18:58S 169:54W

 

The blissful first few days of our passage from Suwarrow to Nuie gave way to uncomfortable, wet and squally conditions yesterday.  It was expected – we had to sail through the convergence zone and it delivered everything we expected in the way of strong winds (20-28), lots of rain and 2-3m swells.  Up until yesterday it had been reasonably comfortable but late afternoon the rain came, we hit a confused swell and it made doing anything pretty difficult.   We sat below and tried to stimulate brains with a game of Scrabble – holding on at the same time.   David came up with ‘vacation’ scoring the 50 point bonus for a seven letter word and annoying me because this particular passage has been anything but a vacation.

 

We read a lot on passage and I’m chewing my way quickly through a number of books including Escape to the Pole - Kevin Biggar’s entertaining account of his and Jamie Fitzgerald’s bold trek to the South Pole.  “They’re quite mad – why on earth would they want to do that?”  I asked David.  He looked blankly and then pointed out that some people would probably think we are quite mad out here in the Pacific Ocean in less than pleasant conditions on a tiny yacht in the middle of nowhere.  Point taken.  In one chapter Kevin, who rowed across the Atlantic with Rob Hamill (some guy huh?) says their motto when on such expeditions is “no moaning, no complaining, no exception.”  Hmm....wish I could take that on board!

 

Despite the rolly conditions I managed to cook a delicious supper – yesterday’s catch of the day (sailfish) in a fragrant rice pilaf with ginger, coconut milk, turmeric and garlic.  Think it’s possibly better than the freeze dried food Kevin and Jamie ate on their trek.  It’s inspiring to think there are still adventurers out there conquering all sorts of challenges. 

 

The good thing about the conditions is that we had a fast passage.  The rather bare and bleak landscape of Nuie came into view this morning and when I woke from my morning nap I couldn’t believe David was listening to National Radio! Think we are going to be tasting quite a bit of New Zealand during the next few days.  NZ pours money into Nuie – we paid $11m for the airport to be built – only so thousands of Nuieans could fly to NZ and make that their home.  Will be an interesting island to explore.