by Judy Handley | Oct 30, 2006 | Sailing Logs Year 1, Tonga, Tongatapu |
Day 377, Year 1: New Auto Pilot Arrives—Hurray
Date: Monday, October 30, 2006
Weather: Beautiful Weather Continues
Location: Nuku’alofa, Tongatapu Group, Tonga
It is absolutely beautiful here today. The water here in the harbor is a light aquamarine and as I look out over the seawall, the water is a bright turquoise in every direction as far as I can see. There are little white caps out there and the wind is blowing gently. It is the kind of day that beckons one to sea. As I watched Hanoah leave the harbor and put up the main sail, I wanted to follow. But that will have to wait for another day.
We are absolutely thrilled that our new auto pilot arrived exactly as promised. That’s a first. I think I like the kiwis already. Mark has been working all afternoon installing the new system. He explained to me that installing a new system like this is like playing a really challenging computer game. He loves it. Of course, he just told me that the installation is going well except that the auto pilot has us going north when we are headed south. Oops! I guess he had better keep working on this.
For the technical minded, I will explain what we ordered and received. The part that broke was the drive unit. We burned out the motor by not having all of the settings properly adjusted.. But rather than just replace that, we wanted a whole new system and we wanted to have the old system as a back-up. As I have said in an earlier log, the company in New Zealand was not able to get just a new motor to us this quickly, so we will be going with the new system and no drive unit back-up. What we did receive was a RayMarine Type 2 Linear Drive with a short arm and an S3 Corepack that is the new computer that drives the system, a new compass, and a new rotary-style rudder reference unit. What we could not afford was a unit with a built-in gyro which allows the computer software to intelligently monitor the boat’s movement. Since we didn’t do such a great job of this, I think we need the computer that can do it for us. This can be added later for only an additional $500. Yikes!
We heard from Doug and Sylvie on Windcastle this morning and they have decided to come to Nuku’alofa. We are thrilled. George and Barbara of Gdansk, another boat that we have been with often on this trip, are coming as well. We all travel at about the same speed, so this will give us a core group for the passage to New Zealand. There are so many other boats coming in here right now that I am sure we will have even more company, but it is nice to have a core group with which to plan and check-in as the passage progresses. Bob McDavitt, the weather guru from New Zealand, issued his weekly “BobGram” last night. He had some interesting things to say about this weather, but my favorite is his disclaimer: “Weather is a mix of pattern and chaos. The following ideas come from the patterned world of weather maps, so please fine-tune to your place.” So basically weather people are predicting from patterned models, but the weather out here has more of the chaos than the pattern! Anyway, he did have some information that I found interesting. He explained that all is settling down now in the Southwest Pacific as we move into a quiet phase of the Madden-Julian Oscillation (http://www-das.uwyo.edu/~geerts/cwx/notes/chap12/mjo.html for those of you interested in that much detail.). But the interesting part to me was that if the oscillation repeats then we will have another “burst of tropical activity” (meaning another cyclone) in late November or early December. Of course, another one could be beginning to form right now, so the models might not be right this time. However, I do hope they are as McDavitt’s prediction gives us plenty of time to get to New Zealand. But if we do have another cyclone in this part of the world, the weather people are ready as have the next names on the cyclone list. Those forming east of 160E will be YANI, ZITA and ARTHUR, and those forming west of 160E (near Australia) will be NELSON, ODETTE and PIERRE. McDavitt went on to explain that the cyclone that just ended, XAVIER, formed soon after some near equatorial westerly winds turned up after being tossed out of Asia by the Monsoon. These winds normally arrive around the middle of December, and he is saying that their early arrival is significant. Typical for this sailing season as everything has arrived early and with more of a punch than predicted.
>From what McDavitt said in his weathergram and from our other weather data, it looks like we should be able to leave here on November 4 arriving in Minerva Reef on November 6 just as a very windy period there is ending. We can then head to New Zealand and arrive around November 11 or 12. This misses another front crossing the Northland of New Zealand on November 8 or 9. Of course, all of this changes daily, so this is just the beginning thinking for our passage. We’ll keep you posted on changes, but so far, it is looking good.
Mark just asked me to do a trial with the auto pilot and it looks like he has us headed in the right direction and everything seems to be working beautifully. We are now ready for a sea trial calibration of it which we will do on Wednesday when we move from this harbor over to Pangaimotu. Tomorrow will be provisioning day, AGAIN, and then we will be ready to go when the weather allows.
The other thing I would like to mention today has to do with technology. Last night when we had Roger and Judy from Hanoah over for dinner, Windbird’s dependence on technology became starkly clear. Roger and Judy sail on a 32-foot boat with no refrigeration, no computer, and no SSB radio. They have no outgoing communication with the outside world on their boat. They can receive radio on their short-wave receiver, but they cannot send. Then there is Windbird with three computers and daily postings to a website. Yesterday I was upset that our wireless internet connection on the boat didn’t allow a free-flowing conversation on Skype with our daughter Heather. We wanted to “see” her via her video cam to see how that pregnant little belly of hers is growing. We couldn’t see yesterday, but today we went into the internet café and we did see. She is definitely pregnant! The communication was still not perfect, but I know we are very lucky to even have the opportunity for such communications. Seeing someone while talking to them on a computer was only a dream a few years ago.
by Judy Handley | Oct 31, 2006 | Sailing Logs Year 1, Tonga, Tongatapu |
Day 378, Year 1: Halloween in Paradise
Date: Tuesday, October 31, 2006
Weather: Beautiful Weather Continues
Location: Nuku’alofa, Tongatapu Group, Tonga
Happy Halloween! I had no idea that anyone here in Tonga would be Halloween aware, but late this afternoon when we went into a local bar, we found carved pumpkins, orange and black crepe paper trimmings, and other Halloween decorations. We were certainly a bit surprised, but we think this acknowledgement of Halloween was only in this bar since it is frequented by many Kiwis and Aussies in the area. Evidently Great Britain and Australia have adopted Halloween, and it has worked itself into the culture here.
We spent our early morning helping new boats come in and med moor to the quay. Zafarse is now next to us, and White Swan and Cheers are just down the way. After helping them get settled, we went into town to buy the necessary food and drinks that will take us to New Zealand. We came back to Windbird in the afternoon and then got ready to go back into town to catch our ride to the Tongan Cultural Center for an evening dinner and cultural show. The dinner offered all of the traditional dishes and the show was great. Dancing here is similar to dancing in the Samoas, but the men here do not do the slap dancing and the hand and body movements of the women are much more subtle. We thoroughly enjoyed the evening. When we returned from the Cultural Center, we were dropped off at the Billfish Bar where we had been picked up earlier in the evening. We decided to stay and have a drink, and while we did this we couldn’t help but watch the music video playing. It was in black and white and it was Roy Orbison. Mark said it is pretty bad when the music of your era is only available in black and white!
We got conflicting information on the weather this afternoon. One source says there will not be a window for arriving in New Zealand until after the 20th of November , while another indicates a good arrival time around the middle of the month. We have much research to do and will hopefully have a better idea of what we will be doing by the weekend. In the meantime, we plan to move to Pangaimotu tomorrow and wait for our weather window from there.
by Judy Handley | Nov 1, 2006 | Sailing Logs Year 1, Tonga, Tongatapu |
Day 379, Year 1: New Auto Pilot Sea Trial Is Successful
Date: Wednesday, November 1, 2006
Weather: Beautiful Weather Continues
Location: Pangaimotu Island, Tongatapu Group, Tonga
We moved the mile and a half from the inner harbor in Nuku’alofa this morning to an anchorage off Pangaimotu (pahng-eye-MOH-too) Island. The name means Royal Island and is owned by the Royal Family. It is beautiful here. The motu is a small, mostly uninhabited, palm-covered motu that is completely surrounded by a white sand beach that slopes into beautiful turquoise water. The thatched-roofed Pangaimotu Island Resort is on the southwest tip of the island. The total picture is that of the perfect South Seas island. And as we sat in the open-sided bar and restaurant tonight watching the sunset, we all knew why we are out here. As Doug of Windcastle said tonight, “This is the stuff dreams are made of.”
We left the inner harbor so that we could do the necessary sea trials to calibrate the new auto pilot. Everything seems to be working just right except that our steering is very stiff. That’s nothing new, but we are concerned that the tight steering might have been a contributing factor to burning out the auto pilot motor. Mark will spend more time tomorrow checking the steering mechanism and then we will just have to hope that we can make it to New Zealand before anymore problems arise.
Once we arrived and got settled, Doug of Windcastle came over to start comparing weather information. I already spend an hour and half of every morning listening to and recording boat locations and weather. Mark spends at least that much time each day studying the new weather information we receive. And now we need to start listening to detailed New Zealand weather reports at least once a day and begin downloading weather faxes a few times a day. Figuring out this weather thing surely takes a bit of time.
At this moment our current thinking is that we would leave here on Sunday morning. After tomorrow morning’s weather reports, we should be ready to e-mail our weather router, Bob McDavitt in New Zealand, and see what he has to say about our departure date. By Friday, we should have a pretty good idea of when we will be leaving. Until then, we will continue to study the weather, clean the bottom of the boat again, and take the local ferry into Nuku’alofa to continue our explorations there.
By the way, if we hadn’t had our auto pilot problems we would probably be in New Zealand tonight. Quantum Leap arrived and Procyon and Wind Pony were only 46 miles out at 8:00 this morning. The only report we heard from them other than position and wind speed was that the weather is COLD! Savior Vivre made it in yesterday and they said the same thing. Jade should be in tomorrow and that will complete the arrivals of those we would have been traveling with. Congratulations to our friends on a safe arrival.
by Judy Handley | Nov 2, 2006 | Sailing Logs Year 1, Tonga, Tongatapu |
Day 380, Year 1: Time
Day: Thursday, November 2, 2006
Weather: Overcast
Location: Pangaimotu Island, Tongatapu Group, Tonga
We spent our day learning as much as we could about New Zealand weather reports. This includes listening to “The Rag of the Air” cruiser net from 0800 to 0900 local time, and then listening to New Zealand Taupo Radio weather reports at 2133 UTC which is 1033 local time. All of a sudden everything is in universal time and we have to add 13 hours. Next we accessed our email and got our Fleet Codes for today. This is a list of numbers that we copy and paste into a program called WIAC and it magically turns those numbers in to a weather map showing fronts, highs, lows, etc. We also get our GRIB files each day via email. These show us wind patterns and can be over-layed on our navigation program to show us what the winds will be like along our passage route. At 1130 am local time, it was time to download the first weather fax of the day. It was listed as valid for November 1, 2006 at 1800 UTC. At first we thought it was old data, but then we realized that if we added the 13 hours, we got 0700 am local time on November 2. That’s today here. What a world we live in out here. I’m lucky if I ever know when to do what. We actually had to make an Excel spreadsheet of the different times during the day when we have to be on the radio or computer getting information during this passage to New Zealand. We have to leave the computer on from 1130 in the am to 1600 in the pm to get all of the different weather faxes. They download automatically if the computer is left on. In addition to all of this, when we are on passage we will have to check into the Pacific Seafarer’s Net at 1630 (4:30 pm local time) and into Russell Radio in New Zealand at 1900 (7:00 pm local time). I’m already exhausted. And one more note on the time. I got an email from my daughter Heather last night explaining that you guys have gone off Daylight Savings Time, so now I only have to add six hours and subtract one 24 hour day to the time here to figure out what time it is back home. At least that is fairly straightforward.
So knowing what time it is out here can be confusing. And then the time it takes to wait to make a passage can be frustrating. We got an email from Bob McDavitt in New Zealand late today that told us to put time on hold. In other words, we need to wait. Our weather window is not here and might not be for quite a few days. We are still going to hold on to November 7 as a departure date, but we won’t know about that until Sunday. So maybe Tonga is the place where time stands still!
by Judy Handley | Nov 3, 2006 | Sailing Logs Year 1, Tonga, Tongatapu |
Day 381, Year 1: Weather, Weather, Weather
Date: Friday, November 3, 2006
Weather: Partly Sunny and Very Windy
Location: Pangaimotu Island, Tongatapu Group, Tonga
The saga continues. All anyone can talk about is the weather and right now it is not cooperating. There is another tropical depression in the upper Southwest Pacific and could actually develop into the second cyclone/hurricane of the season. It is windy, windy, windy here. Thank goodness we are in a very protected anchorage. Just outside the anchorage there are white caps, but it is calm here behind the island of Pangaimotu.
On this morning’s Coconut Net, boats in this part of the world heading to New Zealand were asked to check in and give their departure date. There must have been about 30 boats saying that they were leaving here on November 7. Looks like we will have quite a flotilla. We took the Pangaimotu Resort ferry into Nuku’alofa today to extend our Visas. We will have been here in Tonga for 30 days on Sunday, and even though we will check out early next week, we felt that we needed to be legal. Besides, it gave us an excuse to meet the brother of Nia who emailed us from American Samoa last week. Nia’s full name is Lavinia Langi-Sefuiva. We thought she was a he until we received a second enail. Sorry Nia. She wrote to tell us her brother works at Immigration here and today we got to meet him. We love these connections.
Sylvie of Windcastle went into town with us today, and we had a great time shopping and celebrating the day. We spent the evening at the Pangaimotu Resort in the company of other cruisers. Tomorrow we plan to clean the bottom of the boat AGAIN. That will give us an excuse to be in the water much of the day. I look forward to that.
