600 NM to go…

We are about half way there. This trip has been quite different that a usual crossing for us. We have had our motor on for porbably around 30 hours so far! The passage itself has been quite pleasant.

Happy Birthday!

We just realized a few nights ago that we just passed our second anniversary of leaving the dock in Seattle!  What a two years it has been.  We have met tons of interesting people, sailed a few miles, ate some great food, visited some magical place and look forward to more of all of those.  And to think when we left that we originally had planned on being back in Seattle in two years, and now I have a work Visa in New Zealand, and plan to renew the cruising kitty down there and continue on our voyage.

Also, having been on many different boats since we have left out here, I still don’t think I would change my decision on what boat to pick.  Sure, you always have 2 foot-itis, or maybe 7 ft, but in the same circumstances I can’t think of a better boat in the price range for being solid, fast, sea-kindly etc.  Thanks to Henri for making a great boat!

 

We had a really nice sail to Musket cove today.  There is a regatta going on, and we sailed through the fleet going the opposite direction with the kite up today in crystal clear blue water with the waves of tavarua in the background.  I can only remember ‘Old Milwaukee’ commercials where the slogan was ‘It doesn’t get any batter than this!’  And while I don’t have and old swil, I will raise a fiji bitter tonight in agreement…

In Fiji – Savusavu Bay

We are currently awaiting clearance to leave the boat and hopefully eat dinner with Dilligaf tonight, but we are here safe and sound. Sadly, Britannia did not clear custom today and they are boat bound so we will have to wait another night for them to join us.  Savusavu is a lovely place.

350 Miles to go to Fiji

We had a great last night on Piko. The air is warm, the wind is from behind us, the swell is down. Taking a nap in the cockpit under a sky full of stars is something I have really missed since last season. The wind has continued to be light, and basically from dead behind us so we are having to gybe our way up into Fiji.

It is also amazing how much energy we have without a fridge to run! We added two more small panels to Piko while in Auckland, ones that we actually bought in Mexico before we built the arch, but have been carrying with us since in our sail locker. Between that, and the new batteries which charge more efficiently than the old ones, we literally could be selling energy to other nearby boats. Note, we will trade watt hours for cold beer right now!m 🙂

Also, thanks to John and David with the Fiji Rally and Mike at Cater Marine in Opua. They have all be extremely helpful getting the part we suspect is causing the problem shipped to us in Fiji. I think that should be shipped out on monday hopefully and if all goes well, we will have ice again by the end of the week!

Time to gybe and put the kite up, we really should have last night as well, but sometime you sacrifice a little boat speed to sleep without worries in the cockpit. Yea, you heard me, I may have some regret, but we decided NOT to go fast last night.

Leaving Minerva for Fiji in the morning!

Weather is looking good, should be in Fiji sometime on monday!

Will write more then!

Almost to Minerva

We are about 10 miles away from the entrance to North Minerva reef. We decided to tke shelter there with a bunch of other boats on their way to Fiji to wait for better weather. The wind over the past 24 hours has switched to on the nose, andis supposed to be like there for the next few days. Right now, the forecast looks good for a friday-ish departure.

The crossing so far has been fine apart from our icebox deciding to take a holiday a few days back. we got some water on the unit during our crossing to Tonga last season, and I think it got splashed again and the little electronic control box died on us. Hopefully we can find ice from other boats in Miverva or throw our unspoiled stuff in another icebox for a few days.

Cute Lauren has been a little green for most of the passage. Even when the weather was good, we were still close reaching in 3M seas, which gets a bit bumpy.

We also just crossed tacks with Britannia about 30 minutes ago and they will be following us into Miverva shortly…

Piko back in the news!

Well, I just saw a copy of the latest sail magazine and we have a nice little blurb in there about our trip to Tonga to see the country and do the cruising regatta in VaVa’u.

 

Tonga

http://www.sailmagazine.com/california/better-month-mondays

There is also a photo of Dilligaf, which is own by our friends Bill and Sue from Seattle.

We also are the background image for the pacific puddle jump website for this upcoming season.

http://www.pacificpuddlejump.com/

How cool is that?

We’re not dead yet…

Sorry we have been lame on the posting since we have been in New Zealand! We have been having such a great time exploring the country we haven’t had a chance to post as much as we want. We (not-as-cute-Lauren actually) am sitting in Auckland right now, while cuter Lauren is back in the states visiting family and friends. We have been lucky enough to have 4 of our friends come and visit us while we have been here as well.

My Friend Jared and I did the northern circuit hike around Mt Tongariro. I am not a huge LOTR geek, but I also believe some of you might know it as Mt Doom. It was a spectacular hike, and we were lucky enough to have great weather to do it in. I have seen more pictures of a rocky trail in the fog that the spectacular views that we saw.

We were originally planning on hiking around this and a second volcano, but my knee started bothering me and we decided to only do the first half of the trip since the second half had no easy outs in case it got worse.

We ended up back in Auckland a little earlier than expected, so went out sailing for a rum race instead. We even ended up winning a bottle of rum! Jared is out assisting the judging of a international match racing competition this weekend being put on my the Royal New Zealand Yacht Squadron and I am getting some guitar time in.

We are almost up to date with getting photos uploaded onto the internet. We have uploaded over 2000 already and have about 500 more to go.  What we have can all be found here!

http://lbuchholz.smugmug.com/Voyage-of-Piko

 

Almost there…

It has been a wet and bouncy day so far, and sadly we lost our borrowed surf board overboard sometime really early this morning. The winds have been in the high teens to low all day and we are beating into it to get to NZ. The swell has also increased over the last few hours and Piko is a little more damp than usual. She is usually a pretty dry boat, but the dorades to drip a bit when we take a wave over the boat and we have a few small drip leaks here and there that have both of us annoyed at this point. I am downloading the latest forecast right now, but if the one from yesterday proves true, the wind should back off a bit over the next 6 hours or so which hopefully will decrease the swell and increase our speed. That would be great, since it will get us in around lunch time rather than dinner time at our current speed.

Hopefully our next message will be sent when we are in site of land tomorrow!

Underway!

We are now under way for NZ. It has been a rainy and breezy morning, but us and Britannia are off. Britannia almost didn’t leave because of a small plumbing problem in the galley, but decided to push on anyway. We should be in NZ in 9 days or so if the weather holds out! And then we will have REAL internet and can upload photos and bigger stories again! 🙂