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Burger Boy's avatar

Looking forward to highlights of the voyage ,

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Richard Atkins's avatar

Just made it to Musket Cove. Great (leisurely) sail over and grabbed a mooring. Big plans for some boat projects, scuba diving and checking out the restaurants. pizza tonight???

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Jim Yares's avatar

We are looking forward to a great trip. The handsome and talented crew has begun to arrive and get settled in!

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Nica Waters's avatar

We'll be reading this one next year for sure. Though in our case, it's highly unlikely we'll escape without a gale or storm of one sort or another; the trick will be avoiding getting creamed twice.

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Jim Yares's avatar

Many boats break the voyage into two segments. From Tonga, they'll stop at Minerva Reef and wait for the weather cycle to reset. That gives them two passages in nice weather. Some boats sail from Fiji to New Caledonia for similar reasons. Finally, some will heave to a few hundred miles north of New Zealand and let the low pressure system roll through. Once it clears out, they saddle up and finish in good weather. Although, I bet that's a hard decision to stick to when the dock is only a few hundred miles away.

Otherwise, you are right, below 7 or 8 knots you'll likely have to take your medicine at the beginning or the end of the trip. Most skippers I talk with recommend taking your lumps at the beginning near Fiji as the conditions are less extreme.

Hopefully we'll sneak through on one cycle.

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Janice Anne Wheeler's avatar

We love those folks at Predictwind and of course I have to wonder if their forecasting is even more accurate the closer to their home base you ROAM. Fair winds and calm seas. ~J

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Jim Yares's avatar

I bet they do know their home turf! We use their mesoscale models around here (PWG, and PWE). They seem well tuned for the land influences in Fiji and I am guessing in New Zealand as well.

I've been beta testing their new anchor alarm app. If you have their DataHub, check it out:

https://explore.predictwind.com/anchoralert

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Jake Takakjian's avatar

Safe travels on your passage! This reminds me a bit of chatting about get-there-itis as it pertains to pilots.

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Jim Yares's avatar

Yes! Get-there-itis is a big killer of GA pilots. It's funny, there are a lot of parallels between flight planning and passage planning. Risk management is similar as well.

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Colin Cattanach's avatar

Hi all. We met you on Mana Island and my wife took that picture of the 4 of you on the Survivor pedestal. Following this with interest as I am now doing a delivery trip as part of crew back to NZ in about 3 weeks time !! So I will be learning on the fly. Safe travels. !

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Jim Yares's avatar

Collin! Nice to hear from you. And thank you again for the photo. Keep us posted on your plans. We will leave on or after 19October. Starting to look like that window might work. Safe journey.

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