Day 1 to Opua

25:02.972 S 16:44.920 E Sunday morning we took on 457 litres of diesel, turned the clocks forward one hour, and headed out into SE5/6 on the nose. As we left the harbour the grey descended with a rain squall. Two hours later we were able to sail through a pass on the South Western side. The wind actually went East and for a hour and a half we were able to more or less make course. Then a squall came through and stole the East Wind leaving only the Southeast wind pushing us Southwestward. The generator situation is not ideal. The AC generator relies on a box of
capacitors to excite the alternator and charge the batteries. Three years ago
they failed and the genny wouldn’t charge.
We think the same thing has happened again and were unable to locate the
correct ones in The wind has now gone ESE which means we can make a course just East of South. The wind will probably die away in the next 36 hours and we’ll then be motoring. The wind went back to SE which is not great for us. In
our first 24 ours we logged 178 miles but we also acquired a 98 mile cross track
error which puts us substantially West of our direct track. We still have 758 miles to go but in
effect we are only 142 miles closer to Opua from
For the moment the squalls have passed and the barometer is rising. Its reassuring to see some Sun again as we thought it might be lost forever. __________ Information from ESET NOD32 Antivirus, version of virus signature database 4563 (20091101) __________ The message was checked by ESET NOD32 Antivirus. http://www.eset.com |