Tonga to New Zealand, Day 5

Thursday 10/17, Day 5

Whoa….what a ride today. We swore we would never get in a headsea situation like we did from Providencia to Grand Cayman but yet, here we are. Why when a forecast is wrong it is always for the worse???? We knew we had to pass a trough/front when we left last Saturday after doing many scenarios but the data said it would only be for ~6-8 hours and be in the 10-15G20 kt range with probably some rain/squalls…..ok, we can handle that!!!

Reality is way different. We had 15-20G25kts S winds and 9-12′ S seas for about 12 hours until 4:00 pm. The seas were very confused, angry and had a boiling like action. We slowed down to 4.5-5.0 kts as well as diverted but the quadrant from SW to SE all had the same action. Around 4:00 pm the winds moderated to 10-15kts and the seas calmed to more the 9′ size and we sped up a little. Then around 10:00 pm the winds and seas picked back up to the 15-20G25 and 12′ and we had to slow down again…..neither of us was good company at this point!!!! Finally around 2:00am the winds calmed to 10-15 kt SSW and the seas to 7-10′ SSW (slightly off the starboard bow) and we could speed back up again. Wow, 6.5-7.1 kts @ 1600 rpm (should be close to 7.7-8.0kts)…..this just sucks……headseas, headwinds and counter current…..don’t tell us we are living the dream 🙁 ((((

Our ETA is now sometime late Friday evening, a good 12-16 hours later than planned…..so now we must enter a new harbor and marina at dark….oh joy….NOT!!!! The other option is to slow down and wait for Saturday am which we may do once we get into the lee of New Zealand…..right now all we want to do is to get out of this crap ASAP and have a few or many passage beers!!!!

In all this hubbub, we almost forgot….Mystic Moon has crossed two more milestones. First, on Tuesday we crossed the International dateline at 180 deg longitude…..the opposite side of the world from Greenwich, England….pretty cool. Now we actually lost our day when we entered Tonga so no time change for us….we took a pic of the GPS reading and will post at some point!!!

The next milestone was going over 30,000 nm…..that’s a lot of miles for a boat/cruiser and today we and Mystic are feeling all those miles!!!!!

The passage was so rough that Kathy could not cook….that is a first in our 9 years of cruising. Finally when the winds calmed a bit in the evening Kathy was able to make some hot soup….oh, yes, the temperature has dropped and we are now both dressed for these chilly temps….just like PNW…..the engine room temperatures are below 100 deg F…..now that hasn’t happened since we left California 6 years ago!!!!

Boat stuff:

The Big Bay computer, (our navigation computer where we run Nobeltec) you know the one that has been marinized that you pay big bucks for, took one too many bow dips/bangs and crashed….we both saw a blue screen with some writing and then it went out. We have tried to reboot and the power comes on but nothing on the screen. We do have backup….our Simrad chartplotter, but I have only used it once for navigation and requires getting out the book and relearning…..joy…..we will do that in the am with daylight!! We also have a spare navigation computer which we can also get out and hook up all the lines, but that requires going under the dash which I’m not sure I want do in these seas…..we will figure that out in the am.

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Stats:

Position: 31 59S 177 17E

Traveled: 147nm today: 783 traveled so far; 277nm to go; ETA Friday 10/18 late pm (8-12 pm)

Course: 205M COG

Wind: 8-12 kts SSW

Waves: 3-6′ SSW swell with some wind chop

Speed: current speed is 6.9 SOG, has varied 4.5-7.1 kts; avg is 7.1 kts; 1300 – 1600 rpm

Weather: mostly cloudy yesterday; 20% cloud this am; sea temp 63 deg F – brrrrrr

Boat sightings: 0 today, 1 total

Fishing: no way; too rough and too cold

Sail: down until the wind backs from these headwinds

Fuel burn: 1.24 npmg, 6.1 gph – not quite as good as expected; that darn counter current and headwinds!!

Hope all is well!

John
Mystic Moon