Rob Lydon

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.

Nice calm seas, not a lot of wind. Was interesting going thru the Somosomo Strait as the currents & wind would change due to the various reef or land effects. Went in bands then calmer.

Great night sail!! Following seas & decent winds. Rob, Paul & I shared night watches. Moon was out part of the time too.

We had to make a “pit” stop for Rob to change a fuel filter so both engines worked while going thru the passage & anchoring. All was great with the engines after the change out.

Well was certainly interesting sailing for the first 3 days. We expected this rough weather though as it is not ideal time to head north from NZ. Rob had to shore up our furler line as it appears to be fraying to the point of breaking. Got good picture of the sea state while he was out there! 😳 Days 4 -8 were glorious & so much better even when the seas were large, they were just big rollers.

Great day for flying a kite initially. The new Parasailor is AMAZING! Quiet and fast. This filled a “hole” in our sail suite- we had no good options for deep downwind- anything past 135° TWA was not possible. Now it’s really easy! We were having so much fun we forgot to turn on recording! When we got out a couple of hours, the wind built and we went to a regular sail configuration. Average speed for the trip based on our log meter was 7.3 knots SOG, with a max of 13.4. That includes time to deploy, change and drop sails. LOVE this boat!!!

Fun sail in calm seas with great wind.

Day sail from Marsden Cove. First outing with new standing and running rigging. Overall a success. However. Shakedown revealed numerous small deviations from previous configuration. Took a bit to get things sorted. Then we got to relax. We’ll need to address the electronics and navigation systems next. Lots of little errors which need to be corrected. ‘Cause little things add up, and with navigation a few degrees off makes the difference between getting where you want and ending up in BFE!