Looking back on the passage, with photos

After a very solid night's sleep we are beginning to feel a bit less bleary-eyed and have started to sort a few things out here. We're back to internet (approximately 4 times the price it was in Fiji via a mobile dongle) so have posted a few photos below.

Overall, the passage was successful in that we got here without damage and, mostly, in fairly comfortable conditions. However we motored for much longer than we wanted and found the final few days a tad stressful Thankfully the final day's great sailing put a smile on our faces.

The stats were:

Total Miles: 1231nm
Total time: 9 days, 7 hours, or 233 hours
Average speed: 5.3 knots (disappointing, we usually average closer to 6)
Total hours of the engine running: 117 hrs = 52% of the time!!!! Aargh!
Total fuel burned 365 litres.
Average consumption 3.1 litres per hour

If we'd elected to wait for another wind, however, it would have been another 8 days and we're not sure the window would have been any better. So, we're glad to be here.

A few photos, below:

Motoring on a glassy sea - an all-too regular occurrence

Great to have the Parasailor flying, but still gentle conditions

Just a great piece of kit - we love this sail

The tanker Victoire turns to help us

Syphoning diesel from the Victoire's container into the main tank under our berth 

This gauge got a lot of scrutiny !! When we arrived the needle was at the very bottom of the red sector

Our passenger clings on

The blog will go a little quiet for the next month but please do check it every now and then - we'll aim to do some kind of update once a week.

Safely in to Opua

We made it safely into Opua at 16.00 and didn't run out of fuel! Wonderful, exciting sailing today (in up to 30 knots of wind) was a reward for all the hours of motoring and all the concern about impending weather systems over the past week. Our arrival was greeted by loud rumbles of thunder and the strong southerly winds will arrive here at about midnight; at the moment, though, it's completely calm. It feels pretty odd not to be moving up and down!

 

So, we're off to the Opua Cruising Club for supper and a couple of well-earned drinks and then it'll be an early night. We suspect that we'll sleep well!

 

We hope that you have enjoyed the passage with us and we'll post some photos in the next day or two.

 

This is Maunie signing off. Out.

Day 10: One good Tern surely deserves another

This little fella flew around Maunie a couple of times yesterday evening and landed on the solar panels above the cockpit. Presumably the slippery glass surface had enough salt crystals on it (they are everywhere!) to give him some grip and he seemed unperturbed by us taking photos of him. He stayed there, resting, till first light in spite of the rolling of the boat and the racket we made doing a sail change, though we'd hear him complaining when an extra big roll made him slide – we aren't sure if the squeaks we heard were from his beak or from his claws screeching across the salty surface like nails down a blackboard.

Well we ran out of fuel, to all intents and purposes, at 15.30 yesterday. We have a few litres (anywhere between two and eight, we just can't tell) left in the bottom of the tank to let us motor the final yards into Opua but the will-we, won't-we drama continues as you'll read later. Anyway as silence descended as the engine was switched off, we hoisted the Parasailor and ghosted along at only a couple of knots for about three hours until the wind finally arrived. We had a great sail into the night but decided to switch back to white sails at 01.30 when things began to get a bit boisterous. The phrase 'switch back to white sails' doesn't really convey the work involved – it took nearly an hour of careful coordination between cockpit and foredeck in windy, rolly conditions to lower and pack away the spinnaker, set up the pole and unfurl the yankee and then do a difficult downwind hoist of the main, with a couple of reefs in it. I have to say that Dianne is brilliant at all this, managing the sheets in the cockpit and then coming to the mast to lower the spinnaker – all without complaint in spite of the lack of sleep.

Since then the wind has been up and down and the waves are making us roll but we have been making good progress. The good tern, sorry turn, that the Victoire did us has made a hugely significant difference to our predicament. Without their fuel we'd be nearly a day behind and  facing the 30 knots against us on Friday morning. However, we aren't taking anything for granted just at the moment. At current speed we will arrive in the Bay of Islands late afternoon in heavy rain (which will at least wash the salt off Maunie and maybe us!) but there's still a risk that we may sail straight into the middle of the low and run out of wind! Finger very much crossed.

Day 9: Hoping not to snatch Disaster from the jaws of Victoire.

Good morning from Maunie. A slightly earlier post today as (we hope) we'll be busy with sails this afternoon.

 

As expected we motored through calm winds last night and the wind still hasn't filled in as I write (10.00am). The latest forecast is that we should get a sailable breeze from the NW this afternoon. The extra revs on the engine to make her move at 5.8 knots rather than 5 knots seem to make quite a difference to fuel consumption and we are wishing we had been even more cheeky with the tanker Victoire and asked for 50 litres! Still, we have used a hand-pump to empty the dregs of diesel from the reserve tank and put them, through a filter to remove any tank-bottom sediment, into a jerrycan. The five litres in that can will be our 'motoring-in' fuel, to avoid an embarrassing engine stoppage as we arrive in Opua where the current runs fast, and the diesel remaining in our main tank will last 7 or 8 hours (we are back at plodding speed, but thankfully have a favourable current at last) by which time the wind should be here. Wow, it's closer than comfortable but we are so pleased that we got the fuel we did from the Victoire as we'd be stopped in the water now without it.

 

We have 165 miles to run to the Bay of Islands (and about a further 6 miles into Opua) so we should, if we can maintain a 6 knot average, be in sheltered waters by 3.00pm tomorrow, Thursday. The latest inshore forecast is:

 

Forecast Wednesday 28th October:
Variable 10 knots. Northwest 15 knots developing this afternoon. Sea slight.

Outlook:
Northerly 15 knots, changing Thursday evening southerly 30 knots.

 

So it's still keeping us on the edge of our seats – that southerly could arrive earlier, of course, and even if it doesn't, we will be sailing into an occluded front (basically a warm front caught up by a cold front) which will give us heavy rain, poor visibility and even possibly thunder storms tomorrow! We like a dramatic arrival but this might be taking things too far!

 

Anyway in the meantime there is lots to do today, preparing the spinnaker lines for a hoist as soon as the wind comes, cooking a chicken curry up in advance for this evening, and preparing the boat for potentially heavy weather. We'll both try to get some decent off-watch sleep too as tonight might keep us busy. All being well our next update on the blog will be from the dock in Opua but there will be another position update on

http://www.yit.co.nz/yacht/maunieofardwall at 07.30 NZ time.

Day 8; " I told you we should have stopped at the last services!"

We are motoring through a high pressure system so the wind has dropped away and our precious diesel reserves are dwindling fast. No matter how many times we did the calculation, we kept coming up with the same answer: "It'll be bloody close whether we run out or not". Meanwhile, with the windy and wet forecast for our arrival day, Thursday, in mind we really wanted to open the throttle and get some speed on rather than dawdling at 5 knots to conserve our fuel.

 

Most of you will be familiar with the feeling I'm sure. Driving up the motorway, you see the Services sign but say, "No, we'll go on to the next ones. They have better food.." Less than a quarter of a mile past the exit, the fuel gauge mysteriously drops onto the red zone and the orange fuel warning light blinks on in reproach. "No, it can't be 47 miles to the next services!". From then on, you're reducing speed until indignant HGV's are overtaking you, their drivers no doubt wondering why you're driving at 60mph, and you have that sick feeling in your stomach as you envisage a trudge along the wet hard shoulder if the car conks out 3 miles from safety.

 

So we've been feeling those kind of feelings about our ability to motor through the next 20 hours of light wind, on top of a level of apprehension about the weather that is waiting tfo greet us. The forecast for the coastal area of Brett, where we'll make landfall, is:

 

Becoming Wednesday evening northerly 15 knots. Rising early Thursday northerly 25 knots,
then dying out late Thursday. Developing early Friday southerly 25 knots,
easing to 15 knots later. Sea rough at times. Moderate northerly swell.

 

Anyway, with all these thoughts churning around our heads, we were just having some lunch today when an AIS signal popped up on the chart plotter. A ship was approaching at 12.5 knots from our starboard and the CPA (closest point of approach) was calculated to be about 800 ft. As the ship got closer the AIS system identified it as the m/v Victoire, on passage to Tahiti and that she was a tanker. A tanker?

 

First priority was for us to call her to confirm that we had seen her and that, as the 'give way' vessel (approaching from her port side), we would alter course to starboard to pass behind her. The captain was very friendly and thanked us for this. We then thought "well, it's worth a try!" so called back and explained our predicament with the fuel and the oncoming weather and asked if they might be able to let us have 25 litres. Knowing that it would be impossible to stop the 285 ft tanker, Graham suggested they drop a not-quite-full can into their wake, with a retrieval rope attached, and we'd chase it and pick it up with the boathook. Which is exactly what happened. Honest, we'll post photos on the blog to prove it. The Victoire didn't slow down at all but did quite a scary s-turn towards us; we saw the can hit the water at their stern and picked it up in a textbook man-overboard manoeuver.

 

Bless the captain and crew of the Victoire and thanks to whoever was looking kindly upon us to send a tanker to cross our bows! We've added about 8 hours range to our motoring so are now back on the pace at just under 6 knots. The northerly wind should kick in tomorrow so apart from the big gusts, rough seas and heavy rain on Wednesday night, we should be fine.

 

Day 7: Gentlemen should never go to windward

It has been a trying day on Maunie. We knew it was coming but the high pressure to our west had delivered the southerly winds that we really didn't want so we have spent the last 24 hours trying to get the boat going in roughly a useful direction. The winds have been up to 20 knots and have kicked up a lumpy sea that is slowing us down – it's like driving down a track full of boulders.

 

Normally our options in this situation would be to ease the sails a little and sail a less direct but faster course or to drop the foresails and motor-sail with the engine running hard to push us through the weather on a better (closer to the wind) course. The former would take more time and the latter more fuel and, unfortunately, these are both luxuries that we can't afford.

 

We are on a bit of a race against time just now because our current ETA for Opua is Thursday afternoon, just as a deep low pressure system arrives there. This should give us following northerly winds on the final day but if we delay we'll hit adverse SW winds and quite strong ones. We've already mentioned our fuel calculations and we know that we will have to motor through calmer winds tomorrow before the northerlies arrive on Wednesday so we can't squander precious diesel now.

 

So this has made things uncharacteristically stressful today and we are both pretty tired after disturbed sleep. We're looking forward to calmer waters tomorrow and just hope all our navigation and fuel calculations are right! Meanwhile it's good to hear other boats on the radio – we run two 'skeds' each day, morning and evening, so can compare weather conditions and positions. One boat reported that a Minke whale came alongside him yesterday then dived under the boat; unfortunately it miss-timed the manoeuver and collided with the keel so is presumably still nursing a sore head!

 

News from the outside, non-bumpy world would be very welcome on board (we did get the rugby scores!) so do drop us an email if you have a minute to spare.

Day 6: The {D,V} Equation and Other Calculations

Ok, so regular readers will be itching to know if the optimism of yesterday's blog, vis-a-vis flying the Parasailor, was justified. Well, we had wonderful sailing through the night as the wind increased a little and swung from behind us to a broad reach (i.e. over our right shoulders) but at 3.00am Dianne woke Graham up from his off-watch dreams for a review. Maunie was charging along at 7 –7.5 knots but was becoming a little more difficult to keep in a straight line.

 

Di was right to make the call so we sat and did a quick calculation of the D > V/2 equation (where D is Discretion and V is Valour)  and decided that we should drop the sail and move back to white sails. This is always an extra challenge at night but with good planning and care we achieved it without dropping the sail or lines in the water and were soon back sailing at about one knot less. At 125 sq m the Parasailor is 70% bigger than the combined mainsail and yankee so it certainly makes a difference and the wind did continue to build as we reached a weather front at about 7.00am. It would have been a challenge to manage a neat drop of the wet spinnaker if we'd still had it flying in those conditions so we patted ourselves on the back for Di's good call.

 

Once we were though the front with about 3 hours of drizzle and variable winds, we've popped out to the west of it so have lovely sunshine but with the wind light and moving steadily to the SW, which is the direction we are still trying to go.  We've been looking at all the weather information that we have and it seems that the forecasts are continually changing for the low pressure systems converging on NZ as we do the same. The good news is that the low pressure that threatened to whack us on the nose on Wednesday seems to be moving more slowly so we might escape a bashing. However the bad news is that we've had to do some more maths.

 

It now seems as though we are going to get lots of very light wind over the next 3 days so Bob's latest routing model suggests we'll need the engine for about 65 hours (ugh!). We've been working out our usage so far (an estimate based on previous engine runs as we don't have an accurate fuel meter on board) and we think we have enough fuel for about 72 hours at slow speed (5 knots). That speed should be fast enough (just) to get us into Opua before the adverse winds arrive but our estimate is probably accurate to only +/- 10% so it could be very close on whether we run out of diesel.

 

It could be a lot worse, of course, we could be bashing into a head wind now and feeling decidedly uncomfortable so we'll just have to take what comes and keep a light hand on the engine throttle.