar! I saw the squall from several miles away and furled the headsail, bringing us up into the wind about 40 degrees hoping it would pass in front. But there was no missing it completely – luckily, we just caught the edge of it as it passed. I could tell what was going to happen as I got hit with an icy blast of wind and thought, "Hmmmmmm." As the wind started picking up to 25 knots, we dropped the mainsail, pulled out some headsail, and got back on track. We watched as the wind picked up to the mid to high 30s, and then we followed it around as it shifted from the north. It stayed gusty and rainy for a few hours. We finally got the mainsail back up at 4 am and are now back on track. The next leg of our journey takes us through the Torres Strait and in...

This is our last full day and night at sea. Tomorrow, we'll be tied up in the marina in Tahiti , and I'll be turning off the engines for the last time. The main and headsail will be dropped and stowed away, and I won't be touching the sheets or halyards again. It feels peculiar to think that Namarie and I have kept each other safe throughout this incredible journey, and in a few days, I'll be on a plane heading home. On this yacht delivery Namarie and I started in the Bay of Biscay and headed south into the Atlantic, getting to know each other along the way. We made a brief stop in the Canary Islands, our last contact with Europe before heading further south and leaving footprints in the red dust of Cape Verde. We left West Africa behind and headed further west across the Atlantic, dodging hurricanes and grabbing fuel and provisions in the southern end of the Caribbean. From there, we pushed onwards through the Caribbean Sea to Panama and the canal. Pretty soon after, ...

Now I'm under a personal gag order to avoid discussing the "watery wingsuiters." I've been racking my brain for a different topic, but it seems that once you've covered weather, waves, and oceanic aviators, there's not much else to write about. Yesterday, we put the clocks back another hour, so the sun was just lighting up the sky when I got up for my watch this morning. It's definitely a cheerier experience than waking up to pitch black until 7 AM. If we adjust the clocks again in a few days, Adam can also enjoy a sunrise, and we can arrive in Tahiti without being too out of sync with local time, and our body clocks won't be too disoriented. We spent yesterday motor sailing with light winds from around 120 degrees. We had the main, headsail, and a Volvo pushing us westwards with 10-14 knots of apparent wind. During the night, the wind died down to 8 knots apparent, so we dropped the main and continued with just the headsail until very early morning wh...

Yesterday my request for the wind to ease off wasn't specific enough. It died down pretty much immediately and it was supposed to be after midday, which was disappointing. As a result, our 24-hour run was only 186 nautical miles, which is still impressive but not quite the 200 nautical miles I was dreaming of. We ended up motoring for the night with less than 10 knots of breeze, except for a brief burst of excitement this morning when the wind picked up to over 30 knots for a while. It's back to less than 10 knots now. We'll need to put the clocks back another hour as the sun didn't rise this morning until 7 AM. The day is pretty dreary so far, with a gray sky and drizzle. Hopefully, it will clear up soon. I'm also hoping the sea state will allow me to take the lid off the water barrels and pump fuel into the tanks this morning without spilling any. We also had a very exciting encounter yesterday: we spotted a ship, not with our eyes but on the AIS! It's the fir...

It's been a mixed bag of everything the South Pacific has to offer over the last 24hrs: from 4 knots of wind to 28, completely overcast to blue sky, southerly to easterly winds, its been main up, main down, engine on, engine off, and i have also had to deal with some very vicious flying fish. In a fit of rage, one of them almost made it into the saloon, and I was lucky to have the boat hook handy to help get it away.  We're currently motoring at about 5 knots with a light breeze thats useless for sailing and directly from behind with a rather lumpy sea, so I'm hoping either the breeze picks up or the sea calms down. It's also back to being overcast. At the moment we are making the best of it while the water maker is filling the tanks. We've also been calculating the complexities of changing the clock back an hour to get onto local time and how to adjust the watches so someone doesn't get stuck with an extra hour. It's been some tricky mathematics! ...

We've been making great progress, which I suspect you can see on the tracker . I had hoped to smash the 180 nautical mile barrier in the last 24 hours. We managed 90 nautical miles in 12 hours, but the average dropped during the very early morning. Conditions are perfect, and we've picked up a solid southeast breeze hovering around 13 knots, giving us a great push in the right direction. The long-term weather forecast suggests we can expect to keep this breeze for at least the next ten days. It's completely overcast again this morning, but yesterday we started to see some blue skies and fluffy clouds, the kind of weather you'd expect with the trade winds . We're still seeing fishing boats from China and Korea, harvesting whatever they can from the rich waters of the Galapagos. And these aren't small boats – they're over 60 meters, so their appetite is huge.  We haven't had any splashes on deck, and there are only occasional whitecaps, so I had my hatch o...

There’s been a slight improvement in conditions. The current has eased off a bit and changed direction slightly, which is a small victory. Unfortunately, the wind hasn’t died down as predicted, but it has dropped a few knots and shifted a bit south, sitting at 18 knots apparent. The time between waves has increased and they are noticeably smaller, which is also a positive. All these small changes have added up to a bigger win. We're now able to point the boat directly towards the Galapagos and still be around 25-30 degrees off the apparent wind. With the main sail sheeted in tight and a gentle push from both engines, we're making about 5.5 knots - exactly the right way. Running both engines is a bit of a luxury, but it’s essential to make miles the right way while we have the opportunity.  With 400 nautical miles to go, it suddenly looks a lot more promising. Of course, I’m not getting carried away, as things can change quickly out here. But for now, I'll take this small w...

The finish line is getting closer! With less than 500 nautical miles to go, I can practically hear the steel drums playing a welcome song to Trinidad. We've already sent all our clearance documents over to "Junior," and hopefully, he'll have everything ready for a smooth arrival process. My mental image of "Junior" is a bit outlandish – a towering figure over 2 meters tall with a massive beard and a weight to match. It'll be interesting to see how close reality gets to this picture! Cruising through hurricane alley at a leisurely 6 knots isn't exactly the most relaxing way to travel, so there's been a lot of reading happening on board. Yesterday, we came across some interesting information about the red dust I've been complaining about. Turns out, it might actually be a blessing in disguise! These Saharan dust storms blowing across the Atlantic are a common occurrence at this time of year. And here's the good news: the dust disrupts hurri...

We finally left Nongsa behind us this morning, setting sail at first light. Our recent "sea trial" threw a wrench in the plans, requiring Rhona's swift return twice to Singapore for essential spares.  Thankfully, the final stretch through the Singapore Strait was smooth sailing. Ample navigable water allowed us to maintain a safe distance from the main channel traffic. And with a full fuel tank and four additional 200-liter fuel drums securely fastened in the cockpit, we're making our way south. However, the weather forecast isn't exactly sunshine and rainbows. Early predictions reveal a couple of lows forming southwest of Jakarta, forcing us to hug the Java Sea to avoid them. My initial plan was to bypass the Java Sea and head "outside," which would entail a longer journey but significantly less traffic. Unfortunately, Mother Nature seems to have other plans. Speaking of dodging, keeping a watchful eye is crucial right now. While cargo ships, thankfully...