Day 1: New Cal to New Zealand

At 8:25am, we left our mooring ball at Ilot Amendee, next stop Opua, New Zealand (with a possible stop at Norfolk Island along the way). Trying some different seasickness meds for Cora, as the scopolamine patch itself doesn’t make her feel well.

While passage planning and looking at all the different variables in this crossing, our weather router initially said, “It’s just on the good side of the edge between mostly good weather window and a very tough window.” The passage includes a front west of us, a storm band marching across from the west, a low pushing up waves on the nose, and a low and possible thunderstorms on arrival. The seas forward of the beam are what I’m most apprehensive about as; after our trip from New Zealand to Fiji, I swore off doing those again. But here we are, both seas and winds ahead of the beam, makes for a chunky start, but the waves and winds are manageable enough. As I look at this often-challenging passage, I can’t help but wonder why we are doing this again.

So…why are we doing this again? We need to leave the tropics for cyclone season (which started already on November 1) and the two main options south are New Zealand or Australia. We loved New Zealand so much and want to explore it further and, from there, will fly to Australia for two months of land-cruising. Next year, for cyclone season, we will likely head north to Indonesia rather than south, moving along on our long journey home to Alaska.

Before we left the dock, we updated and distributed our “Float Plan,” which outlines our route with dates, emergency contacts, info on our vessel, and communication options on board. The dinghy and anchors were secured robustly. I had prepped dinners for the passage. And, we pulled our warm weather clothing out from storage; hoodies feel great the last half of this passage.

Today we started our Citizens of the Sea ocean water sampling. Citizens of the Sea is a New Zealand-based ocean conservation initiative that turns sailors into citizen scientists. They partner with researchers to gather environmental DNA (eDNA) from seawater, allowing scientists to detect which marine species are present, monitor changes in reef health, and track how climate shifts are affecting ocean life.  It’s awesome to be part of something bigger than our own voyage, helping build a global picture of ocean biodiversity and changes.

The seas and winds today are indeed forward of the beam, nothing too crazy, but not awesome either. However, the winds should come around more on the beam by tomorrow afternoon so we can make some easterly progress. In the meantime, we’ve turned one engine on and are motor-sailing to continue our progress. There’s a squall line on the horizon that we could miss…we missed it!

We take turns with watch, eat snacks, and get used to the motion again. One day down, 6 more to go. Just a tiny short-lived sliver of moon, otherwise very dark with stars peeking through the clouds.

Total miles: 145.7 nm

Avg speed: 6.1