Wednesday, July 24, 2013

bora bora to tonga - day/night#1

wet'n'wild...that's what we're in for at the moment.

we left bora bora yesterday at 11:00am with gust of 35kn in the anchorage - so it was to be expected that there would be wind out there. but at least the weather forecasts showed a constant wind direction and no systems that could change those 30kn from behind to 30kn on the nose.
and the good thing is, we are moving fast!
currently we are goose winging and roll a fair bit but we are doing this with an average of 7,5 to 8kn...so the effort is not in vain.

generally the conditions are exactly like we had it at the beginning of our atlantic crossing - probably a bit more wind here and there (i've seen a couple of gusts with 38,5kn) and the odd high wave that at one point got the end of our boom wet...but a well placed preventer made sure everything is good.

so here we are again - a long passage - the first painful 36h until you just drop dead sleeping when you're off shift - but nothing new for us and you to read about too;)

island hopping in the south pacific takes a bit longer then in the mediterranean. the distance from bora bora to tonga is pretty much the same as from kusadasi (where we started) to gibraltar.

if weather permits we will head straight through leaving the cook islands to our port and starboard. we currently head WNW towards suwarrow, an uninhabited atoll that belongs to the cooks. if the weather should go bad on us we will head there to sit it out. if not we will turn down SW towards the vava'u group of tonga.
we made this decision for three reasons: 1 -being the timing. essentially we are running out of time and can't afford to be trapped by bad weather for 2 weeks in on one of the cook islands.
2-being the weather systems that at the moment seem to go directly over the central cooks with strong strong winds
3- being the bad anchorages in the cooks. for a boat like ours there is only a couple of places really to go to and even they sound quite adventurous to enter and leave.
a shame really!
same counts for nuie - another place i would have loved to visit.

but as it seems, we might just have to cruise the south pacific again with a bit more time in our pocket:)

and to finish up, a couple of new records!

maloo and crew have now officially sailed half way around our blue globe! - we are a little proud, but celebrations will have to wait till we feel a bit better.

and our new speed record surfing down a wave (and seen twice for about 2 seconds!): 16.1kn - not sure if this one is to be proud of as a 42ft boat should never go that fast;)

that's all for today- stay dry! we will try to too!

maloo over and out.

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