news are very welcome to us. nordlys (at) mailasail.com

 

After five days in Tongatapu, most of which were spent anchored under a delightful motu some two miles across from the port of Nukualofa, the met men began to tell us that the time had come for a dash south.  Thus the morning of the 16th October found Stuart Ingram from Troubadour and myself traipsing round the immigration office in town, the port office two miles nearer the port and another mile away the customs office.  In each we were met by great politeness and incredible delays.  Patience persevered and after three hours of walking and hanging around we were free to leave.  At 1330 hrs we upped anchor and deflating the dinghy for the first time since Trinidad we lashed it flat to the foredeck.  Running north west, the wrong direction we sailed off and out via the western entrance.  No marks and lots of coral but by now this did not cause our heartbeats to increase.  Once outside the GPS told us that the distance to the entrance of the Bay  of Islands, New Zealand, was 1025nm.  The wind allowed us to sail the course of 195 degrees magnetic but only if we were sheeted in very tight.  I gave her another ten degrees and set off on 205 with one reef and twenty knots across the deck.  All went well, if roughly, for the next thirty six hours.  Sometimes we had two reefs and some rolls in the genoa as the wind tended to nearer thirty knots but then the weather god was kind and the wind backed twenty degrees to give us a close fetch and allow the sheets to be slightly eased.  Another day and feeling very happy at the progress I tuned in to Russell Radio to hear the latest weather information.  'Get south fast' we were told 'there is a tropical low  forming west of Tonga and about to scream in your direction giving winds of forty knots from the south east'!  This caused some consternation on the evening radio chat amongst the yachts in our part of the ocean.  Luckily we had by this time left the others some way behind us and were able to theoretically keep ahead of said 'bomb'.  On this occasion we would all have been better off without radios as in the event the low pressure fizzled out some two hundred miles north of New Zealand and our little group of  five yachts all got in without trouble.  We have heard that a yacht behind us suffered a seriously hard time and a lot of damage to her sails.  In our case we tied up to the quarantine dock having covered  1040 miles in six hours short of six days at an average of over seven knots.  Nordlys thrives with the wind forward of the beam even if her crew do not relish the movement involved.

 

The girls had managed our stores very well and so we lost only a few things to the Ministry of Agriculture man. New Zealand is very strict on food imports and every tin was examined to see where it had originated from.  A whole bottle of Grenada honey was our worst loss.  Opua has proved to be a delightful spot.  The marina hums with interesting people and boats.  Both local and like ourselves foreign long distance sailors.

Social life is hectic to say the least and we are really enjoying all the things that living in the 'first world' provides.  The New Zealand people are very friendly and welcoming and we are looking forward to spending time in this country.  Probably  we will do two seasons here with a trip north to Tonga, Samoa and Fiji next southern winter.  In the next few days we will sail the final sixty miles to Whangarei and put Nordlys to bed for two months.  Christabel will leave us there and return to the UK.  She has tolerated our quirks for some 8,500 miles and has always come up smiling whatever we or the weather threw at her.  We will not be parted from her company for long as we ourselves are planning to fly north on the 24th November.  I am however getting ahead of myself and will write a final dispatch from Whangarei before we fly home.

Happy times dear readers and for the last time from

David, Annette and Christabel