the wind eased off a little - now we get 22-28kn, which is a bit more comfortable.
the seas are still big but not as angry anymore - so we should have a nice sail the next 24h.
as already written, we turned wsw, a course of about 256° towards tonga yesterday. if the wind really disappears on us towards tuesday, as currently predicted, we came up with a new "plan b".
we might just head a bit further south, about 250° and stop in niue - one of the world's smallest nations (if not the smallest)
as niue has no fringing reef and the island itself comes straight out of the deep the local yacht club has set up a couple of mooring buoys on the west side of the island - anchoring is. not recommended, because you have to anchor deep in coral. apparently there is not even a way to land the dinghy, so they have installed a dinghy-lift that hauls you out of the water.
with only the protection of the island against the prevailing winds, it gets fairly uncomfortable if the not-prevailing winds set in.
the southern pacific convergence zone, short spcz, causes a fair bit of havoc in this area that i so far have referred to as "systems moving through".
so if one of those systems, that seem to come about every 7-14days moves through it is likely to cause a west wind blowing towards niue. and that, you have guessed it, is not nice on a buoy that is only sheltered from the east. so you are forced to leave immediately and sail right into the wind.
this was one of the reasons why we so far did not plan to go to niue. but with the forecast of no wind we might go and check out that fancy dinghy lift ;)
we will see.
apart from that all is well - for some reason i keep daydreaming of a big bowl full of fresh cherries. i saw a punnet in papeete, but 16$us for 100gr. was even for met too expensive.
No comments:
Post a Comment