The Journey South

NORDLYS
David and Annette Ridout
Wed 27 Oct 2004 07:16
Our Voyage South to New Zealand
 
Opua New Zealand.
27th October 2004
 
 
Well it is really best if I do not dwell on this passage, little of it was pleasant.  We left Port Vila in grey warm weather with a promised forecast of twenty knots out of the ESE.  As we cleared the protection of the land the reality was more like twenty five knots from the SE.  Only  a little difference in forecasters terms but a whole different world as far as we were concerned.  We had cast off at 0900hrs on the 15th October and there were no entries in the log book until 2120hrs the same day.  This said Wind down to 20-25 true after a spell of 35, stars out for the first time.  The reason for this lack of writing was that both Annette and I were feeling rather under the weather as Nordlys, sheets hard in, threw herself south by west into a very lumpy sea.  This continued until dawn after our second night at sea when with Walpole Island just to the East of us the wind eased and we actually reduced to one reef and then by 0700 we were motoring.  At this stage we had been forced well to the west of our desired track, Walpole Island being the southernmost and an uninhabited New Caledonian Island.
 
The motoring did not last long but the rising wind was exactly from the direction we wanted to go, it had also become and continued to be amazingly cold.  On we plugged in a direction that was west of south for a lot of the time.  Our desired course was just south of South East.  I will not go on.  Suffice to say that for the next four days we banged away with the wind rarely ever allowing us to lay the course and our progress also being slowed by a knot and a half of current from the SSE. This slowed our ground speed and pushed us further west at the same time.  One evening we were so fed up and tired with the motion combined with the lack of either progress or a likely change in the wind that we hove too for four hours and slept while Nordlys looked after the show herself, quietly (a relative term) bobbing along at one knot.  The reality was that on Monday we knew that there would be little change until at least Thursday and probably Friday.  When one is going hard to windward this is not always easy news to take philosophically.  At least not for softies like ourselves.  Neither of us pretend to be out of the SBS type mould.  Reality won and on Thursday evening things got better, the wind went East and down to a pleasant fifteen knots.  We could point to our destination which by now had slipped from a bearing of 152 degrees to 124 degrees.  The next thirty hours were a pleasure and the previous struggle began to recede into the back of our memories.  Saturday morning, exactly eight days to the hour after leaving we tied up to the customs dock in Opua.  We had logged 1257nm to achieve 1090.  One plus point was that we were never threatened with a severe gale nor did the we ever have rain or after the first two days any real amount of cloud.
 
I must at this stage say a bit about 'Noodles'.  She had taken all this in her stride and at one stage she went for over thirty hours with the helm lashed.  She does in fact sail faster for some reason with the helm thus, rather than using the monitor wind vane.  This despite the wind strength shuttling between 20 and 28 knots true and changing in direction by some 20 degrees.  We had few leaks and those we had were due to worn rubber around hatches.  There were few squeaks and groans from the woodwork down below and I have yet to see so much as a crack in the paint around any bulkhead to hull join.  This after a week of going at 6 to seven knots to windward into foul seas.  I reiterate my view that when it comes to producing boats with good all-round sailing characteristics Olin Stephens and Nautor are in a class of their own.  The grand old man of design is of course still alive, in his nineties now.  As she grows gracefully older, Nordlys is now over twenty four years young, Nautor's build quality becomes very apparent.  We thus forgive her the small rather antisocial cockpit and her other non cruising design points.
 
New Zealand  is living up to its memories of last year and within a few hours of clearing the formalities we were whisked away by kind friends to spend a few days resting in their 'bach' or holiday home on a beach a few miles east of here.  Now back on board we are immersed in tasks both boat and admin in origin.  In a few days we will sail down to Auckland where we have things to do before picking up Annalise Hamilton who is coming with us for a short cruise to the Coromandel Peninsular and hopefully out to Great Barrier Island.  Then about mid December we will head back to the Bay of Islands and prepare for the arrival of Nick, Jenny and grandson George on the 24th December.  Christmas to New Year is planned off the aforementioned 'bach'.
 
On the assumption that most of our readers are in the Northern Hemisphere we wish you all a happy and hopefully not too severe winter.  We will enjoy the lengthening days and the New Zealand summer.  Not to mention the lovely fresh green colour of the countryside.  Okay I really will stop now.
 
As always, happy times,
David and Annette