NZ to Tonga passage, day 8 and 9

Yay, we're finally having really warm weather! It's now consistently about 25 degrees during the day and still over 20 at night time, so clothes are getting much more scarce now. Yesterday we even took down the sail and took turns holding onto the ladder and dipping ourselves in the ocean. At 21 degrees water temperature it wasn't warm, but nice and fresh. We're in the middle of the Tonga Trench, so it was pretty mindboggling to 'swim' in 8-9 km depth!

Day 7 and 9 continued to be very light and a bigger swell developed (possibly from a big low around the South Island, glad we're not there...). The swell together with 3-6 knots of wind from all over the stern quarters made for very slow speed (under 2 knots) and the main sail continued to pop and bang, very frustrating, so we gave in and finally motored throughout the whole night. This morning the wind finally filled in and we are having a lovely 12 knots SSE breeze (tradewind!!!) and are doing 6 knots. Today we also saw our first ship since Gisborne. Saw and saw, our AIS told us a freighter was 12 miles ahead of us, too far to spot with our own eyes. It was the most excitement that happened all day and we both jumped up when the AIS alarm beeped.

We have decided on going straight up to Vava'u and then hopefully visit the Ha'apai group later on.

Position: 22,26,1 S and 175,00,6 W
1040 miles so far. (103 miles daily average the last 2 days, again exactly the same as last report!!) 240 miles to go to Vava'u (only 60 to Tongatapu, the bottom of Tonga). This means we might get to Vava'u on Tuesday, of course depending on the weather.
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NZ - Tonga passage, day 3 to 7

We missed getting day 3 and 4 update out last time we downloaded the weather, so this little update will cover 5 days. They are actually really hard to distinguish from each other and it's hard to believe we have already been out 7 days.

We have had almost all westerly winds, ranging from 15-25 knots almost close hauled (and waves splashing over Sophia) to southerlies. Overall it has eased more and more every day, the last two-three days we have been bobbing along to a 3-7 knot WNW'erly and our speed has ranged from 2 knots to 7.5 knots. There's soft rolling ocean swell, but it's not bad at all. It did take us at least 3 days before we both felt fine and had all our appetite back.

The sea temperature is now 21 degrees. When we remembered to check a day out of Gisborne, it was 18 degrees, so it's a good improvement. It's 20-25 degrees during the day, so we're still wearing clothes, but increasingly less. We have worked out a good watch system starting at 8pm, where we each get 3 hours sleep twice during the night, supplemented by day time napping. We have gorgeous sun sets and sun rises and I (Astrid) am taking way too many photos.

All in all, we're very happy out here in our own little 'bubble'. We're a tiny spec on a massive ocean (still haven't seen any other boats), at the mercy of the weather and winds, and we have no idea what's going on in the rest of the world, but we're content without the knowledge.

By day 4 this was our status:
522 miles so far (262 since last report), so amazingly steady speed! 575 more to go
Position: 30, 48, 0 S and 177, 41, 7 W. Parallel to but about 50 miles west of the Kermadecs

Now, day 7 it's:
807 miles so far (day 5-7, 285 miles, daily average 103 miles (corrected for the 6 hours missing to make up exact 24 hour slots). 290 miles to go.
Position: 26, 13, 3, S and 176, 02, 2 W.

We actually haven't decided where to clear in yet, we have the options of either Nukualoafa, Lifuka (Ha'apai), or right up to Vava'u. We'll make the decision when we're closer and it will depend on weather among other things. The 290 miles to go is to Tongatapu. Vava'u is obviously longer than that.
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NZ - Tonga passage, day 1 and 2

Thursday 21 June we finally got our weather window and left Gisborne and we have now been 48 hours underway. So far all is good. We started out in a 10-15 knots southerly, which build to 25 knots when we neared East Cape and stayed around the 20-25 knots the first night and day. This has been typical of most of our other trips, so we're fine, although the bouncy sea means we're both a bit green and mostly just sleeps when not on watch. This second night the wind eased and we even had to motor a few hours. We know there's some NW coming so we're trying to get as far north as possible, as it should be lighter there. All today a westerly has slowly been building in strength and is now close to 20 knots.

It's very exciting finally to be underway and on such a big passage. We haven't seen any ships since Gisborne, just endless blue waves. We were visited by a pod of dolphins yesterday and we still have some sea birds around us. It's surprisingly warm, well, compared to our Stewart Island trip in February, so we're quite content just wearing one or two layers of wool when below.

This post is an email sent via our satellite phone, and will hopefully automatically post itself on the blog and our facebook page should also be notified. We will not be able to see any emails or comments until we find internet in Tonga (except emails to our sat phone email address).

260 miles so far (average speed of 5.4 knots) , 837 more to go to the bottom of Tonga.
Position: 34,49,4 S and 179,40,9 W


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Christchurch to Gisborne

29th of May we finally left Christchurch! Only about 2 months later than planned!!! And three weeks after our farewell party. It truly is an enormeous effort getting ready for departure (closing down a sail loft at the same time does not make it any easier), despite how ready we thought we were when we came back from Stewart Island early March. But we are as ready as we'll ever be now and even finished some less important jobs while waiting for a weather window.

It didn't look like a super good window so we didn't make the finaly call to leave until two hours before, pretty much just when the southerly front hit and it was hailing! But, as usual, the worst passed and two hours later by 9pm it was not raining, though it sure was cold! We're extremely impressed that a good bunch of our friends turned up to wave goodbye. Thanks so much :-)

Un uneventful trip and 27 hours later we arrived at Wellington around midnight. Phil had been through with Sophia on the delivery trip and we had both been there a few months earlier for the Wellington-Nelson race on Krakatoa, so it wasn't a problem arriving in the dark. Thanks to Gordy and Matty G at Duffy's Rigging for letting us stay at their berth. That warm showers was priceless! Wellington is such a cool city and we were right in the middle of it. One of the best things about the North Island is Burger Fuel. Four different kinds of veggie burgers and the BEST kumera fries, yummy!

We left at 9pm that same day we had arrived, the tide happened to be pretty perfect and a new southerly front was due to hit at 3am, so hopefully we could make it round the courner of Cape Palliser and get up the coast a littel bit before then. Of course the reality didn't quite work out that way, as the southerly was weaker and slower to arrive. That was totally OK though and we had a great first day out with beautiful weather and only 10-15 knots! 30 knots southerly arrived just after dark (of course) and lasted most of the night, but eased a little bit later on. We arrived around 7pm in Gisborne Friday night, almsot 48 hours after departing Wellington. Again a dark entry, but we had been shown by several people on charts and googlemap how to enter and it was quite straight forward. Only one big wave shoved up out of nowhere and scared us a bit (well, Astrid...), but that was it.

Well, it's now 2 1/2 weeks later and we're still in Gisborne! It takes a lot of patience to get a good weather window. Well, as least one that doesn't involve up to 55 knots headwind! Two lows (first one a really big one) have passed, and we're now fairly certain we got a decent window tomorrow, but we'll are yet to make the final call, we might wait a few more days and let some of the northerlies pass. 

About Sophia

Sophia is a Davidson 35, designed in 1981 by Laurie Davidon, a New Zealand yacht designer, most famous for being one of the designers for New Zealand's America's Cup boats, which successfully challenged and defended the Cup in 1995 and 2000.

The Davidson 35 is a New Zealand built production boat, designed as a fast cruising yacht with no concession to rating rules. It is thought that it was the first production yacht built with a walk through transom. Dave Blundell (builder of the Davidson 28) built the first 10 in solid GRP, and then Export Yachts Ltd brought the moulds and built the next 30 or so in GRP Balsa Core.

LOA: 10.66 m (or 35 feet)

LWL: 9.14 m

BOA: 3.31 m

Draft: 1.8 m

Displacement: 4727 kg

Ballast: 1955 kg

Sail Area Upwind: 54 m2

Sophia is one of the later ones, built in 1986. She was commissioned by an Auckland architect who named her Sophia, the explanation being something about beautiful Italian curves. The SY means sailing yacht. Also commonly used is SV for sailing vessel. We actually bought Sophia directly off that first owner, but she had been owned by someone else for a few years, before he bought her back again.

We bought Sophia in late October 2010. We had been looking for a cruising boat for over half a year (and fallen in love with a fantastic Swan S&S 36, which unfortunately turned out to be a total dud, so we had to let her go). After that experience we (well, mainly Astrid) tried to keep much lower expectations and feelings for boats. It actually even took some convincing by Phil to get Astrid into the Davidson 35’s. She has totally come around to liking them now though, especially Sophia.

The furthest Sophia had ever sailed was to the Bay of Islands and her set-up was very basic (the architect would probably say minimalistic), so it took a bit of work getting her ready for the trip to Christchurch. Some of the bigger jobs were cleaning diesel bug out of the tank, fitting an auto-pilot, changing engine mounts and adding a spray dodger. Phil sailed Sophia from Auckland down the east coast of the North Island to Picton with a couple of mates, as Astrid couldn’t get off work. The combination of the boy trip and Sophia being very light with not much gear, meant that she achieved her so far unbeaten record speed of 16 knots surfing downwind.

Sophia stayed in the Marlborough Sounds until February 2011. Phil’s parents live in Waikawa, so almost each weekend we did the four hours drive up to Picton. We did more work to her, but also just enjoyed cruising the Sounds.

It was when she came to Christchurch that the real work started! She spent 4-5 months on the hard over the winter and we worked non-stop! Overall she was in good condition, but as already mentioned quite basic. Below is a massive list of all the work we have done in roughly a year’s time. We did all the work ourselves, with the exception of very few things such as stainless steel jobs and difficult wood work.

But first a bunch of photos. When I read boat blogs I usually miss photos of boats, especially the interior. Not sure if people either forget it, or don't want to show their 'personal home' (which is what cruising boats really are).  Here is Sophia, of course very tidy for the occasion.

Sophia during one of the races in the winter series before she got all the work done to her, looking very bare...

Above deck:

Replace halyards

New rigging

Bigger wire lifelines

Install roller furler

Fix bent stanchion

Service winches

Wires for open transom

Make new washboard and teak surrounds for it

Make new teak hand hold rails

Make teak handholds for cockpit lockers

New anchors and chain

Rearrange nav lights

Fix gas locker

Bigger gas bottles

New Sophia graphic

New red stripe

Install hand bilge pump

Fix mast leak

Anchor locker modify floor level

Make bimini

Make spray hood

Make arch for radar, solar and wind

Below deck:

Add engine insulation

Change engine mounts

Change engine rubber couplings

Replace alternator

Replace thermostat

Replace fuel pump

Add hatch to saloon

Add solar went to head

New vinyl floor instead of carpet

Rail in front of stove

Make insert for double v-berth

Organise port quarter storage

Make book shelf & lockers in saloon

Make shelf in v-berth

Make shelf in quarter berth

Make extra shelves in galley

Teak skirting on bottom around saloon for old water damage

Make new instruments box

Change mast drainage system

Change to LED lights

Close off locker opening to cockpit

Painting all interior and lockers

Replace all hoses, add water filter

New water tanks

Install holding tank

New toilet seal and change pump location

New bathroom faucet

Electronics:

Install anchor windlass

Install water maker

Install wind instruments

Install depth/speed transducers

Install electric fridge

Install radar

Install VHF

Install AIS

Install solar panels

Install wind turbine

Install float switch for bilge

Set up sat phone

Out of the water jobs

Soda blast anti-foul to vinylester coating and build up new layers

New anodes

Take off rudder

All new through-hulls and sea cocks

Cut & polish

Sand and varnish tiller

Sewing jobs:

Main sail

No 1 head sail

No 2 head sail

No 3 head sail

Code Zero

Try sail

Storm jib

Squab covers

Bimini

Spray dodger
Sail cover (lazy cradle)

Stove bum strap

Cockpit squabs

Rain catcher/deck shades

Wind scoop

Fitted sheets for mattresses

Curtains

Harnesses

Covers for horseshoe buoys

Winch covers

Mosquito netting

Stewart Island part 10, Paterson Inlet

This is the final Stewart Island post, so I thought it would be nice to show the Stewart Island map again and draw on it where we went. Please excuse my wiggly paint pencil. All up we spent about 4 weeks on Stewart Island and almost another week on getting there and back. We stayed on average 2 days at one anchorage. It looks like we missed big parts of Paterson Inlet, but the bits we missed is either tidal or commercial fish farming. If you're on a tight time schedule I'd probably recommend only going to Port Pegasus, but do bring all your groceries for the whole time with you, because the only little shop on Stewart Island is in Oban.

By Millers Beach in Paterson Inlet you can find the ruins of an old ship yard facility that serviced the whaling chaser boats. There was a whole heap of propellers and Phil tried to see if he could grab one for Sophia, seeing that they were just lying there littering the beach.

Around Oban there are tons of walks you can do, one to suit all level, right from 20 minutes, to whole days. We did a coastal walk which was just a couple of hours long. It was a bit of a spur of the moment decision, so we were just in our jeans and shoes, not boots and (dirty) 'tramping' clothes. It was pretty funny encountering other trampers who were fully kitted with boots, walking sticks and the whole shebang. It was seriously a highway compared to the tramping we did in Port Pegasus. Super wide tracks and extremely well maintained. We were appropriately dressed, all others we total overkills :-)

 Thule bay below, very idyllic but a few quite abandoned boats sitting there.

Ulva Island is a predator free (or almost) island in the middle of Paterson Inlet. Predator free means teaming bird life. There's a little ferry running visitors back and forth every few hours, or you can just anchor off it. We anchored in Sydney Cove (where the fun swing was) and spent several hours walking every single piece of track on the island.

For our return trip to Christchurch we ended up stopping in both Dunedin and Akaroa. We left Stewart Island into a 30-35 knots southerly (not forecasted quite that windy, but partly also our own fault for getting a bit antsy to leave) and had a fast and uncomfortable trip to Dunedin. We both had to make sacrifices to Neptune that night, me for the first time ever I think. I was actually keen to keep going, as I just wanted to get home at this point and get it over and done with. Forecast wasn't going to be worse than what we already had, and it was doable and we managed our watches just fine. Luckily Phil got me persuaded to stop, because it was really nice to get some proper food, a warm shower and a good night's sleep before continuing. And then we also got to sail the next leg with Meltdown, a local Young 88 heading up to the South Island nationals in Akaroa. Meltdown is in between a couple of waves crests in the photo below. It was still maybe 25 knots southerly. After a day in Akaroa, we went round the peninsula to Lyttelton, mostly motoring into light headwinds.

Phil came back to a lot of work at the loft (not quite part of the plan, but it's hard to close up the only sail loft in Christchurch), and we also had heaps more work to do on Sophia. Originally we were only supposed to be in Christchurch a few weeks, maximum a month, but now over two months later, we're still here! It's always like that with boat work though, things takes at least 3 times longer than you think, so I really should have expected it. But, we're almost ready now, we passed our category 1 inspection, and now just have a bunch of smaller projects to finish (and a few bigger ones!) and then we just be waiting for a weather window. Yay, I can't wait for warm weather and water!

Stewart Island part 9, kiwi spotting

One of the top high-lights of the whole trip for me was to see Kiwis. They are a New Zealand national symbol and everyone loves these funny little birds that can't fly. If you ask around, I'm sure only 1 in 10 kiwis (as in the people) would have seen one, and most then only in captivation. Stewart Island apparently is one of the best places to see them. Most see them on Mason Beach on the west coast, which is part of the big northern circuit tramp (or if you're rich you fly). You can also go on a tour with Bravo Adventure and see wild kiwis on Ocean Beach. Or if you're lucky enough to have sailed your own boat to Stewart Island, and are lucky to get the DOC permit visit Ocean Beach by yourself (quite a mission to get the (free) DOC permit, we were lucky to get one), you can simply go there yourself! You're allowed to go there during the day, but from 6pm to 6am you need a permit. We first went there during the day, and that itself is a lovely trip. There's a wharf in Glory Bay on the eastern side and there's a short walking track over to Ocean Beach which is on the main coast of Stewart Island, just south of the entrance to Paterson Inlet. It's quite a long and wide beach and we were quite excited when we spotted these prints.

We went back a few days later with our permit and after the tour operator had finished his tour (after 11pm), and weren't quite sure what to expect. Would we be able to spot any kiwis on the big beach? We certainly wouldn't be able to hear them beforehand, as the surf was quite noisy. Our dim lights (not to disturb the kiwis) didn't help a whole lot. But suddenly we spotted one a bit ahead of us. WAUW. I was so excited, I couldn't stop pulling at Phil's arm. The kiwi couldn't have cared less about our presence, it was very busy picking out bugs from the seaweed. It's impossible to take photos in the dark without a flash, so I only got some video of it. The photo below is a snap shop of the video, obviously very poor quality, but it's a kiwi :-) Don't worry about the light beam from our torch, it really was very weak and from a good 5 meters away. I was surprised how big it actually was, and very round (or fat?) too, kind of like a soccer ball! And a big long beak. We continued along the beach and saw several other ones, equally busy eating insect.

A couple of hunters were staying in a hut in Glory Bay, and one of them was tell us about how they sometimes track something noisy through the bush, slowly closing in on what they think is a deer. When they are really close they look all over the place and just can't spot the deer. Then they look down and there's this little kiwi clumsily walking around, making a lot of noise. Very funny and cute!

Stewart Island part 8, wildlife

Stewart Island is renowned for its wild life and it really was spectacular. Tons of birds and prolific sea life. While you may have seen the odd one during the previous posts, I have tried to gather them all in here.

                                                                                                                                

Starting with the birds. Lots and lots of Bellbirds around. They sing lovely songs, ALL the time. And to each other. The one is the photo below was singing with two other bell birds nearby. I have also added a shaky video (partly the wind’s fault, not all mine...).

Next are the albatrosses, or Mollymawks to be exact. Amazing and impressive creatures. They provides hours of entertainment during watches while at sea. The way they soar over the waves, and hardly ever flap their wings make them very majestic. I think they were used to feeding from fishing boats coming into Port Pegasus, as we had several of them following us for a while, each time landing right behind Sophia. 

Oystercatcher are noisy and territorial birds hanging out on the shore. Almost all the ones we saw were black, but many are also while and black. I like their super bright orange beaks. There's a photo of a mussel covered rock further down, so there's definitely no shortage of food for them.

Little Robins were cute and quite tame, especially on Ulva Island (second photo). I'm not sure if what were saw were South Island Robins, or Stewart Island Robins, possibly both. 

The Kaka is a forest parrot, related to the Keas. There were lots and lots of them around Oban, so probably they like humans and the food that goes along with that, just like Keas.

We only ever saw a couple of Yellow-eyed Penguins in the water a distance away from Sophia. They always duck into the water right as I get my camera out, just like Little Blue Penguins. We had hoped to see them on land as well, they must have been hiding. This particular one was at our anchorage in Sailors Rest in Paterson Inlet.

Before moving on from the birds, you might wonder if we saw any kiwis! The answer is YES, but that story deserves a whole separate post (plus this post is already super long).

In the Magog tramp post I mentioned we saw sharks. Sophia was anchored just inside Seal Creek (also called Cook's Arm) behind a little island. The water wasn't quite as clear as some the other anchorages, but you could still see the bottom when it was about 4 meters deep. Anyway, when dinghing along further into the creek, looking for the start of the track, we suddenly saw a big shark-looking fish near the shore. We turned the dinghy around and tried to see it again. We were wondering what it was. A little further along we saw another big something , and agreed it sure did look like a shark. Pretty cool! Then suddenly there were at least 10 of them swimming around on the bottom, just 3-4 meters deep! Wowsa. The bigger ones looked bigger than Cherry (our dinghy, 2 meters long)! They were greyish with white spots and a broad nose and only a very small dorsal fin. We both got very excited and tried to turn around and spot more and get photos, and we did see a few more, but not the same amount. It's also really hard to get a photo through the water. But you can definitely see a grey something in the photo. We later found out they are Broadnose Sevengill Sharks.

Seafood lovers would love Stewart Island. Tons of mussels everywhere, as well as paua (abalone) and scallops if you know where to look. Unfortunately Phil and I aren't big fans (read what crime we did here).

 Stewart Island also has lots of Sea Lions and Seals (bit tricky to tell the difference, but apparently sea lions have ear flaps which seals don't). This one below was really cute, super curious, he (or she?) slowly came closer and closer, popping its head up every so often to look again. By then we had come ashore and he was halfway out of the water thoroughly checking us out.

However, our first experience with seal (lions) at Waterlily Bay wasn't quite as cute and fuzzy. When Phil got in the dinghy to get the stern line set up, this big sea lion came charging out from the beach. Phil quickly retreated back to Sophia and he (gotta be a he :-) ) swam right out to us and underneath the dinghy. He then went into the other beach and Phil tried again, but with the same result! It was pretty obvious that this was his bay and we were not welcome. Finally he left the bay and we could get our stern line set up. After this experience we always carried our fog horn with us when we went ashore, but luckily we never needed it.

If we're not seafood lovers, but we love fish, and especially Blue Cod. Yummy yum. And they were so easy to catch! Definitely not like the Marlborough Sounds. I had to restrict Phil when he went fishing, only one or two. We had fish as much as we wanted, pretty much every second day, or more even. The limit on Stewart Island is 30 a day per person! According to Phil, the fisherman on Sophia, they live on rock, so often you just got to dinghy a bit away from your anchorage (usually sand) to a rocky outcrop and you'll be able to see them, the water is that clear and there are that many. Phil would usually use some soft bait and catch a Spotty and use that as bait for the Blue Cod.

We had thought we'd snorkel more than we did. We only went once together, and Phil once by himself. We had lots of excuses though: cold water (brrrr!), angry sea lions, swarms of red jelly fish with tentacles and sharks :-) We eventually did go and it was actually really nice (albeit a bit cold), heaps of little fish, and lots of big kelpies and spotties. Phil also speared a delicious butterfish (and I cut his hair immediately after taking this photo!).