Position: 26 degrees, 11 minutes south; 172 degrees, 48 minutes east 108 miles in last 24 hours
Our daily distance doesn’t show it (we measure it from 3PM to 3PM), but today was a smoking fast day. Starting around sunrise, we unfurled the jib, eased off about 15 degrees and Charisma took off like a shot. We’ve been doing 8-9 knots all day long.
That’s the good news. The not as good news? We have been making somewhat more west than I’d like to see. The wind is from the SSE so we have no choice, but it puts us fairly far out west when we come to the point where we need to turn in to New Zealand. Hopefully, we hit the weather window right and get to our turn point at the same time as a low comes over the North Island on Tuesday. We’re crossing fingers and toes because if we hit this right, we’ll have a north wind driving us downwind the last 300 miles into Opua.
So cross fingers with us and watch. The next two days will tell the story. There’s a “slot” that we hope to hit that is at about 30 degrees south latitude and it goes from about 169 to 173 degrees east longitude (240 miles wide). There’s a high that’s passing over just below this spot and the top of a low filling in behind it. If we hit this spot to the northwest of New Zealand, we then turn about 60 degrees to port and start a downwind slide with pretty good winds in the 20 knot range, but coming from behind us so not near as difficult as the headwinds we’ve been encountering all the way thus far.
Other than that the last 24 hours has included the above mentioned smoking ride as well as a good six hours where we just sat with very little wind. There was just enough, maybe 3-4 knots to maintain steerage and 1-3 knots boatspeed. We probably only covered 6 miles in that 6 hours. We also dodged a bullet. Last night at about sunset we saw a squall line up ahead. The radar confirmed there were squalls (i.e. heavy rain) inside the line and it was about 12 miles away. Miraculously, we were positioned just west enough that we actually sailed around the west end of the line of squalls. Once past, we had glorious stars most of the night. Sometimes we get lucky
Stay tuned for the race to the finish.
Nice to hear that Charisma got the bit in her teeth and was smokin’ the track, er sea.
So when did you become a highly professional weather man? The way you blog about it sounds like you could do the Channel 2 weather broadcast with ease. And with special insight for sailors.
Sounds like your tat mojo is also still working its magic. I’m thinking that getting them may have been one of your smartest moves of your sailing adventure. Going with the authentic option pleased the sailing gods.
So even in the modern world you can get stuck in the doldrums? Who knew.
Good luck sneaking into the favorable weather slot. Probably won’t be any harder than a carrier landing at night. LOL
Looks to me like you covered about 130 NM since the last report. BTW, there was a 6.5 earthquake 100 miles east of Tonga this morning, about 900 NM from your position. You probably didn’t feel a thing.
Lookslike your timing is good. Don’t be in a big hurry to get south. A day later is better than a day earlier based on most current grib. Waiting for your Opua landfall. See you then.
John