Landfall
Where Next?
Bob Williams
Mon 31 Aug 2026 01:20
Course: ENE Speed 6 knots
Wind: SW, F5 fresh breeze
Sea state: moderate Swell: SW, 3 meters
Weather: mostly sunny, showers, mild
Day's run: 159 nm
We continued overnight running wing-on-wing before the fresh SW breeze, jib poled to starboard and main to port with one reef. Late yesterday afternoon a small rain squall passed over requiring a second reef in the main for the first time this passage, but by sunset the skies were clear again. I shook out the second reef and we continued on with just the one reef in the main.
This morning I stood on deck surveying the scene. Ahead I could make out New Zealand, what I presumed was Cape Reinga, some 18 miles ahead according to the GPS, and to the north I could see the grey shape of Manawatawhi/Three Kings Islands, also some 20 miles distant. And of some concern, I could see a large container ship on a parallel course about four miles to our NW. My concern was that the ship was not showing up on Sylph's plotter. How long, I wondered, has the AIS not been working. I had worked on the AIS connection to the VHF radio three days ago because it wasn't showing GPS information, which was not of concern because it is only useful if one needs to make a Mayday call. Clearly in fixing this problem I had created another potentially more serious problem. I had been a little surprised that I had not seen a single ship on AIS for the past few days; however, we were to the south of the shipping lane between the east coast ports of Australia and New Zealand so I had not given it much thought as the AIS had been working fine when we left Sydney. Anyway, a little bit of fault finding this morning found the disconnected wire (they are very small wires) and it was soon reconnected with two ships immediately appearing on Sylph's plotter to our north - very reassuring, especially now that we can expect to encounter more shipping as we sail in NZ's coastal waters.
The winds are forecast to remain in the SW for the next couple of days. We have 100 miles to go to Opua and our ETA remains around noon tomorrow.
All is well.