North to Tonga

After much anticipation to depart from Opua, including a car trip to Cape Reinga on the Northern tip of New Zealand, we finally managed to persuade the weather to let us go. We had waited a number of days in Opua for a good weather window and when it arrived we did not take a second glance. We bolted from Opua like the proverbial horse from the stable!

We had received weather routing from various sources and although the depiction was not entirely favourable we decided it would be our best bet to start the passage with what we had in hand as opposed to waiting out another system!

On leaving Opua we encountered our first problem which we had worked on just 2 days prior to departure, and thought we had corrected. It was the wind instrument. She did not want to work as we had hoped. Needless to say after 2 or 3 circles in the mouth of the entrance to Opua we achieved the goal of re-aligning our wind indicator.

Dave and Tessa, on there first ocean passage ever, boh had a little uneasiness to start but made good as the days wore on. We all stood watch and the extra hands were most appreciated. We cleared land fairly rapidly and soon assumed the rolling habits of any sea going unit! One or two habits, lost in the months of landlubbing, soon returned to the old hands! and all was well. We sailed for most of the time with some help from our 'iron spinnaker' on occasion.

Below is a log of our passage from Opua, Bay of Islands to Tongatapu, Tonga. A run of 1035nm in 128 hours. We had a combination of sailing in force 5-7 winds, motor sailing in force 2-4 and motoring in calm conditions. All in all our average SOG was 8.09 knots.

Only one other solo sailor seen and spoken to underway otherwise pretty quite!

Date Time Wind DIR Force BAR Wave DIR Height Position
5/5 1720 350 4 1016 320 3ft S34 06', E174 42'

6/5 1000 260 1 1018 290 5ft S31 50', E175 49'
6/5 2359 - - 1017 280 7ft S30 12', E176 56'

7/5 1000 050 4 1018 060 9ft S29 02', E177 59'

8/5 1054 110 6 1016 090 4ft S26 22', W179 30'

9/5 1000 110 6 1016 110 6ft S24 32', W178 02'
9/5 2216 160 6 1013 140 6ft S23 19', W176 54'

10/5 1000 135 4 1012 150 3ft S22 00', W175 53'
10/5 1800 120 2 1012 130 2ft S21 03', W175 15'

Just so you know the water temperature rose from 61 deg F in Opua to 78 deg F in Tonga. A vast improvement.

Well one other exciting event was when we were motor sailing along and suddenly the old girl (detroit deisel) just up and died! After investigating Jim and Dylan set out to deal with what they had uncovered. It seems the supply of deisel we had was not making its merry way to the engine and so the result was a starved deisel engine. We jury rigged a supply from the fuel tank inlets and viola, we were on our way again.

Well alls well that ends well.