Friday 22 sep Magnus and Jocke arrived very early and had breakfast with us at the hotel. The guys went over to the marina to be ready to get Saphir in to the water. I stayed and enjoyed the pool for some hours before I check out and head back to the marina.
It took some extra hours before it was our time to get Saphir in.We are on Fiji time and we are getting use to it. This time they had enough diesel so we could fill up the tank and not only get a few litres as last time. It had been sunny the whole morning but as soon as Saphir was in the water and we were filling up diesel it started to rain. Luckily it is not cold when it rains.
We have 2 days to prepare the boat before we start our sailing to New Zealand. There are some maintenance to be done like filling grease in to the rudder, food shopping, preparing some dinners, baking, washing and in between some naps…
In the evenings we went out for dinner both at the marina and at the resort . Our last night in Fiji we had dinner at the resort and we got our own farewell song singed for us.
We check out from the Marina and are ready to leave. First we get a quick visit from Andrew from Voager. He had just arrived back and laying on anchor outside the marina. Before we leave we get the staff from the marina coming and singing for us. I love this tradition .
We wave goodbye to Vuda Marina and to our friend boats Far,Voager and Ester of Sweden anchoring outside the Marina. Thank you for the lovely picture on Saphir Ester.
One of the first thing we need to do when we hoist the sail is fix it with some silver tape so the tear won’t get worse. Now we have approximately 1100nm ahead of us if we can sail shortest way but we will need to sail around a bad weather so it will be a bit longer.
The first days we have good weather and nice wind . We work first on four hour shift then after two days we change to three hours in the night and then four hours during daytime. This gave us an easy rotating schedule to follow. When the weather is okay I can continue knitting and cooking is okay also
30 sep I had the morning watch from 05.00-08.00. Still the iron jenua that are working. The sun tried to shine through the clouds. At 14 hour we changed our course 45 degrees to avoid heavy winds and waves. This means also even if we still is going south which is good we are going slowly west and not east . We are in other words going further away from our goal……. During daytime we have had to go even more west. NZ is south east from our point. When it was the worst we was sailing 90 degrees from our destination and see the NM left to our destination ticking up and not down….When I went to bed we had 625NM left.
Next morning we had 603NM left. Tjoho we have been able to change course. The waves are still high and coming obliquely from the front.! The comfort in the boat is not the best. We do not fish but still we get some small ones during nighttime .
300 Nm left to our destination. The sun is shining we have nice wind in the sails. Doing 6-7 knots and the waves keeps us on our toes. Part of the breakfast omelette went on the floor when a wave rocked the boat extra… the coffee spills over and so on. The boat is leaning in around 15-20 degrees angle so we move around in the boat leaning and always one hand holding on to the boat. Sleeping is also a challenge .
We are getting closer and the weather is getting better so we enjoy the calmer sea. Although the water temperature is going down. We started in Fiji with 29 degrees and ended with 15 degrees. I will not jump in the water in New Zealand.
Even if we have reach New Zealand’s tip there is a bit left to get to Whangarei. When the instruments shows that it is only 100NM left you know that the next night we will be sleeping in a harbour and the boat will not rock at all. A full night sleep is one of the first things that we all are looking forward to. Until then we enjoy the scenery on our way down the coast and getting in to the marina.
This is a very protective marina with houses around and some of them have their own privet dock in front of the house. We arrived on the 5 oct 14.30 local time. Unfortunately the immigration could not come until next day but bio security came and took care of our garbage and cleared the boat. Now we have to wait until next morning to be able to go ashore. Luckily we have everything we need on the boat although it will be very nice to walk on land again after 10 days on the sea.
The next morning the custom arrives and we can hoist the New Zealand flag and move the boat the the dock where she will be staying while we take a 10 days tour with our crew and their wife’s Helena and Julia that arrived in the morning.
Hugs Eva
Sailing with Saphir 