After deciding to delay departure again last week we made use of the time by having Serenity lifted out in the yard attached to the marina to get rid of the barnacles on the prop and touch up the antifouling.  We were out for 3 days, with temperatures down to 4 degrees making painting impossible until 10am.  It might make a bit of difference to our speed.

Today the wind has been bitterly cold: according to Metbob (the local weather guru) ‘ice-chilled air is expected to be strongly shovelled northwards onto eastern NZ’, but he also says that departure for the tropics is good this week, and we expect to leave tomorrow.

The passage to New Caledonia is just under 900 miles and will take 6-8 days.  We will blog when we can (but don’t expect it to be every day) and put positions on the map on our blog home page.  There is also a tracker associated with our satellite comms system which can be seen at:  https://forecast.PredictWind.com/tracking/display/SerenityofSwanwick  this gets updated once or twice a day when we go online for a weather forecast.