Minerva to Opua New Zealand 850NM

Well, now that it's officially 2015, we thought we'd better post the final leg of our journey!

From Minerva, I think 8 boats all left on November 1st bound for Opua. Smaller boats like us tended to leave early in the morning. The weather was sunny with a light SE wind. We left with 2 other boats Pamela and Viandante both Crealock 37's, .

Viandante at sail

Kailani is longer and heavier at 42 feet but we seem to sail about the same speed as the Crealocks, we have less sail up and tend to baby our boat with its older sails. By midday we were in our usual position at the back of the pack but we made good time for the first few days nocking off 120-140 NM a day. On day 3 the wind tended toward the south, more on the nose and the problems began....water was getting into the boat somewhere! The water in the bilge rose to near the bottom of the engine so Carolyn manned the hand pump in the cockpit while I turned on the electric one. In no time the water was gone but we couldn't find the source of the leak. We noticed there was water in the anchor locker so we sealed the small cavity where the chain enters the boat through the anchor well. An inspection of all the sea cocks found no problems eliminating those potential sources - so we figured we'd solved the problem by bogging up the anchor well.  The wind had dropped by this time and the bilge remained dry and it wasn't until the next day when the wind picked up that we again had a small but steady stream of water running into the bilge. OK now we were getting worried! We radioed Pamela to let them know we had a bit of a problem which was more of a psychological help than anything else. It was blowing about 20 knots almost on the nose so crawling around the bilge trying to find the leak was miserable.

We discovered the anchor well was again full of water. After watching it for a while, we found that the water wasn't coming in through the top as we'd assumed, but was surging up through the drain hole when the bow impacted the ocean swells- where the water is supposed to go out, it was coming in!  So, each time we hit a wave the water would hydraulic up through the anchor locker drain hole from the ocean. The anchor locker is sealed by design so normally this isn't a problem. In our case however one of the previous owners had run anchor cables through the bottom of the anchor locker. Over time the water had eaten away at the bodgy seal between the bottom of the anchor well and the cables. Now 500 miles from NZ the gap was large enough to let in a decent flow of sea water into the bilge.

Once again, we radioed Pamela and Denis and Pam slowed their boat and remained in radio contact while we "hove to" in order to stop the boat and fix the problem. Once the boat settled into its hove to motion (parking the boat) we began dismantling the forward cabin so we could get to the anchor locker. Carolyn retrieved the underwater epoxy from under the settee berth and set about kneading the epoxy stick while I went forward to investigate the anchor locker. With the boat leveled out the water drained from the locker, so all we had to do was to prevent the water pushing up through the drain. We smeared the epoxy goo over the drain and pushed through the small 1/8 inch holes and waited 45 minutes for it to go off sufficiently.We radioed Pamela and set the boat back on course - the fix worked with a dry anchor locker - what a relief.

There was a lot of discussion during our daily scheduled SSB radio meetings as to the best course. It is common practice to head west to a point about 200 NM north of New Zealand before heading south. This is especially prudent during the winter or when there is a chance of southwest or northwest gales. Our forecast predicted southerlies or south easterlies so the western route wasn't appropriate. Thus we headed on the "rhumb line" that is directly for Opua. This was fine until we were about 390 NM from our destination, the wind decided to blow 20-25 knots from the south. The wind was too strong for us to motor into so most of the fleet tacked west for a day, then east south east the next day. We made little progress south at least on the first day. Pretty demoralizing especially with a large low pressure weather system hovering to the north between us and Tonga, but at least it was sunny and we were in daily radio contact with Pamela and other boats.

On day 8 the wind shifted and dropped enough for us to motor sail at 4-5 knots directly for Opua. The only problem we had (other than the wind coming from the wrong direction!) was that the alternator regulator died resulting in the voltage rising to 15 volts instead of 13.8-14.1. Batteries can boil and damage electronics in these conditions, so we came up with a work around by using as much extra power as we could. This turned into a power consumption extravaganza....both laptops were constantly running movies, the water maker ran and ran, we turned on lots of lights, used the electric water pumps, had the fridge and freezer running, etc. It was like being in an apartment instead of being at sea! It was such a change from the cruiser's constant efforts to conserve water and power and felt quit liberating. We looked like a cruise ship for the last few days! Love Boat watch out!

We finally arrived at the Q dock in Opua at about 0900 hours on November 9th. It was a beautiful sail into the Bay of Islands with a full moon giving way to a warm and sunny morning. We had no trouble berthing Kailani on the Q dock along side Pamela and others we had met during the voyage. It was so surreal being here for those first few days especially after 10 months on the boat.

Our last night at sea

At the Q dock Opua

Pamela and Denis with us in Opua

Needless to say, we're glad to have arrived at our new home. We had an amazing voyage which began with saying goodbye to our friends and colleagues in Switzerland last January, a brief visit with Carolyn's sister and family in Pittsburgh, then on to California and Mexico. The issues of Kailani's impoundment are all but a distant memory now, and what lingers are the experienced joys and challenges we faced along the way. But most of all, we'll remember all the people...its the people that made our journey memorable forever.

We'll probably post a bit about being in the house in Kerikeri, you'll just have to wait until summer is over since we can't get ourselves to stop having fun in the back yard! Thanks everyone for tuning in!