Tonga here we come!!
I think we're leaving tomorrow. That's the plan, anyway. It's lovely and calm at the moment; we are in Opua marina, tied securely to our pontoon, and the children are fast asleep. The boat was looking pretty shipshape and tidy earlier today, but now every clear surface in the saloon is once again covered; dry laundry needing folding, an unruly heap of shoes which have been "tidied" from the cockpit, clean dishes and pans all over the surfaces in the galley waiting for the Good Lord to finish the drying up for us, and the odd random teddy, football and book sprayed around for good measure.
There is a brief weather window tomorrow. There is low pressure passing over during the morning, bringing lots of rain and strong north easterly wind. Once this has passed, the wind will back to the north west, and that is our cue to get out of here. Then we need to make best speed north, as fast as we can, to try and keep our noses as far ahead as possible of the next sweeping low pressure system. By the weekend, if the next low pressure tracks where it is expected to, we 25-30 knots of wind from the west and some waves of maybe 4 metres. The boat can handle anything, but I think the junior crew will be a little bit quiet and horizontal for a day or so, until the weather system passes. We could stay in Opua longer and wait for a better "window", but there's no sign of one anytime soon, so most of the fleet are leaving tomorrow.
It has been great for us to have had an "extra" week here in New Zealand before setting sail. We have got to grips with all sorts of things on board that we hadn't quite figured out before. Amazingly, I managed my first ever successful micro-switch replacement on the fresh water pump a week ago, and it hasn't needed a tap since. I hardly dare write that, in case it causes the start of new problems.. Our fresh water now flows from our taps at a massive 1.5 litres per minute, at the fastest tap in the galley. Further from the pump, it is less impressive. This is a good-news-bad-news situation. The good news is that we have 1000l of water in our tanks and we don't use it up very fast at all. The bad news is that it takes quite a long time just to fill the kettle and the water jug, which we do several times a day. To Eric, our lovely Canadian friend - a huge thank you for all your help, attention to detail and long conversations with Angus to help us understand the physics behind the pumps!!
The other part of the water equation is our water maker. This is an incredible bit of kit, which takes up the space behind the seats in the saloon on the port side. It pushes sea water through a series of filters and membranes, and turns it into freshwater. I gave George a cup of water maker water at breakfast to try, and he spat it out in disgust, but hopefully we'll all get used to the completely tasteless taste... We had noticed for some time that we get quite a bit of water in the bilge when we run the water maker, so assumed we had a bit of a leak. It was only when we measured our fresh water output yesterday - 300ml / minute - and then inspected the leak more closely - that we realised it is quite a significant leak, and is probably affecting how much water we can make. We have a huge repair kit with lots of seals and o-rings, and Angus was going to take the whole thing apart and see if we could fix it, but in the end we decided that was not a very clever idea the day before we leave, and besides, we had a long list of more important jobs on the list. So we'll trickle along making water at 20l/hour when we're running the engine, and see how we get along. There's plenty of rain forecast, so we can catch that too if we need to.
On the rally there are kid-boats and non-kid-boats. During the week's delay, the non-kid-boats have been hanging around in the marina, presumably studying the weather endlessly, reading their books, and maybe even relaxing. The kid-boats all went in search of adventure and we met them all sailing in the Bay of Islands, very close to this marina. We had three fantastic nights, the first on Urupakapaka island - what a great name! - the second on Motorua, where we saw a kiwi on our night safari, and the third anchored off Russell, the first european capital of New Zealand. We fished and kayaked and Eloise and I circumnavigated an Motorua on foot which we both loved.
We'll try and write some accounts of life at sea on the way, and post on here.
This is our boat page which will show our position:
https://forecast.predictwind.com/tracking/display/Victoria
This is the rally tracking page, to see all the boats. Please note it's NOT a race!!!
https://www.forecast.predictwind.com/tracking/rally/ICNZ_2019-PCR/
and marine traffic AIS app will show us. boat name Victoria, MMSI 232 020 973
Sorry no time for pics on this one. Better get some sleep - big day tomorrow!
Xx Love from all on Victoria
https://instagram.com/victoria_0583/
https://www.facebook.com/snow.goose.940
There is a brief weather window tomorrow. There is low pressure passing over during the morning, bringing lots of rain and strong north easterly wind. Once this has passed, the wind will back to the north west, and that is our cue to get out of here. Then we need to make best speed north, as fast as we can, to try and keep our noses as far ahead as possible of the next sweeping low pressure system. By the weekend, if the next low pressure tracks where it is expected to, we 25-30 knots of wind from the west and some waves of maybe 4 metres. The boat can handle anything, but I think the junior crew will be a little bit quiet and horizontal for a day or so, until the weather system passes. We could stay in Opua longer and wait for a better "window", but there's no sign of one anytime soon, so most of the fleet are leaving tomorrow.
It has been great for us to have had an "extra" week here in New Zealand before setting sail. We have got to grips with all sorts of things on board that we hadn't quite figured out before. Amazingly, I managed my first ever successful micro-switch replacement on the fresh water pump a week ago, and it hasn't needed a tap since. I hardly dare write that, in case it causes the start of new problems.. Our fresh water now flows from our taps at a massive 1.5 litres per minute, at the fastest tap in the galley. Further from the pump, it is less impressive. This is a good-news-bad-news situation. The good news is that we have 1000l of water in our tanks and we don't use it up very fast at all. The bad news is that it takes quite a long time just to fill the kettle and the water jug, which we do several times a day. To Eric, our lovely Canadian friend - a huge thank you for all your help, attention to detail and long conversations with Angus to help us understand the physics behind the pumps!!
The other part of the water equation is our water maker. This is an incredible bit of kit, which takes up the space behind the seats in the saloon on the port side. It pushes sea water through a series of filters and membranes, and turns it into freshwater. I gave George a cup of water maker water at breakfast to try, and he spat it out in disgust, but hopefully we'll all get used to the completely tasteless taste... We had noticed for some time that we get quite a bit of water in the bilge when we run the water maker, so assumed we had a bit of a leak. It was only when we measured our fresh water output yesterday - 300ml / minute - and then inspected the leak more closely - that we realised it is quite a significant leak, and is probably affecting how much water we can make. We have a huge repair kit with lots of seals and o-rings, and Angus was going to take the whole thing apart and see if we could fix it, but in the end we decided that was not a very clever idea the day before we leave, and besides, we had a long list of more important jobs on the list. So we'll trickle along making water at 20l/hour when we're running the engine, and see how we get along. There's plenty of rain forecast, so we can catch that too if we need to.
On the rally there are kid-boats and non-kid-boats. During the week's delay, the non-kid-boats have been hanging around in the marina, presumably studying the weather endlessly, reading their books, and maybe even relaxing. The kid-boats all went in search of adventure and we met them all sailing in the Bay of Islands, very close to this marina. We had three fantastic nights, the first on Urupakapaka island - what a great name! - the second on Motorua, where we saw a kiwi on our night safari, and the third anchored off Russell, the first european capital of New Zealand. We fished and kayaked and Eloise and I circumnavigated an Motorua on foot which we both loved.
We'll try and write some accounts of life at sea on the way, and post on here.
This is our boat page which will show our position:
https://forecast.predictwind.com/tracking/display/Victoria
This is the rally tracking page, to see all the boats. Please note it's NOT a race!!!
https://www.forecast.predictwind.com/tracking/rally/ICNZ_2019-PCR/
and marine traffic AIS app will show us. boat name Victoria, MMSI 232 020 973
Sorry no time for pics on this one. Better get some sleep - big day tomorrow!
Xx Love from all on Victoria
https://instagram.com/victoria_0583/
https://www.facebook.com/snow.goose.940
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