Sunday 24^th August 2014 - The Best Laid Schemes o’ Mice an’ Men Gang Aft Agley

Ho,hum.  A departure tomorrow is not going to work after all.  It did, perhaps, feel a little too good to be true that a weather window would open for long enough for us to get from Gulf Harbour to Opua, pause, move on (by now, three days after the window had opened) and still avoid the next, inevitably feisty, low pressure system.  It is now clear that it was too good to be true.

The weather in Opua is currently balmy.  The wind is light but favourable for sailing north.  However, over the next couple of days that is now set to change as a recently formed low pressure system tracks towards northern NZ from Australia.  So, a departure for Fiji tomorrow would probably involve quite a lot of motoring for a couple of days, followed by gale force head winds, decreasing to head winds of some lesser force.  Alternatively, we could tool about in Opua and pick up the favourable winds that should follow the passage of the next low.  Then go - PDQ.  To be absolutely honest, it wasn’t all that tough a decision.

It isn’t possible to see far ahead enough to work out when the next window will open.  But, a wait of something like a week is a reasonable guess at this stage.