Day 3: Passage from NZ to Fiji

This morning, Code Zero up in light winds. Ahhh, now this is lovely sailing! Not going as fast as before, but feels more peaceful and able to move about the boat much easier. It’s calm enough where Calder can attack the mountain of dishes in the sink.

Every morning and evening we check the weather, making sure nothing new has popped up, always looking ahead to ensure we’re strategic about where to head. Looking excellent currently.

Throughout the day we take naps, listen to audio books and music, prep and eat food, and just stare out at the always changing ocean and clouds.  Saw a massive flying fish; happy to be out in flying fish oceans again. Calder just lost a massive fish, thinks it must have been a bluefin tuna. He’s changed up his lures, hoping to entice a wahoo as we get into warmer waters.

Spent some time completing the Fiji paperwork. Every country has a different document for their Advanced Notice of Arrival that we complete. Some are 1 page long and others are 15 pages long. For Fiji, it’s 13 pages.  This is for Customs. We also notify Immigration and Biosecurity.

Took down our tattered NZ flag today. International waters begin 12 nautical miles from a nation’s coast. This area is known as the territorial sea, where a country’s jurisdiction extends. Beyond the territorial sea lies the exclusive economic zone (EEZ), which extends up to 200 nautical miles from the coast, where a country has special rights regarding exploration and exploitation of resources. Beyond the EEZ, the sea becomes international waters, with no single nation having control.

Winds and sea building this afternoon, back to average 20 knots winds with seas 2 meters on the beam, reefed the sails when we saw a gust of 34 knots, also a bit of rain around.

We got the idea of fresh tuna sushi in our minds and couldn’t get it out. Calder and I propped ourselves at the cockpit table and made sushi, trying to keep things sliding around. I call it “double rolled sushi,” as we rolled it in rolling seas! It was delicious and totally worth it.

Seas continued to get rougher, which was not predicted. But this is the ocean…and the ocean doesn’t read the forecast. We were in a conversion zone between two systems. All around us is a donut of thunderstorms warnings and we are in the donut hole. There’s also some low and high pressure systems south of us. Ahead of us are the tradewinds. So lots of systems about. Night watch keeping us on our toes, a more active watch.

We are 1/3 of the way to Fiji.