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April 2003 New Zealand

Newsletter 2003

As usual everything came together the last few days before departing Nelson. We had 2 young Swedes named Sofia and Jesper who had seen us on Bo’s Swedish travel documentary. A British carpenter named Ian, a South African veterinarian named Peter and a young American sailor named Mark. Also joining this years crew was Marie, an experienced circumnavigator and Sean a Kiwi coastal skipper. I was scrounging to find enough crew to make up 3 watches, when a couple of French “vegan” backpackers’ names Brice & Delphine decided to give it a try. That made 10 on the crew.

On our way through the Marlborough Sounds we learned there were gale and storm warnings for all of New Zealand waters. So we stopped in at Ketu Bay to wait for a fair wind in Cook Strait. Twelve days later we were finally underway again.

Motoring through a calm Cook Strait we were contacted by a customs aircraft and ordered into port to re-issue our customs clearance. Spent a busy 14-hours in Wellington and got underway the next morning.

By the 3rd day at sea we were north of the Chatham Islands when the next gale caught us. Spent 16-hours hove to. Then had a good days run after that till the next gale, a force-8 blow. Spent that day hove to under gray gloomy skies. The next morning the sun came out turning the sea a deep blue color. Breaking waves and streaks of foam both sparkling white made such a cheery scene I decided to fall off and run with it.

The inherent difficulties in running before a strong wind are driving the boat under or getting pooped, which is to say, waves breaking over the stern. The sea was running 6 to 7 meters, (a bit over 20 feet), so driving Alvei under was not a problem. However we did get pooped, several times it was knee deep on the after deck and waist deep amidships in the lee scuppers. Mixed in with the gale were a few 50-knot squalls with hailstones. Being in one of those tends to generate sympathy for those fluffy little ducks on the wrong end of a shotgun. A couple of squalls reached 60-knots or better. That is when the wind knocks off the wave tops and “sand papers” the sea smooth.

Blew out the fore on the 3rd day and so ran under fore stay’sl and inner jib. The wind moderated into a fresh breeze about the time we finished repairs to the fore and bent it back on.

An American friend named Don, of the schooner “Scotsman”, was trying to locate an abandoned yacht and so radioed the coordinates for a 30-mile square area to search in the Horse Latitudes south of Niue. After beating into light northerlies for a few days we were able to work into a position on the sou’east corner of the search area, then sailed diagonally across the area to the nor’west corner, but didn’t sight the vessel.

A large high-pressure area nudged us farther north and left us becalmed for a few evenings under brilliant starry skies. Then we crossed the tropic of Capricorn and picked up the sou’east trades for a pleasantly uneventful sail the rest of the way to Pago Pago.

It took a full day to clear in and take on fuel and water. Then we spent the next week buying food stores and having a look around.

It was an overnight sail from Pago Pago to Apia, Samoa. The crew organized several expeditions. About half took busses and ferries to the Island of Savaii; the rest did day trips around Upolu

Anyway, the passage from Apia to Tonga was bloody obnoxious! It was six days hard on the wind with a gale in the middle. Had to heave to on the 4th day to wait for a wind shift and to avoid getting blown too far down wind of the island group. We blew out 2 jibs during the gale. (I have to have a bit of a yarn with my sail maker in Hong Kong. They were both new sails.) Half the crew of 8 was down with seasickness or a tummy bug.

The wind eventually moderated and backed to the east. We had to crank up the “Iron Topsail” and motor sail the last 70 miles. Finally made the group just before midnight on the 6th day and came to anchor off a little island called Mala a few miles south of Vava’u.

Since then we spent about a week in Neiafu seeing the sights on the main island and stocking up on fresh veggies from the market. The damage from the New Year’s eve cyclone was evident. There was a noticeable thinning of the palm tree population. Some of the older buildings and homes were just not there anymore, including about 20 meters of storefront along the main street.

Everyone has a cyclone story. Apparently the eye of the storm passed right over the island about midnight on New Years eve. There were 160-knot winds. Almost everyone had a damaged or missing roof. Some of the small traditional villages were completely obliterated. A yachtie named Nick I met last year stayed the season and moved in with a local woman. The roof was ripped completely off their house then they spent the rest of the cyclone standing chest deep in the fresh water tank. His yacht drug a 2-ton mooring block and a 50-kilo anchor a half mile and fetched up under a cliff just 3 meters short of the reef! However 16 other

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