Round Three

2016, 2017, 2018: Three times we have left Whangarei for a sea trial, and three times we have then waited in Opua for a weather window to sail north to the tropics. The routine doesn’t change, only the details do.

This year’s sea trial—theoretically not a trial by sea, but a chance to try out systems that can’t be checked at a dock—was to NZ’s Great Barrier Island. Second Wind was more ready than ever, we had good wind for sailing and we hadn’t lost our sea legs, so the trip across the Hauraki Gulf and back was an easy one. While there we enjoyed the surroundings, and still got some work done.

There are plenty of fish in the Great Barrier Island area

One of our favorite hikes,

in one of our favorite kinds of forest

At Smokehouse Bay
one builds a fire, waits for a while,

and ends up with hot water for a bath or shower
(note the space is also used as a boaters' lending library)

Overview of Smokehouse Bay's rustic yet pleasurable facilities.
Steinlager 2, the NZ yacht that won the 1989-90 Whitbread Around the World Race, was also anchored at Smokehouse; later that evening we shared a campfire with her current skippers. Very cool!

Servicing the winches:
more winch grease than elbow grease

Our dinghy is lifted on davits and tied securely at night while at anchor, but 50 knot gusts at Great Barrier managed to push hard enough on the dinghy that the davit arms bent. When we got to Opua, Art tied long lines together that stretched to the end of the dock, then rigged them with a block & tackle to a davit; I winched the line in from the cockpit, and voila! Each davit arm bent back to the correct angle. A bit of a gamble, but it worked. Whew!

One of our final pre-voyage tasks is to re-caulk and re-seat every seam and screw where water can find a way in (and that can be caulked). No doubt the sea will find a way, it always does; but we all try to minimize entrance points as much as possible...

Enjoying some nice hikes out in the Bay of Islands
while waiting for departure weather.

After we've cleared NZ Customs back in Opua,
we'll head out past the triangular rock near the upper center of this photo
to the open ocean beyond... 

Now it’s a waiting game. We’ll be crossing over 1,000 miles of ocean, so we’re looking for a weather pattern that forecasts reasonably good wind (not too strong, not too light, not too much headwind) for at least a week. There’s no crystal ball, of course; forecasts always change, especially over that amount of time and distance—but at least we give it our best shot.

If weather permits, we will stop for a while at Minerva Reef; if not, we will bypass Minerva and sail on to Fiji, where we will spend almost 4 months exploring places we have not yet seen. As before, we can be tracked at www.yit.nz/yacht/secondwind. I try to file reports every time we move; on passage that means once a day, and after we’ve made landfall it means every time we go from one anchorage to another.

The next blog post may be quite a while from now—but it will be from Fiji!