Ocean Ready?
Bamboozle
Jamie and Lucy Telfer
Wed 16 May 2012 08:07
Our
two months in Europe have flown by and we are now back on Bamboozle in Gulf
Harbour just north of Auckland. It has been pretty hectic since we arrived
back on board making sure everything is working and ready for the open ocean and
of course shopping, shopping, shopping. There are not many supermarkets
where we are heading so we are packing a full 6 months worth of staples into the lockers and bilges. In fact I think Lucy may have single handedly managed to keep NZ out of recession this month. Pre passage preparations are split in quite a pink job/blue job way and we revert to sexual stereotype with Lucy taking charge of all the provisioning and stowage whilst I spend most of my time checking out all the mechanical, sailing and safety aspects of the boat. It is probably lucky that Lucy is responsible for what comes on board in the way of foodstuffs as if I were driving the supermarket trolley we would probably end up getting scurvy having departed New Zealand with a boat full of pies and crisps. The good news is we are now ready for the off and it looks as though we have a good weather window opening up for our trip up to the islands. Until last week we had planned to head straight towards Savusavu in Fiji but one of the beauties of cruising life is the ability to change your mind, often at the very last minute......... so we are now planning to try to head first to the tiny Island state of Niue, a few hundred miles to the east of Tonga. Down here in NZ it is late autumn and the first winter storms are starting to roll through and the last couple of days even up here towards the top of the North Island have been cold, wet and very windy. The plan is to clear customs down in Auckland tomorrow and then head out using the strong west winds on the back of the low to sling us rapidly out in the right direction and hopefully to give us a quick enough start to complete the 1350 nm before the back of the next big high brings us nasty headwinds for the end of out trip. I spend hours each day poring over the weather charts and we have been in touch again with a well known local forecaster, Bob McDavitt, who has safely guided us on all our previous trips up and down from NZ and at this stage things look pretty good although we may be in for a robust first 24 hours.....
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