Date: Monday, November 5th 2018 Time: 23:00 UTC (12pm local) Location: 24° 48′ S, 178° 34′ E COG: 198°T SOG: 4.5 kts Distance to the New Zealand: 716 nm 24 hr. Distance covered: 88 nm All is well on Banyan. Cameron and the girls are slumbering away to the hum of the engine while I …
Tonga to New Zealand Passage – Day 3
Date: Saturday, November 3rd 2018 Time: 23:00 UTC (12pm local) Location: 22° 00.822′ S, 179° 20.099 ‘ W COG: 230°T SOG: 4.5 kts Distance to New Zealand: 867 nm 24 hr. Distance covered: 92 nm Today has been a bumpy ride on the South Pacific roller coaster. It’s probably more reminiscent of a washing machine. …
Tonga to New Zealand Passage – Day 2
Date: Friday, November 2nd 2018 Time: 23:00 UTC (12pm local) Location: 21° 28.78 ‘ S, 177° 47.23′ W COG: 275°T SOG: 4.5kts Distance to the New Zealand: 1062nm 24 hr Distance covered: 97 nm Cameron Here, Last night was a quiet night. We lost all wind for about four hours and were forced to motor …
Tonga to New Zealand Passage
Day 1 Date: Thursday, November 1st 2018 Time: 23:00 UTC (12pm local) Location: 20° 47.49′ S, 176° 13.84′ W COG: 230°T SOG: 5.5kts Distance to the New Zealand: 1147 nm Distance covered since departure (19 hrs) : 86nm Happy Halloween from Banyan! I first have to say that we LOVE reading your comments. We always …
Outbound Niue, Inbound Tonga
The below was written on Saturday, October 27th Location 19° 54.6742 S 172° 36.1894 W COG: 260° SOG: 4.5 knots With some funky weather hitting us on the nose and some lighter winds forecasted, we have decided to swing into an uninhabited island in the Tongan group just to wait out the weather and have …
Never Heard of Niue?
Date: Friday, October 25th 2018 Time: 21:34 UTC Location 19° 49.27 S 171° 29.33 W COG: 262° SOG: 5.2 knots I had also never heard of Niue until our minds and plans started heading west from French Polynesia. People were asking “Are you stopping at Niue? Palmerston? Suwarrow?” common stops on the way west. Niue …
Notes on Suwarrow
If you’ve read the last few posts, you know that we have had a pretty special time in Suwarrow National Park in the Northern Cook Islands. The girls have been tasked with more writing projects lately and I was really pleased with the work they put into the recent posts. Thanks for all the very …
Bird Island
By Elizabeth Vawter Bird Island is one of the many motus that surround the atoll of Suwarrow National Park in the Cook Islands of the South Pacific. This island has a cloud of birds that come there to nest every year. A rough estimate of the number of birds is five hundred thousand. We were …
A Reef Walk
By Adelaide Vawter (11 years old) Today in Suwarrow National Park, part of the Cook Islands and one of the most remote atolls in the world, we are going on a reef walk at 9:30 am. We determined that low tide was at 10:52am with our Navionics navigation software. It is important to go at …
French Polynesia to Suwarrow Passage – Day 6
Date: Sunday, September 30th 2018 Time: 17:00 UTC Location: 13°14.85′ S, 163°06.52′ W COG n/a SOG: 0 Distance to the Suwarrow: 0 nm 24hr Distance covered: 88 nm “LAND HO!” I heard hollered from just over my hatch, right after I had heard Cameron whisper to the girls to stay quiet so I could sleep. …