Sunday, October 23, 2011

Day 3 - Tonga to New Zealand

It was a rather uncomfortable night with Rutea heeled at about an 18 degree angle until early this morning when the wind finally backed some. Even though I was off watch, I couldn't sleep and so I adjusted the sails which made it more comfortable. The the wind began to build which put a bone in Big Ol' Ruttea's teeth and she began to pull like a team of mules. The exciting upshot of this was that the Time-to-Destination field on our chartplotter began to actually show numbers. Previously, we had too long to go for the counter to work and once it became less than 100 hours, the space that only had dashes now had real, tangible numbers. Of course, gradually the wind lightened and the dashes returned, leaving us to wonder if we were ever going to get there. But our 24-hour distance was 156 miles which isn't too bad for a big old boat, although we did motor for about 6 hours yesterday when our speed dropped to less than 5 knot per hour.

Bob McDavitt, our weather router, writes a weekly weather forecast for the western South Pacific and New Zealand area - he calls them 'Bobgrams'. They're pretty generic but most of the cruisers in this area count on them. There's always a section on travel between Figi/New Caledonia/Tonga and New Zealand and this week he talks about how the going is good right now but to not try to arrive this weekend. We should arrive by Friday.

I don't think we've turned the iPod off since we left. It really helps the time to pass on the night watches. We've talked to some people who watch movies when they're on watch.

We could hit our halfway point tomorrow.

Our spirits remain good and we're grateful for the emails that we've received from our families and friends. Please keep them coming.
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At 10/24/2011 12:57 AM (utc) Rutea's position was 25°30.28'S 179°04.56'W

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