The way she moved

We're in.  We sailed through the Whangarei heads on the afternoon of Friday, November 6, and by early evening, Enki II and her crew were cleared to enter New Zealand.  That felt good.

On approach to Whangarei (and below)

We've slept, we've cleaned, we've re-stocked, we've re-connected. The reality of Enki's home-coming is soaking through our pores. This is not the same as other landfalls we've made. Some people may argue that we've still got the Tasman to cross before we get home, and technically they're right. The boat is registered in Sydney, and that's the city we call home.  Our children live there. But I'm a Kiwi by birth, and as far as my mother is concerned, we're home! She drove up from Orewa, bringing us a rack of lamb and homegrown broad beans.  Yum.

We've hoisted the NZ flag on our starboard spreader, and the burgee of our yacht club, the RNZYS, on our port spreader. When we sail past Rangitoto into Auckland city, tuck Enki into a berth at Westhaven marina and show up at the squadron bar, we'll feel like we've arrived, I reckon. Auckland is a long way from Turkey, that's for sure.  

The sun also sets at sea - en route to NZ from Minerva

The six-day leg from Minerva reef could have been much worse. Some of the boats which left on the same day as we did got caught in a low which developed very quickly off New Zealand's East Cape after our departure.  It wasn't entirely unforeseen, but the chances of it coming to anything were considered slight by the weather forecasters. They were wrong, but nobody holds that against them. Predicting the weather on this passage has become a black art of late. 

Radio sched for the West Pacific Magellan net

In brief, we held to the rhumb line as far as possible. That wasn't an obvious thing to do - the conventional wisdom on this route is that you make your 'westing' and then, at about the longitude of North Cape, you hang a left and head down to New Zealand. That's certainly a good way of dealing with the prevailing southwesterlies. But sticking to the rhumb line in these volatile conditions  ("the forecast changes faster than I can breathe", I heard the skipper of one boat say on the radio) worked out pretty well for us.

The buck stops HERE

We encountered a front at 32 deg S on our 4th day out, with strong NW winds and big sloppy seas.  Alex drove the ship through that. He got wet, and cold, but the front blew through in about three hours, after which the wind (predictably) backed southwest and then south, which wasn't ideal. The seas dropped off quickly and we sailed on, hoping against hope that the wind would keep backing to the south-east. A day later it did, and those lovely south-easterlies took us all the way into Whangarei under blue skies. 

What a thrill to see first the Poor Knights, then the Hen and Chicken Islands and finally, that bold headland which says, 'you are here. Whangarei harbour this way, please'.  I've seen Bream Head many times but it's never moved me as it did then. 

 Bream Head

The Minerva reef chapter of our voyage was superseded by the urgency and intensity of the ocean passage, but we spent 7 days there - longer than we spent at sea - so it's worth re-capping in pictures.  

Looking for the pass into N. Minerva reef

We anchor a respectable distance from State of Mind

Walkie talkie radio headsets aka marriage savers .... as good as their word 

Low tide at Minerva (and below)

Reef combing - Brenda and Diana

The brave and foolhardy spear fish on the ocean side of the reef

Parrot fish for dinner?

The crew of Penn Station on the reef

We've looked at clouds from all sides now - the squalls circulate 

More reef life (and below)

Clams come in all colours

Rod and Brenda with State of Mind in the background 

When we arrived in N. Minerva, there was just State of Mind (sailed by Rod and Brenda) anchored. Penn Station (with Wiki, and Nikki, and a web-footed diver called Red on board) came in soon after us, and for a few days, there were just the three of us.  But by the end of the week, 10 yachts were in N. Minerva, champing at the bit to be on their way.

La Belle Epoque is a true voyaging vessel

That sarong - given to me in Tahiti when I was 16, still good for tropical wear. 

She who tires of sunsets, tires of life....(adapted from S. Johnson)

The weather conference on Enki on the final morning was something to behold. Everyone brought their ideas about the gribs. Some boats were taking instruction from MetBob (Bob McDavitt), most were tuning into Gulf Harbour radio for David's weather discussion. But in the end, every skipper has to make his/her own call.

Our daily life - the radio scheds

Boys, focus on weather  -  if you can (and below)

Several other boats chose to leave Minerva on the same afternoon we did,  most of them bound for Opua. We tied up at Marsden Cove marina's quarantine dock about 12 hours after the speedy State of Mind.  Some boats slower than us got caught out badly by the low and had to sail west. They didn't expect to make landfall until Sunday. We felt most keenly for Jan, a single-hander sailing Phoebe,  a yellow slip of a yacht (27 feet). We very quickly lost contact with him because he has no SSB radio and cannot check into either radio nets.  Nor can he download weather gribs.  Jan has sailed his boat from Germany via Patagonia. We shouldn't be worried about him, but you can't help it - he's young enough to be our son.

Phoebe weighs 2 tons vs Enki's 20 tons

Some of the cruisers coming into New Zealand now will stay around for the summer, and we may cross paths with them in January and February. Some are selling their boats, others are putting their boats into marinas or onto the hard and going back to the US or Europe to see their families. Then next May, there will be another migration out of New Zealand back to the tropics.  That's the pattern known as the cruising season.

Alex on deck duty - every boat needs a strongman

We don't know what Enki's next chapter will be, but it seems reasonable for now to assume that this is where we part company from the fleet. We'll keep in touch with some, lose touch with most, but we won't ever forget how interesting this group of people are. From the true adventurers (we count among those Mike and Alisa on Galactic, but there are others we passed along the way including La Belle Epoque, anchored next to us at N. Minerva) to the merely adventurous like ourselves, the crew of every cruising boat has a story.

Enki II at rest at Marsden Cove Marina

We'll keep feeding you tasty snippets of nautical-flavoured news for as long as this beautiful boat is part of our life.  

30 degrees S

There was a game the kids used to play when we were at the beach called 44 Home. They played after dinner, under cover of darkness and using a torch. The kids scattered into the darkness, leaving one of them at Home as the Seeker. Home was a spot in the middle of an open space. When the Seeker began his or her countdown (44 to zero) the aim of the game was to get Home without being caught in the beam of the Seeker's torch before he/she called zero. There was always a last mad dash across a long stretch of grass or sand to Home. The best way to get Home safely was to distract the Seeker's attention, to sneak in while his/her back was turned.

I've been remembering that game as we and other yachts scamper across the many exposed ocean miles which separate the tropics from New Zealand. We hid out at North Minerva reef for a week before we made our run. We are fair game for the weather systems which brew and boil and make trouble in these latitudes in the spring. We're the kids trying to make it Home without being spotted.

So far so good. I'm touching wood. At the beginning of our 4th day out from Minerva, we're sailing under clear skies across an ocean showing its kindest face. We're in the centre of a high. We expected to have to motor through it today, but a delicate breeze pushed us along at about 6 knots over a seal-skinned surface. Only just fast enough. In other times, that speed would do us nicely, but we can hear the countdown. Weather forecasts are changing daily, and as things stand, if we're lucky we will make it Home before things turn unpleasant. In between now and then, we can expect very fresh wind from the northwest, and then from the southwest, and then probably from the south-east, or maybe the south-southeast. Simple, really.

This is not tradewind sailing where the wind blows from the same direction for days on end. This is what New Zealanders and Australians call normal sailing. You pay attention. You watch the horizon. And you dress appropriately. None of this half-dressed nonsense of the tropics. Yesterday, for the first time in 10 months, I spent the whole day covered from top to bottom, and wearing shoes and socks. Ye gads. As I write, cloud is building behind us, in the northwest. Noted. Today has been a bonus, but the weather forecast on Gulf Harbour Radio tells of a surprise low building quickly off East Cape, and squashing itself against the Tasman high to our west. We'll have dropped down below 30 degrees S by tonight. Nowhere to hide, just cross our fingers that we don't get caught and run like the blazes for Home.

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Across the dateline

The tedium of those days without wind is already receding. All it takes is one night of uninterrupted sleep in a calm anchorage for the essential tones of a long passage to begin to gel. It is not so much the weak trade winds which are taking up most space in my memory of those nine days now but the emptiness of the Pacific ocean.

Between 151W and 175W,  and between the latitudes of 15S and 18S , there was nothing which blemished the ocean’s clean skin except for the wind. We saw no large mammals or schools of fish.  We saw very few sea birds. We saw no great patches of weed, or those notorious accumulations of plastics.  We saw no container ships or fishing boats.

It wasn’t until we were within about 30 nautical miles of Vava’u that a vessel showed up on our AIS screen.  It was the super-yacht M5, making 8.2 knots under power, in 22 knots of breeze. She took a long time to catch us. We were making 7.5 knots under sail.

 

M5 in Neiafu harbour, Vava'u island, Tonga

There was one unwelcome object which floated past us a couple of hours after sunrise one morning – fortunately at a distance of about 20 m off our lee side.  Alex spotted it in the  2.5 m swell.  It was 4 m square of lashed-together timbers, a traditional raft. We gave thanks that we had not collided with it at night. 

The nights were very dark, what moonlight there was at the beginning of the passage too quickly waning into irrelevance.  But on cloudless nights, the light from the milky universe was brighter than I have ever known.  And the wind was warm.  Those were the dreamy nights which our friends on Galactic, who are wintering over in Patagonia, asked us to enjoy for their sake as well as ours. We did both. 

That's Tonga

Sailing on a flat sea in the lee of Vava'u

The squat islands of Vava'u came as a surprise

 On our first full day in Tonga, we are cleaning ourselves, our laundry and the boat.  And we have been waiting for news of our friend Marce. She is very much on our mind.

When we slipped our mooring 10 days ago, Marce was standing on the lower steps of Escape Velocity’s starboard hull, waving goodbye and blowing kisses. “See you in Tonga,” we shouted, and we believed we would. They’d be starting a bit behind the crowd if they left in a couple of weeks, but they had time up their sleeves. They could still get to New Zealand before the (insurance-driven) beginning of cyclone season.

What was standing in their way was uncertainty about what was going on with Marce.  Two weeks earlier she’d been floored by intense sciatic pain which didn’t go away.  She’s rebound, and then she’d regress again.

Alex helped as he was able.  Then Jack organized for a local doctor to come to the boat.  

We agreed we wanted to see her on the mend before we departed for Tonga. 

On Friday, 4 September, we decided we could go. Marce had been moving about on the boat for a couple of days. That morning she sat in the EV cockpit with us, her back straight and her legs crossed, chatting, laughing, keeping Jack busy, as she does. Marce is a “hard-headed woman”, to quote Cat Stevens.  She’s doesn’t lie down easily, but this pain had her pinned to the bed for day after day. When we saw the light back in her eyes, we felt ok about leaving her.

Jack and Marce - on Tahiti, on a happier occasion

But we jumped the gun (thankfully, their good friends, Mark and Sue on Macushla, arrived in Bora Bora soon after our departure).  She regressed while we were at sea. The next step for her was to go to Tahiti and “get it sorted”, she wrote. Easier said than done when you’re bed-bound on a boat.

While I was writing this, word came that they’d just docked in Papeete. They’d motored for 33 hours, because their sail-handling needs two hands on deck. Jack kept watch the entire time. It was undoubtedly a tough overnight passage for both of them.

They would head for the hospital after they’d rested a couple of hours, she wrote. “All is well. Help is on the way.”

Now that’s heroic.

PS We've crossed the dateline - Ikale lager, made in the Kingdom of Tonga, claims to be "the first beer in the world everyday". We'll drink to that - and to finally bringing Enki onto the same day of the week as our family in Australia and New Zealand.