(posted by Marge)
All’s well aboard. We officially went an entire 24 hours without turning on the engine. Guess we found those winds they’d been promising, huh? We averaged a solid 6.5 knots all day yesterday and on my watch last night I woke Drew to see if he wanted to pull in some of the sails because we were doing close to 8.5! We did slow it down a bit which is my preference at night.
Starting to find the rythym that normally comes after three or four days. You get into a pattern with the night watches and stuff and the time just ticks by. I haven’t showered in four days though so my hair and underarm’s are starting to really bug me. If it stays much the same as it has been for the past 72 hours then hopefully we’ll get to take some showers today!
Weather forecast is still looking good for the next four days and by late Monday/early Tuesday we should know for sure what the tail end of our journey is going to be like. About 475 miles away from our current position lies Middleton and Elizabeth Reefs so there is always the option for us to stop there if the weather turns. I always hope that timing wise it works out to pass reefs such as these during the day, just from a safety stand point, and to be able to just truck on by. At that point in the trip, you’re more ready to just get it over with than anything.
More tomorrow! Here’s to the winds keeping up…
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NZ to Brisbane, Australia-Day 2
(posted by Marge) Let’s see…we cooked fresh lobster for dinner, had a pleasant convo with a sea turtle about the East Australian Current, and I got a mani/pedi. Oh wait…those were day 2 dreams! A pleasant and calm day at sea, however, so my reality wasn’t much to complain about either. We’re pluggin’ along. Again we sailed under spinnaker all day yesterday averaging anywhere from 5 to 5 1/2 knots. The past two nights it’s been as if someone flipped a switch as soon as it got dark and the winds just disappeared. Personally, I enjoy a calm night at sea but no winds means I’m not getting to Australia any faster, thus we have a problem; We motored through it again last night and woke this morning, day 3, to winds from the East that are currently pushing us along at a gratifying 7 knots. Back to the shelf for me again as I burned through an entire book yesterday. My Sisters Keeper. Complete tear jerker. At sea we can’t afford for me to be tearing through our rolls of toilet paper so today perhaps I’ll go for something with a bit more humor! -
NZ to Brisbane, Australia-Day #1
(posted by Marge) After a gut bomb breakfast of eggs benedict (“eggs benny for breaky” in NZ talk) at the Marina Cafe yesterday morning, we were ready to haul tail. Customs arrived right on time, fueling up was quick and easy, and we were headed out of the Bay of Islands by eleven o’clock. Had a really, really nice day of sailing up the coast of New Zealand under spinnaker. The only hard part about dinner was Drew having to decide which of the pre made meals he wanted. We went with chicken casserole, green beans, and thus, dinner was taken care of. That’s my kind of cooking underway! Right before sunset a pod of dolphins came by the play around on the bow a little bit. We were able to get some great video of that and I assured Drew they knew it was our last passage for a while and wanted to make it memorable (I haven’t had great luck seeing dolphins throughout our trips). We rounded the North Cape while on Drew’s watch, motor sailed for much of the night as the winds died out when night fell, and are now headed towards the Three Kinds Islands. We’ll leave those long behind us in our second day at sea and for hundreds of miles it’ll be just us, the water, and any visitors that might pop up along the way! -
Almost time to go…
Well hello! Happy belated new year to everybody. The days have quickly ticked by since our arrival back to New Zealand and in the midst of it all I have failed to post this year! In preparation for our trip across the Tasman my significant other has been up to his elbows in boat projects for two days straight. Most cruising wives/girlfriends can back me up in that more often than not, the best way to help out on days such as these is to just stay out of the way. So here I sit on the couch, legs tucked underneath me, trying to leave as much room as possible for my boat monkey to get his work done. We’ve been given the go ahead by Bob McDavitt, a weather guru god if you will to the sailing community, to set sail for Australia this week. We wait now on our alternator to be returned to us and then there’s nothing else I can think of that would delay the inevitable any longer. It’s passage time, once again.
Thus come mid afternoon tomorrow the galley will be ablaze with sauces, casseroles, boiling chicken breasts, chopped this, and chopped that. I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again. Knocking out any, or possibly all, cooking that would otherwise have to be done at sea is a hands down must for yours truly. If you’ve followed us along our journey through any previous passages then you are probably fully aware of my ridiculous fear of gimbal stoves. At anchor, I’ll cook all day but when there is motion in the ocean, I’d rather eat cardboard.
After more than a year of this incredible lifestyle, the stove and I (at sea) I have thus far failed to establish a good relationship and its in sensitiveness has made more cry on way more than one occasion. You label me any name in the book you want to…punanny, pansy, or even worse a different p word…I could care less. There are many women far braver than I who tackle their own gimbal stove with no fear whatsoever but I, unfortunately, have been unable to do so. It’s a fear I hope to conquer…one day.Speaking of conquering fears, last night I layed awake for a solid hour. My armpits were sweating. I was nervous. Drew was dead to the world. There was no one trying to come aboard Dosia and inflict bodily harm on me. I was merely thinking about the bungee jumps that are waiting to taunt me when we arrive back in New Zealand to travel the South Island. Will I find the gonads to jump? Just how pissed will I be at myself if I return back to the States having not taken the plunge(s)? My dad writes me the other day…”Marge, do me a favor. If you’re going to jump off of anything or out of anything, please wait until after you do so to tell your mother.” Thus he enforces the fact that its all dangerous. I don’t crave the danger. I really don’t. It didn’t thrill me to stand on the edge of that Sky Tower in Auckland and look down over my toes at a distance so great it looked like the building beneath me was inverted. All the while a giant bulls eye was there to guide me “home.” It reminded me later of the skit Ron White did that time where the guy asks him how far the single engine plane they were riding in was going to take them and he replied, “all the way to the scene of the crash.” I cried like a little girl. The fear that consumed me was so intense. Mascara was streaming down my face so bad the guy had to delay my jump so I could wipe it off just to be able to watch as I plunged to the earth. However, as soon as I went, as soon as I was falling, I loved every second of it. I know that I would love sky diving over the incredible Nelson Lakes or bungee jumping in Queenstown. I will hope every night for the courage to take the plunge when the time comes…
Until then I’ll continue to partake in wonderful events that aren’t so life threatening like our buddy, Tom’s from s/v Zen, birthday the other day. Being the dessert lover that he is, I whipped up a cake for him and his lovely wife, Monique, took a small group of us out to lunch to celebrate in Paihia. The day was full of good food, great laughs, awesome music, and incredible company. I am going to miss these people that I’ve formed these bonds with out here so much when this is all said and done. There isn’t a single wave that would have been the same without them, or Drew, by my side.
