Position: 32 degrees, 00 minutes south; 173 degrees, 33 minutes east

There are six or seven other boats out here with us doing the Opua Dance right now. What’s that? Well, you move to the left, then you move to the right and try to match the moves of our capricious partner, the wind. in other words, we’re all sailing back and forth trying to be the first boat to get to the westerly winds that are forecast so we can sail into Opua. Right now we’re all scattered over about a 200 mile stretch. Who’s going to find the wind first. We tacked this morning from our position well to the northeast. Opua is now bearing 150 degrees, but the dance has us going 120 degrees. In other words, we’re going more west than we want to. Some boats are heading 230 degrees on the other tack, and others who got blown further east by the storm are just trying to get back somewhere near the original course to NZ. It’s a dance right now because the present wind is coming right from Opua which is the port we’re all trying to get to in order to clear into the country. In our case, I believe we tacked at about the right place. The wind has to only shift 30 degrees for us to be going straight in. Cross fingers. If we can the shift sometime tonight we can be in by Monday.

In the mean time we wait. Fortunately the wait is not unpleasant. Now that we’re two days removed from the storm we have had a glorious sailing day. 6 foot long period swells, 10-12 knot winds and clear blue skies. If we weren’t so anxious to get in after being out for 9 days now, we’d really be loving it. Actually we are loving it. Tonight promises a stunning display of bright stars in a clear night sky. So it’s not all bad our here doing the dance, waiting for our partner to make her next move so we can make ours and together dance into New Zealand, some 9000 miles from where we’ve come these last 12 months. It’s a dance sailors have been doing for centuries, so we’re in good company.