Yacht Delivery Blog

We flew into Tahiti and arrived at the boat at 4am on the 30th, and we left yesterday, on the 2nd. It was a bit hectic getting everything ready. We have to go through all the cupboards, check the spares, tools and equipment, read the manuals and understand how all the systems operate, as well as go shopping to provision for the passage. Then there are the authorities to deal with, getting cleared out and getting all the paperwork sorted and of course the French invented bureaucracy. And now, entering New Zealand means complying with the new biosecurity regulations, which essentially mean the boat should never have been within three miles of any water ever, as that seems to be the only way to meet the standards they have set. First impressions of the Lagoon 450S: Its awesome. It’s a huge step up from the 440. The living areas are very comfortable, but more importantly for me, it’s a very solid platform for working and feels very stable underfoot even in the larger waves by M...

 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...