Weary

Sitting in a large anchorage with constant 25-35 knot winds peaking higher at times with the boat constantly moving in a short steep chop with occasional hull slaps from bigger waves is a wearisome thing. We’ve been at it for days now and it seems like a life time. Each night we’ve gone to bed with the anchor alarm which wakes up up every now and then when the wind shifts. The anchor has stayed firm. There are better alarms which allow one to set up guard zones around where the boat will naturally swing. We can’t do this so we get woken when the boat has moved a certain distance. This is worse than passage making.

Furthermore the starboard bilge has been gathering water slowly and that alarm has gone off every few hours. I know water is coming from the stern locker via the drain tube and the problem became more apparent yesterday, perhaps related to our removal of the dodger which keeps rain water (and there’s been a lot of that) out of the cockpit area. Being in and official storm is not the time to troubleshoot or fix this sort of thing so we just had to put up with it. We know we need to seal the stern rail – one of our last chores before we leave – and it might just be that. We’ll see.

This morning we’re seeing winds actually below 20 knots. The boat is still moving around and normally these conditions would be deemed totally unsuitable for an anchorage – we’d find something more sheltered. But now it feels like peace. And it’s surely only going to get better.

At first light yesterday we braved the elements and took down the dodger. We found the main sail lazy bag had been blown half open. How the main sail itself had not been caught and dragged out I don’t know but it surely would have been had we not dealt with this and the winds increased as they did yesterday.

We spent the day locked inside the boat. We communicated with a few people via email and VHF and there is a growing number of us 2010 puddle jumpers looking to grab this up coming weather window which is now looking to be this Thursday.

We played some cards for a while and the rest of the time got on with our own thing. I managed to nail five more Euler problems including two I’d previously been stuck on.

After this morning’s weather forecast I’ve put us on a positive decision to leave at the end of this week. That means that our crew Paul now expects to come to the boat which we’d agreed over yesterday would be Wednesday at noon.

Today we’re heading back to Whangarei for final provisioning courtesy of John and Pam from Passages. This had been planned for Tuesday but they made the sensible decision to do the provisioning while the weather was still bad and use Tuesday for boat work.

My final plan for today is to call out for volunteers to help run a radio net up to Fiji for safety/assistance purposes with an idea to get together at the yacht club this evening. We may end up having an evening out as we’re desperate to get off the boat for a while. Delos is in the anchorage and will be coming. We’ve not seen them for a long time it seems.