NZ to Aus – Days 11&12
The visiting bird wasn’t sighted again after early morning on Thursday, so it must have recovered and taken off. Meanwhile Rusalka made good progress toward Newcastle.
I thought I’d assemble some clips of news I received from Alex (in the form of Whatsapp texts sent via Iridium) over the last two days.
Thursday, 3 April (Day11):
Sailing at 4.8kts in 6.5kts of wind, gentle seas, sunny.
Laundry day – used 80L water in last 24hrs. Ran watermaker for 3 hours, but forgot to divert the valve to water tank – 150l down the drain!
After gybing main, Boris noticed the pin holding the boom end of the rodkicker coming out. The split pin holding it in place was missing. Gybed back, rolled in main, mucked about with topping lift and rodkicker, put in new pin. Unfurled main, gybed back, and underway again. Hot and dripping sweat from humidity and heat.
Did fuel transfer from jerry cans – went well. Have enough fuel to motor all the way if needed, including extra grunt for the expected headwinds and still have generous reserve.
Friday, 4 April (Day 12):
(I asked if they were running out of food as I had only precooked 12 dinners) Heaps of chocolate, bickies and snack bars left, running out of sliced meat and cheese. All desperate for a cold beer! Roish counting down the time to when she can walk in a straight line for more than 40 feet.
Sailing beautifully with full main and genoa, gently heeling, dinner in the cockpit with a beautiful sunset. Started engine later.
We also exchanged a number of texts organising arrival details, and planning the next leg of the trip.
One nagging problem that Alex wants to address in Newcastle is an intermittent problem he’s seeing when starting the engine where no cooling water is expelled. It’s not the impeller and he hasn’t been able to trace the cause. He’s able to get it going by briefly backflushing the watermaker to push fresh water into the engine, but we’ll be looking at resolving this in port.
This morning (Saturday 5 April, Day 13) they have about 80nm of motorsailing into 15-25kt headwinds to reach Newcastle. It won't be pleasant, but it's the final stretch. I'll report again as they close in on their destination.
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