Aboard Dignity (Lagoon 420) Blog

Our trip into the village was somewhat of a repeat of the previous day. John picked me up at 6:30, we crossed the island, found Kaleb the lobster guy who told us he’d stayed up till 4am but noone came in with lobsters due to the weather. We are destined not to have them.

We decided to head for the island for O’ua. This time Helen helmed the boat off the anchor while Ben raised it. With the winds up around 20 knots this was quite challenging and they did well to do this. They followed up by raising the sails and getting us on our way to O’ua including having to tack twice to squeeze between two islands. Sea Mist left a little later and headed further south as they’ve decided to make a party down in Nuku’alofa which we’re not so keen on.

There are a few anchorages around O’ua and we chose the one to the north behind the reef but exposed to the wind.

This had mixed blessings. The wind gen loved it and the reef protects us pretty well from the swell making it quite calm. The wind picked up and stayed in the mid twenties all day. It also rained heavily all day and into the night pinning us inside the boat. Had we chosen the anchorage to the west of the island we may have had a bit more protection from the wind. For the first time in a long time I set my spare GPS to alarm if we dragged but fortunately this didn’t go off overnight.

We collectively made a decision last night to favour more time in New Zealand rather than here. This may be influenced by the generally poor and cool weather we’ve had for the last few days. We’re slap bang in the middle of one good weather window down to New Zealand. Chances are we’ll take the next one which. The weather windows occur in cycles of 8-10 days as highs spill of Australia and head east. The boats that caught this one appear to have had a good ride. This has turned out to be very much a ‘La Nina’ year which means we should see reinforced trade winds as well as the weather patterns moving south earlier than normal. There is certainly evidence of this. The winds have been pretty strong recently. Looking at the wind forecasts for the north of New Zealand the westerlies have given over to easterlies as the trades have pushed down in late October – something I understand doesn’t normally happen until November. If this persists then the normal sail plan to head more west early on to catch the westerlies on the final leg gives over to sailing the rhumb line which makes the trip shorter and easier. We’ll see.

Try saying that with a mouthful of biscuit crumbs.

We decided not to stay at the last stop setting sail mid-morning. The wind was up around 20 knots and I decided it would be a good day to give Ben and Helen some sailing practice. Although there was a pass that would make the trip to Uonukuhihifo somewhat simpler I decided to go the long way around the reef forcing us to make more turns and put in a lot of tacks to recover the distance we’d lose against the wind. I more or less told them to work out how they would work together to bring the boat to the anchorage and stood back to keep an eye on things. It was a good exercise as by the end both had noticeably improved on their handling of the boat. With the big and challenging trip to NZ ahead of this we’ll need more of this.

Arriving at Uonukuhihifo we discovered we were the only ones there. This was not to last as Sea Mist had the same intentions – we’re both using the same guide book and hence are choosing more or less the same anchorages. Ben and I went ashore and walked around the island scouting out possible places to go lobstering and somewhere to have a fire in the evening. Uonukuhihifo turned out to be too exposed to the wind for a fire so we went over to Uonukuhahaki and found a good spot and spent some time nearby collecting firewood.

We invited the Sea Mists ashore for company around the fire and around 6pm we lit up spending a pleasant few hours chewing the cud ashore. Ben, Ian and I had agreed to come out at 6:30am on the reef to hunt lobsters. However, when I woke this morning the continued trades have picked up the seas on the outer reef making the prospects of snorkeling there less than inviting.

We’re probably going to head west today to the island of Ha’afeva. Sea Mist have the same plans so we’ll be in lockstep for a while still.