We’re spending this Christmas at sea – a first for us – and what a lovely Christmas morning it is out here! We’re about 300 miles NW of New Zealand and slowly making our way in glassy, flat calm seas under a beautiful sunny sky. (When we get internet again, we’ll post some pictures.)
It’s been a mixed bag passage. We’re six days into it (with over three more days to go) and while we’ve had very nice seas and pretty comfortable winds, we’ve had to sail into them most of the way so far. To top that off, we’ve had a huge current against us much of the time, sometimes almost 2 knots. We went the long way around in the first place to try for a better, less upwind passage, but that extra distance, coupled with the 150 miles or so we’ve lost to the current has made this a very long ride! We’ve had to motor quite a bit, if not because of lack of wind, then because what wind we had was on the nose. We’ve motored enough that were getting a little concerned about fuel. A few gallons more would sure make a nice Christmas present!
It turns out, even way out here, Santa knows where we are and brought us some giftwrapped diesel. This morning, we found that our fuel gauge was reading low and we have about 20 gallons more fuel than we thought. (I guess the lump-of-coal flip side of this is that I’ll have to fix the fuel gauge when we get in, and oh yea, the mess I made when the tank overflowed while pouring in fuel from jugs was lump-of-coal-ish too!) Even before Santa’s help, we figured we’d have enough fuel to make it in, assuming the weather reports were correct (and they haven’t been so far!). It would be a little close and we’d have to get in a couple of days of sailing. Now, we’re really in pretty good shape, fuel wise.
If all goes well, we hope to be in Opua, New Zealand late Thursday night or early Friday morning. I’m really getting excited about being back.
Note: any mistakes contained herein are strictly the fault of passage brain and not my fault, for I am usually faultless! 😉
Merry Christmas and may your new year be faultless!
-Rich
