Archive for June, 2011
We waited a week for this weather to come, but it won’t go away! We had NE 40Kts last night gusting well over 50, woke up to calm and sunny sky this AM, however all the weather charts say that was just part one. It’s now mid day and the rain is back winds are rising again in the predicted NW meaning the low is moving…but slowly.
Each day the predictions on the 7 day forecast change slightly and you can see the changes from the Sunday picture I posted on the 16 June, very subtle but to the trained eye I see a better slant on the wind (more Westerly at the top). I will look at it again tonight and in the AM and see if there are any new changes and base our 1200 departure on that and the Sailmail grib files as well.
We will most definitely see some heavy going to start the voyage but we will punch through the 25-30kt stuff to the NNW and we will see some light and variable then SW winds for a short period, until another low pressure comes from under us with North winds!!! But only for a day and then we will see the influence of the High coming over Australia, and then things should turn to a more predictable south easterly flow. These are my predictions based on available info, anyone else on the same trip should do their own predictions. Crusoe is a big strong steel boat, built for heavy conditions, we also take that into account when planning this type of routing. We know from previous experience that crossing the ditch is always a challenge, but soon enough we will be in the tropics and the Tasman becomes a distant memory.
With any luck this will be the last posting for a few weeks. We have an appointment to clear customs at 1200 tomorrow, and we will get what we get weather wise, enough of this cold and wet winter weather, batton down the hatches…..we are headed to the tropics!
This is the little system we have been waiting to pass, you will see changes daily by going to http://www.metvuw.com/forecast/forecast.php?type=rain®ion=nz&noofdays=7 this is the 7 day forecast, we have seen it change little since it first popped up in North Queensland and worked it’s way down the Tasman. We will still have some strong winds for the first few days, but favorable direction, and a BFH (Big Fat High) comes in behind this with moderate SE winds, looks like we made a good decision to wait for this to pass, as you can see on the south Island they will have 40Kt winds, and we did not know where we would meet these winds had we left earlier. We will keep you posted with at least one more update before Sunday, this picture will change every 6 hours on the website, this is not a dynamic picture (from 16/6/2011).
Our friends Guy and Candy are getting married while we are at sea, if you guys read this CONGRATULATIONS!
Anyone with suggestions on a Blog unrelated to us or Crusoe let me know and I’ll start it up. Of course it will be from our next stop in Cairns, North Queensland Australia.
Well….not so imminent, as we continue to wait, the little low that developed last week on the North Queensland coast is now a week away, and has turned into a major league low, it spread out and joined another area of convection last week and is now forecast to cross NZ Saturday and Sunday, giving us a possible departure date of around Monday 20th. We should see SW 20 kt. by the time we make it out of the bay, http://www.metvuw.com/forecast/forecast1.php?type=rain®ion=nz&tim=168 in this picture it shows Northerly but as the low continues East the winds will come around to the SW, and we hope after a few days northbound we shall start seeing the effects of the high over Australia.
This picture was taken this AM by Raewyn at Ashby’s Boatyard, we decided to do some work since we are stuck in Opua, we will replace both headstays today (two boats recently returned from attempts to go North with broken headstays, and a mate of ours lost his mast in the round North Island race a few months ago…..paranoid I know, but they are due for replacement anyway). John and Pam will notice the 2 vent scoops over the bow locker drain holes we installed yesterday.
Nice to be on a dock for a while as we live as a self contained unit on our mooring, this means no gen set running twice a day, batteries fully charged and all systems are go. Nice way to get the small jobs done while we sit out the wx, in between showers.
We are working on getting a Sat phone hooked up, we bought a Iridium satellite phone and have signed on to UUplus service, we are able to use the Internet and receive emails with a compression software program that makes it more economical to surf the internet, not to mention the added safety to having communications in case of an emergency or breakdown, We hope the compression software is here before we leave as it is shipped UPS tomorrow (California time), being a day behind us it will be tight to get here by close of business Friday, if we get it set up you will be able to send us free text messages, or if you feel rich you could even call us at around $10.00 a min!
We are now anxious to get underway, as we had a good window go bad with the formation of a deepening low off the North Queensland coast starting to come our way. Unfortunately this sets us back another week! With our limited time frame to make Darwin before I return to work, means we may spend the next 6 weeks of my work rotation in Cairns instead of Darwin. Either way is OK but makes allot of pressure for us to get to Malaysia on the next trip as we still have to get to Darwin to clear out of Australia. and takes the leisurely aspect out of the sail through Indonesia and Malaysia. To add insult to injury…there is no assurance there will be a good window after this next low comes through, it’s not so much the low and the 30K winds that come with it its the Northerly direction! http://www.metvuw.com/forecast/forecast1.php?type=rain®ion=nz&tim=78 this is Fridays wx pic with the mentioned northerlies, then we wait for the next low to meander it’s way through. The waiting game is frustrating, after all the preparations we are in a holding pattern…….more later as we get closer to an actual departure date.
We are looking forward to visiting our friends in Cairns Steve and Helen Dominikovic, and my work mate Gerry who lives in Trinity Beach, plus my friend Aubrey and his son will be traveling to Cairns, I would have missed them on the original schedule, but looks like we may hook up after all!
