Yacht Delivery Blog

Well, yesterday turned out to be a pretty solid day on the water. We managed a respectable 146 nautical miles in 24 hours. Now, I'll be honest, we did get a bit of a push from one of the Yanmars to bump those numbers up. But hey, as long as we're heading in the right direction, I'm not complaining. Every mile counts, right? One of the more… creative projects we tackled yesterday was the stove situation. With the wind dead astern, it was blowing a lot of the heat away from the pot. And look, I love a good cup of coffee as much as the next sailor, but waiting an eternity for the water to boil?  I considered closing the saloon doors, but it’s just too hot. And firing up the generator just to get the air-con going, because the saloon door is closed? That felt a bit excessive. So, necessity being the mother of invention, we came up with a… let’s call it a "bespoke" wind shield. Picture this: an 8-liter water bottle, securely tied to the stove frame, with a large chopp...

Things are going smoothly, and we're settling into the watch routine. We're currently doing 4 hours off and 4 hours on, which is a bit of a change for me. I'm used to doing 3 on, 3 off. It's a tricky balance, really. Four hours is a long time to be sitting around on watch, especially when it's pitch black and all you can hear is the wind and the waves. But then again, it also means a fantastic amount of sleep. On the other hand, 3 hours on watch doesn't seem too bad, but you always feel like a bit of extra sleep would be amazing. Another option, of course, would be to have extra crew, but that changes the whole onboard dynamic. There would be five personalities to juggle, and things could get interesting! As it is, I have three personalities to manage, so the two crew hopefully would only have one each to deal with. I was on watch last night, and it was one of those incredibly clear nights, with a million stars blazing overhead. I was just scanning the horizon w...

The light winds haven't let up, so we're still motor sailing with just the headsail up. With the breeze right behind us, and the Yanmar ticking over at 1700rpm, we're managing about 125-135 nautical miles a day without having to stray too far off course. It's been so calm that when I saw 11 knots of wind this morning, I actually thought, 'Wow, it's getting windy!'. Every now and again, there's enough wind to turn off the engine. If there isn't enough wind, we put the headsail away, but as long as we're still pushing forward, I'm happy. There's a slight change of plans. We'll now be pulling into Samoa for fuel and water, and to assess the low-pressure system developing near Fiji around the 3rd. If the long-term forecast holds, we can leave Samoa and stay well north, bypassing Fiji and heading towards the northern part of Vanuatu. We'll then turn south as we get closer, likely stopping in Port Vila to prepare for the final leg, or S...

We finally left Raiatea. It's really a beautiful spot even with the few days of heavy rain we had, thanks to some passing low pressures. The rain gave us a chance to go through the boat, check the systems, and see what needed doing before we left. Sunsail were really helpful, which made things much easier. Everything went pretty smoothly until I noticed a mistake on our temporary Australian registration. It said our port of departure was New Caledonia, thousands of miles to the west. I could just picture the customs guys having a field day with that one. After the weeks of delays we had getting the boat papers in order I was a little nervous about another hiccup. Thankfully, a new one was sorted out fast, so no major delays. Of course, it’s cyclone season, so you expect a bit of iffy weather. But this chain of low-pressure systems stretching practically from the Coral Sea all the way east of us? That’s a bit much. And the weather models are showing another 'little bit of someth...

Oxygen is all tied up in the marina in Sorong after the delivery from Fiji. This was certainly an unusual passage! We left Fiji expecting those gentle trade winds that usually sweep across the Pacific, but instead, we were greeted with 30+ knots and rain or nearly flat calm. The normal strong winds of the Coral Sea vanished, replaced by an eerie stillness, and even the typically turbulent Torres Strait was surprisingly calm. These delays, caused by both excessive and insufficient wind, meant we faced headwinds for the next 1000 nautical miles after leaving Thursday Island behind. We could have managed this IF (and it's a big IF) we hadn't encountered a vicious counter-current that seemed determined to push us backwards, sideways or both. As if things weren't complicated enough, we had a problem with the genset (remember, we have electric motors, so the genset is crucial!). AND THEN, just to add insult to injury, the support for the mainsheet track started giving us troubl...

The last few days have been quite the adventure, in fact its been pretty hectic! We've been battling torrential rain and squalls, along with one of my biggest annoyances – unlit fishing boats at night. I'm not sure if it's a blessing or a curse that they're big enough to show up on radar. On the one hand, at least we can see them, but on the other hand, hitting one would definitely ruin our day, where as a small one would just bounce off. This is an island 1/3rd of a mile away. 

It's starting to feel very equatorial – lots of gray skies, squalls, and that hot, sticky humidity. We've got about 80 nautical miles to go before we reach a channel between two islands by Irian Jaya Barat, the western end of PNG. The plan is to navigate through there in daylight, which will leave us just 35 nautical miles from the marina in Sorong. So we will slow down later to arrive at the channel at first light. Yesterday was a bit of a mixed bag, with some slow sailing and some slow motoring. It's funny how the wind could spring up from 360 different directions but always seems to come from every direction except the one we want when it finally decides to show up! We ended up doing a few tacks yesterday because it was constantly shifting around. We've seen a bit of shipping traffic and the usual assortment of fishing boats. We can always tell when a fishing boat is nearby without even looking because suddenly there are flies buzzing around the saloon. I guess eve...