Tonga to New Zealand Passage – Day 7

Date: Wednesday, November 7th 2018 Time: 23:00 UTC (12pm local) Location: 27° 59′ S, 177° 28′ E COG: 198°T SOG: 4.5 kts Distance to the New Zealand: 493 nm 24 hr. Distance covered: 92 nm
Happy Birthday Karen Minton! (Nov 6th)
This is the first passage that we have had to go upwind in a long time. We have had to adjust our expectations on speed and distance traveled per day and we have been playing a lot with how we are sailing Banyan to get the most out of her. We’ve learned over the years that she seems happiest and fastest when she is as flat as possible and when she has no more sail up than strictly necessary. Inverse to what you would think, she moves faster when we reef down (shorten sail) in many cases, even if she doesn’t necessarily feel overpowered, this applies in particular when heading upwind.
Happily, things have been uneventful. We are all a bit bored and talk centers around our travel plans in the next few months, what we need to do to prepare the boat to be left, what we need to pack etc. We are all looking forward to arriving in a place that has more amenities and arriving back to the familiarity of our home country.
We realized today that we have burned through our Sat phone minutes. This came up be because Sailmail, our radio/internet provider notified us that we were using up too many minutes of connection. Part of this is because Cameron has been uber diligent with weather downloads for the last month to pick a weather window and then to navigate the winds on this passage. The other part is that the radio propagation hasn’t been great the last week and uploads and downloads have been slower. Long story short we pulled out the Sat Phone and those precious minutes are gone as well. We will be fine but don’t be alarmed if the posts stop or are a little less frequent. We hope to be in New Zealand by Monday or Tuesday. Banyan Clear……

5 comments

  1. Richard Edne says:

    Not sure if this sail rigging would work with a boat your size but we have won a few races tacking with the kite and the jenny up if you are not pulling a full angle tack. You need someone to control the kite to keep the wind in the sail and the boat will skip along. We used this in the around Oahu race and won all three legs. Other boats started using this rigging after that race. We developed lots of race tricks that the old skippers said would not work. they changed their mind when did sail changes on a tack. Glad you are have so much fun. We are all playing polo each Sunday and have 7 horses and 8 family players. Winning a few matches. Hope this does not take up your internet space.

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