The beautiful weather window fell apart for the many boats waiting to head to the Tropics. These waters between New Zealand and the Tropics are not to be trifled with. Many of our good friend boats did indeed take this window, heading to Fiji, but we plan to head to Vanuatu. I find this one of the most challenging parts of cruising. We form deep friendships quickly, then part ways. We look at the weather incessantly, second-guessing ourselves, getting the boat ready for passage then not departing. There were many tears this morning, as we said our goodbyes. Our weather router is not excited about this passage for us. We could convince ourselves that maybe it makes sense, but this is wishful thinking and we need to defer to the expert we hired for this purpose. As they say in New Zealand about this passage: “Yeah…nah.” The good news is that it is sunny in New Zealand this week and we are heading out to the Bay of Islands to enjoy Birdland! Really there are worse places to be stuck.
Out to Moturua Island. It is calm and sunny, but cool in the Bay of Islands this week. Lovely, but we look forward to getting on our way. Wait, what is that?! A low looking like a cyclone between us and the Tropics. This is decidedly NOT normal. Our weather router said, “Earth is off script when a tropical forecast with 65k winds forms near Fiji in June.” We watch it closely, Calder tow-foiling, Cora hiking, getting through some school.
Wait, the low is moving off to the East…let’s go! Back to Opua to get ready (again!) for check-out, sneaking in a night of roller-skating with a group of teen boats.
We continually get Terikah ready for sea, fine tuning and stowing gear, checking systems, buying last minute items.
We schedule a departure date and time with customs. Then with the next forecast, we cancel it. New forecast, new appointment…followed by another cancellation. We aren’t alone. We heard today that 40 boats cancelled and rescheduled, but the agents take it in stride, though it must be quite annoying. Again, it appears we have a good window opening. Yes, this looks like it will be a solid GO! We have a 12:00 Tuesday appointment with Customs for departure.
It is hard to say goodbye to New Zealand, as we have spent a total of 11 months here in this safe, green haven and have bonded with this country. In fact, we did consider staying and obtaining residency here, but our home of Alaska calls to us. New Zealand could be home, but Alaska is home.
I have eaten kumara and courgettes. I know the sounds of the tui and ruru in magnificent Aotearoa. We’ve gone on a tiki tour, swerved around millions of traffic cones, eaten lollies, worn jandals, and ate piles of savory pies. We became acclimated to the word f*&$ as a casual part of speech, used to being called a mate, going to the dairy to get sammies for our chilly bin, and returned our trolley after grocery shopping. We’ve almost perfected the universal greeting of “How ya garn?” and have hid out at anchor when it was blowing a hoolie. New Zealand is truly SWEET AS!
So, Terikah crew, what is the plan? We are coming home to Petersburg over the next 15 months via Vanuatu, Solomons, Papau New Guinea, Indonesia, Philippines, Japan, and the Aleutian Islands. We set off on the first leg of our journey, toward Vanuatu, but ultimately…North to Alaska! Good as Gold.
We leave tomorrow morning and I will be writing daily on the passage. Here’s the link to our Predict Wind tracking page that will update our location as we travel: https://forecast.predictwind.com/tracking/display/SV-Terikah
SV Terikah Adventures 