Jana Lydon

The boat mantra is “No adventures, just good times”! But we had adventures- lots of things went wrong, but redundancies saved the trip. We had an idyllic first 3 days- good wind, easy sailing And all going as planned… Then we were presented with a slowly developing set of issues. (Kinda like cooking the proverbial frog slowly, they crept up on us). Electronics became glitchy early on day 4- no wind info or boat speed/heading most of the time, (but occasionally restored on its own). Later that day, the Main GPS went out, so had to use backup plotter and its internal GPS, comparing it with handheld GPS and backup charts. That’s not good, but we can continue. Main VHF had no position info (sourced from failed main GPS), so constantly alarming- turned main VHF off and began using backup VHF, (which unbeknownst to us wasn’t receiving…) Day 4 the autopilot failed, so hand steered for the next 5 days. Then, day 5 the Hydraulic steering got air in lines, so we bled it at sea- it was mostly functional, just spongy. This made hand steering possible, but challenging and fatiguing. At least we didn’t need to use the emergency tiller. Then on day 6, the port bowsprit stay parted (brand new refit, visually normal on inspection prior to leaving Fiji). Wow! That was fun! Lashed it out of the way, and recovered and stowed the Code 0. We were closer to NZ than Fiji, so we kept going. Other issues included: discovered some chafing on the jib furler line- replaced; a reefing block failed at gooseneck- lashed replacement block to mast and continued; deck hatch seals leaking in both the port forward and starboard aft cabins; the salon door latch broke and the ice maker quit (big bummer! LOL). We made it (mostly) happy and without any real mishaps, just more work and much slower passage than planned. This caused us to not be able to execute the “avoidance of heavy weather” plan we had. We had to use the “hang in there, we’ve got this “ plan instead. 5 meter seas and gale force winds are more “adventure” than we want! Now to get repairs and such sorted. We have to decide where to go from here. Have we reached the point of diminishing returns? Should we continue to restore, replace and upgrade? Or should we get OCEAN serviceable and sell? Begin with a newer boat and (hopefully) fewer senescent systems? For now, we’ll clear customs, get the boat settled into a berth and take a week to sort things out and re-assess. For now, we’re thankful for Providence and each other.

Transit back from Namena to Savusavu. Made great time in moderate wind and moderately bumpy seas. Sunny skies. Single reefed, making 7-8 knots in 10-13 knots of wind at 60-80 TWA. Surfed up to 11.6 in a gust of 19 knots… Sailing at its finest!

Lovely sail up from top of Tavenui. Great wind, nice sea state & we made great time to Yanuca island. Last picture is in the bay outside of the village school. Sweet spot.