At Sea

  • At Sea

    Minerva North

    We’ve been here at North Minerva Reef for a little while now, waiting for a good weather window to make the passage to New Zealand. None has presented itself yet so we’re waiting………………

    All is well. We went for a dive yesterday in the pass and saw a tiger shark – very exciting! Also lots of smaller fish that we’ve never seen before, such as the Palette Surgeonfish, better known as Dory from Finding Nemo 🙂

  • At Sea

    We’ve made it to Minerva!

    We’ve made it to North Minerva Reef and amazingly there are 17 other yachts here! So much for minimal human interference, but at least we have plenty of company. The sun is shining and the waters are crystal clear – I can’t wait to go for a dive and see what’s around. I wonder if the resident tiger shark will make an appearance…?

  • At Sea

    We’re Off!

    And we’re off! The weather forecast over the next week or so is a dynamic piece of modern art. No consistency, order, rhyme or reason and it changes drastically from one day to the next. An opportunity to make the hop to Minerva became apparent but beyond that is anybody’s guess. At any rate we decided to make the most of it and are currently en-route to Minerva North. TongaTapu is 160 miles astern of us and Minerva North is about 80 miles off our port bow. We’ll slow down at some point or heave-to for a few hours in order to ensure an arrival in daylight tomorrow, but for now things are comfortable under a double-reefed mainsail and a third of our jib, and we’re making about five and a half knots.

  • At Sea

    It’s Raining

    It’s raining today in Tonga so we’re having an internet day. We’re currently testing out a new feature which will (hopefully) allow us to post while we’re at sea 🙂

  • At Sea

    A Bit More About Bob

    Greetings all. First of all, Merry Christmas and Happy New Year and all that stuff. I must apologise for having been so useless recently, having not posted anything for quite some time. Fortunately Sarah has picked up the slack 🙂

    I’m just posting this as an FYI – although I haven’t written any actual blog posts recently I have written a rather lengthy reply to a fellow owner of a West Indies 36 who contacted us recently via the comments section. I got a bit carried away in my email to him and ended up writing something that may or may not be of interest to others. It’s a semi-technical account of some of the modifications that I’ve made to Bob, some of the work done to her in order to return her to a state of ship-shape-ness following many years of neglect, some modifications and adaptations made for this voyage specifically (including some of my views on best practices as far as preparations for extended cruising are concerned) and a bit about heavy weather tactics on Bob, since those are the topics that the gentleman asked about. For those interested it can be found at the bottom of the ‘about Bob’ page.