Scenes from the Passage, Part VII

November 2015

Pictures from our passage from Fiji to New Zealand…

Click for larger version.
Click for larger version.

Scenes from the Passage, Part VI

November 2015

A Warm Passage!

Usually it’s a very cold passage and cold when we arrive in New Zealand. Not so this time. It was very pleasant and most of the time, we slept without a blanket and wore only minimal clothing.

A few days before New Zealand, we broke out a light blanket. A couple of days before arrival, we broke out the comforter. The day before, Cyndi found it necessary to sleep buried…

sleeping-cyndi

That’s OK. It got so hot in Fiji just before we left that this is very welcome. And besides, it’s usually much colder here this time of year. Thank you El Nino (or global warming)! -Rich

Scenes from the Passage, Part V

November 2015

All was not a box of fluffy bunnies on this passage. We had a smooth and wonderful first day, then we hit the trough left over from a small low that tried to form a cyclone. We knew it was there but I didn’t think it would amount to much.

What it amounted to was about 24 hours of pretty extreme discomfort, with winds getting up to almost 30 knots, and this mess when a wave broke in our cockpit…

slammed

surprised-fish
And if you look closely at the base of our steering pedestal, you’ll see a fish who must have been very surprised to end up in our cockpit.

Conditions are pretty bad when even the fish want out of the ocean! -Rich

Scenes from the Passage, Part IV

November 26, 2015

Thanksgiving Dinner at Sea

thanksgiving-dinner-at-sea

There are a lot of things to love about Fiji but the meat cuts are not among them. It’s hard to find good steak there. Cyndi did. During a last-minute provisioning run at the tiny market in Vuda Marina, she found incredible, thick, beautiful steaks but she didn’t tell me about this at the time.

Thanksgiving rolled around and we still had a ways to go to get to New Zealand. I wasn’t expecting much – maybe a couple of Pop-Tarts and a glass of wine. I was surprised when Cyndi started cooking, and cooking, and cooking. The result was an incredible (surprise) dinner with these amazing steaks with wine sauce, potatoes au gratin, and green beans. Thank you Cyndi! What a great Thanksgiving. -Rich