Commodore
October 31, 2023

Wednesday 1 Nov – heading straight as the wind dies

Besides watching some big squalls go by it was a comfortable night’s sail. Roy was definitely feeling perkier from his sea sickness today. With the wind dying we are on a direct straight line to our destination in NZ. We have had sunshine and rain, it is definitely getting colder. Jumpers on during the day, what a shock! The sea temp is down to 20 degrees.

Early afternoon the wind died, the sails came down and the engines fired up. The waves are still pretty confused and bouncy but have definitely come down in size and the ride is getting more and more comfortable. A lot of boats are leaving for NZ from Tonga and Fiji now, the weather looks good for them, but they have all been warned they are potentially motoring at least half the passage, with that in mind we think we are doing pretty well.

The day passes pretty quickly in between naps. Rowan has to fill out endless forms for entry into NZ. We also each have to fill out an online form, plus our entry visa. The Bio Security list means I have to declare all our food stuffs, listing all seeds nuts, spices, sea shells, wooden objects, outdoor gear etc etc. We have been told to be very honest and thorough, for an easier inspection. My aloe vera plants are going to be interesting! Plus my little collection of unusual seed pods I’ve collected along the way. Plus all my seed jewellery, and shell collections. We have to declare everything, which meant I had to delve under the guest cabin bed to do a booze infantry, I was very pleased to note that I had 10 bottles of Gin left while Rowan only has 5 bottles of Rum left! We usually buy the same quantity of each. I counted 20 bottles of wine, still from our stock we took on board when we picked the boat up in France! On the down side I discovered a whole lot of tonic water cans had perished and leaked creating a ghastly mouldy mess. I thought we were going to have a nasty stain left in the cupboard but was very impressed that my precious Flash Bleach (I bring a couple of bottles back to the boat each year – nothing like it for stains) and magic eraser got it all back to looking perfect. These tonic cans need drinking before they perish and with 10 bottles of gin it looks like we could do a lot of celebrating when we finally get to NZ, which is now looking like the early hours of Saturday morning.