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.