Another calm day. The Code Zero stayed up all day and we alternated sailing and motor sailing as the wind built and faded. Excitement is building as we’re within a day of New Zealand. We all had good long showers and changed our clothes. Helen spent some time cleaning the boat. I started ferreting around the boat for some ideas about some things I want to do when we’re ashore. The last 6 beers went into the fridge.
A big thrill was seeing a large pod of lively dolphins – a species we haven’t seen before.
As I type our ETA for arrival at the customs dock is around 7pm this evening. The apparent wind is down to 3 knots so we’re motoring with little help from the sail. It will stay up for now to provide us some movement when I shut the engines down for radio transmissions. These sessions will no doubt slow us down but that’s alright. We’ll get free dockage on the customs dock for the night where we’ll have our last meal (before all our fresh food is confiscated and incinerated) and crack open the beers and wine we’ve denied ourselves for the passage.
It’s quite a feeling to sit here realizing we’ve almost done it – crossed the Pacific. I’ve been pondering this. Where does the Pacific end when one sets of from the Americas? It has to be somewhere. Although we’ll be going back out into the Pacific next year in a lot of ways arriving in New Zealand represents the completion of this 8,300+nm passage. With a lot of stopovers. So this may as well be it. Barring problems today, we’ve made it. We feel like congratulating ourselves.
72nm to go.
Leave a Reply