Passage to New Zealand

Our departure on Monday the 10th of November 2003 was smooth and enjoyable. Good winds exiting Tonga gave us a great head start and we raced away from the Kingdom clocking 200 plus miles per day for the first four days!

We had pleasant weather, even though we felt the chill setting in rather rapidly the further south we moved! Watches were quiet and we saw just 2 vessels the entire crossing. One container ship and one 50 foot sailing vessel - hove to! In other words anchored at sea waiting for better winds to arrive. We zoomed past them at around 7 knots to their amazement!

Underway we saw dolpphins and some birds heading south and really enjoyed the beauty of being on the sea in the middle of the Pacific. Firebird, once again, performed superbly and kept us all high and dry for the duration.

Our last 36 hours was a mixture of pitching, rolling and yawing along with the occasional lurch! Harnesses and foul weather gear were the order of the day, and night!, and as such we undertook the task of finishing our crossing as soon as possible within a certain comfort level as well. We arrived in The Bay of Islands on Saturday the 15th November 2003 around 23H00 and gladly dropped the hook and slept the sleep of the dead.

We cleared customs and immigration on Sunday and along with about 80 pounds of our fresh produce, meat, honey and other food varieties the officials left our humble home after being satisfied that we were satisfactory individuals. New Zealand has strict quarantine laws and this is the reason for us loosing a lot of food stuffs on arrival. Of course we anticipated this so we had dinner ashore for the first time which was an absolutely blissful event!