2nd half NZ to Aus - 8th June
Astra
Jeremy & Sally Paul
Fri 12 Jun 2009 18:48
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Up to the Half way mark on the trip from NZ to
Australia we had a great sail, with no great problems.
However the second half of the trip was not so
easy!
We have had a rough and ready ride over the past
few days. But nothing we couldn't handle.
The first storm came across us in the middle of the
night, when Sally was rather rudely awakened by the alarm going off (oops dozing
on watch), only to find this rather ominous looking black cloud coming towards
them. Jeremy was dulely summoned to handle the 35 knots of wind and driving
rain. The wind then dropped to nothing after rotating 180 degrees. Most
disconcerting. This carried on for the next 8 hours.
The next day was a beautiful calm sail, which
continued for 2 days. Then another weather front came along, and this time Astra
was slightly more prepared, as Jeremy had remembered that the regular Grib
(weather files) were not good at forecasting the local weather fronts with rain
and squalls, so was using a different system to spot them coming.
After that it was a bit of a close haul, but but we
arrived safely after 8days 1.5 hours at sea.
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