Position: 35 degrees, 12 minutes south 175 degrees, 00 minutes east

We left Marsden today. Destination Fiji.

A quiet morning at Marsden, NZ

Leaving Marsden. Little did we know what weather was awaiting...

It was a lovely day. Sunshine, calm sea. Perfect day to leave and get used to navigating large distances of water toward tropical islands again. We checked in with the shortwave net (PacSeaNet) so they know where we are and where we’re going. We’ll continue to check in once per day at 1530 local time to track our progress with them. Then we had a Charisma at “cocktail time” to celebrate our departure as well as our new crewmate “Orcinius Lisa” as we got ready for the evening. Dinner, which I cooked last night was heated on the stove and we enjoyed an easy bowl of ham, beans and potatoes with fresh bread we bought from the local restaurant just before leaving.

Once everything was settling in for a seemingly nice evening-zzzzzappp! Lightning. Damn. That’s no bueno. On goes the radar to check for a return. Nothing. Nada. We can’t see it. Must still be too far away. Well, that’s good.

And so it goes on our first night out. We know we’re going to hit some unsettled weather. It’s part of leaving NZ in the winter. But we thought it would wait until at least tomorrow. Oh well. We’ll see how the night goes and hope for the best. If we can paint it on the radar maybe we can steer around it.

Check back tomorrow to see how the night went. I for one would be fine hearing-“No worries mate, it was a nice night!”