Well it’s been a bit of a mixed bag for the first 24 hours.
It wasn’t long before the clouds came over and we had a spit of
rain. Not much wind to start with but then it gradually built up over the
afternoon to around 25 knots. Close reached on port tack with a reef in
both main and genoa doing around 9 – 9.5 knots. The sea got a bit
boisterous for a while but then as we went round north cape late evening it
calmed down and the wind dropped. At around midnight we had nothing so
the engine went on for a couple of hours. There was a cruise ship in Opua
when we left which we picked up on the AIS as he set sail (also for Sydney) – we took
around 11 hours to reach north cape – he took about 4! Quite a few
fishing vessels around the north cape too but not a problem – do like
this new AIS (our old one was just a receiver and was linked to the computer
– this one is stand alone and is also a transmitter). As dawn broke
we were sailing close to the Three
King Islands
about 40 miles north-west of north cape. Currently there’s about a
2 metre swell and around 10 knots of wind – sailing close hauled on port
tack but quite slowly trying to put as much westing in as possible (but still
having to go north of our course). According to the grib files there
should be a front coming through later today – followed by more southerly
winds so we want to get through that as quickly as we can – it’s
not altogether clear exactly what it’s going to do or where it’s
going so we’ll just have to ‘play it by ear’ and try to make
the best of it.
24 hour distance: 153 Miles