Passage to New Zealand (Saturday, October 22 to Saturday, October 29)
Goodbye Tropics, Hello New Zealand!
Our last passage for 2011 was a trip from Nuku’Alofa Tonga to Whangarei, New Zealand. We’ve been cruising since August 6, 2010 and have clocked approximately 9,000 ocean miles upon arrival to New Zealand. Since we started, we were always on the fence as to whether we would sail to New Zealand or to Australia. This passage to New Zealand is known for some pretty nasty weather off the coast of New Zealand and is considered one of the world’s most treacherous cruising routes. It’s generally an 8 to 11 day passage with gale force winds hitting off the coast of New Zealand about every 5 to 6 days. Once we realize that going to Australia is also known for having poor weather, we decided to bite the bullet and head to New Zealand. Hence we had a third reef sewn into our main sail just to be prepared for this passage.
There’s lots of good strategy on how to get to New Zealand successfully – for example some cruisers sail from Tonga to Minerva Reef (about a 3 day sail) and wait out the weather conditions for another good weather window. Other cruisers go way west in hopes to avoid such bad weather fronts. We kept all these strategies in mind, including using Bob McDavitt as our weather router. Bob forecasted that we would have strong winds in the first part of our trip, with the winds lightening up towards the latter part of our trip as we neared New Zealand. He also predicted that our passage would take 6 days and 19 hours and he was pretty much spot on.
So we sat around for 4 days waiting for our router to give us the go ahead; first we were going to go on Wednesday, then Thursday, then Friday (which is bad luck to sailors for a departure date – probably an old wives tale generated by seaman who got called out on a Friday, hence they had to work the weekend), and then finally we got clearance to depart on Saturday, October 22 – our 28th wedding anniversary. So off we went – it was like being given a big push to hurry up and get going before the weather changes.
For the first four days, we had terrific winds of about 20 knots. If Lardo had wings, I would say that we flew instead of sailing and had record breaking days of 150+ miles. Normally we reefed the main at night to steady and slow down the boat for comfort but because we were trying to beat the typical weather window – i.e., 8 to9 day passage to New Zealand with the possibility of a front with gale force winds hitting the New Zealand coast every 5-6 days, we opted to give up comfort and put the pedal to the medal. At first it was difficult to sleep, cook and move around the cabin due to the boat being so far keeled over and the constant rockin’ and rollin’ motion from Lardo’s high speed. Any attempt to make coffee resulted in the coffee grounds flying around the cabin.
Winds finally died down starting in the wee hours of Wednesday morning, and we needed to turn on the iron wind. Once the wind settled to about 7 to 9 knots and the seas flatten out, it got a lot more comfortable. After the seas mellowed out, we all took heavenly showers and were able to open a few hatches without water spraying into the cabin - nice to air out the cabin which was getting a little ripe. It was a nice break to have the winds slow but they did pick up to about 15 knots on Thursday and Friday – very nice sailing conditions. So for the remainder of the trip we were mostly under sail.
We saw our first Albatross with its magnificent wing span about 2 days before reaching land. After having such warm air and water temperatures in the tropics, we finally experienced a cool down – day time temps were a pleasant 70 degrees Fahrenheit, night time temps chilly 50’s and the water about 68 degrees Fahrenheit. Ooh, brrrrz – we dug out our jackets and woolies for night watches. Lovely clear night skies where we could gaze at the constellations. Sometime in the wee hours of Tuesday morning, we crossed over the western to eastern hemisphere.
We checked in daily with two New Zealand nets – Southern Cross net at 7:30 a.m and the weather net at 8:00 a.m.; it was thru these nets we learned that New Zealand All Blacks won the Rubgy Cup. Additionally, MaryLee chatted with Ruthie (s/v Rutea) and Beth (s/v Sarah Jean II) each day at noon on SSB channel 4B – nice to have boats nearby and within range to chat with. We spotted Ovation again on Thursday – Ovation had followed us out of Tonga, disappeared for a few days and then there they were on Thursday; Ovation is returning to New Zealand, their home, after completing their second circumnavigation and being away for seven years.
After all of our fears and anxiousness about the trip, it was truly amazing that we were blessed with such great wind and sea conditions. Because of great boisterous trade winds in the beginning plus the ability to go nearly “rhumbline”, we were able to get to New Zealand in 7 days, beating the normal trip time of 8 to 9 days. When telling Kiwi’s how anxious many cruisers are about sailing to New Zealand because of all the weather horror stories that we hear, they always seem to respond with a comment to the effect – “you’re right mate, the stories are all very true Luv!” Boy, we were so glad to beat weather fronts that arrived shortly after our safe arrival.
Good Day Mate!
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