Thursday November 16, 2000 en route Opua

We had a fairly lazy morning as Vlad did not want to leave S. Minerva until the tide was down a bit to make lifting the anchor easier. In fact when we did lift it, there was absolutely no problem. We think we had been set in heavy sand and managed to avoid tangling with coralheads.

So by 1215 we were off again, on our way to New Zealand. The wind had increased overnight (it is a good job we got the foil done yesterday!) and we were sailing along at 7 knots with two reefs in the main and just the staysail for the first little while. Then the wind eased and we pulled out the yankee, which unfortunately has a small 1/4 inch hole in it in the third panel from the top. We hope it will be okay – it’s more of a hole than a tear.

At night, which was very clear and a lot colder than we are used to, Orion rose in the east and for the first time we saw the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds, which are distant galaxies, and which look like small, stationary clouds in the night sky.

All the boats left S. Minerva today. FIO OKO and EQUINOX are very close by and GRAY HAWK and PERSIAN LADY are not far behind. CELANDINE and NATIVE DANCER are a bit further back. We chat back and forth on the VHF because all the boats are within 15 miles of each other.

Today for the first time we listened to Tony’s Net, from NZ, and got weather information from John, on Norfolk Island. He does weather for boats on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays and will give individual forecasts, which is great. Lots of boats are using commercial services from NZ for weather routing but you have to have email or inmarsat onboard.

829 miles to go to Opua when we left S. Minerva.  Click here for Day five