Pitufa.at

Waiting for a weather window is always frustrating. We get new forecasts twice a day and then the strategic games begin: we try to “sail” the cursor in expected daily runs through the area of the grib file where arrows indicate the wind speed and direction, trying to avoid becalmed zones and galeforce winds. Of course the further into the future the prediction goes, the more the planning resembles crystal-ball watching…
Anyway, we’ve been waiting for wind to go to Rapa now for 3 weeks, which lies south of the trade wind belt, has depressions moving by on a regular basis and isn’t easy to reach. We went to get the very last veggies time after time, kept Pitufa in oceangoing shape and kept on hoping. For the last 3 days the grib looked really promising, so we deflated the dinghy and secured it on deck, baked bread for the passage this morning, drugged the cat with her anti-seasickness medicine and were about to lift the anchor, but then we decided to get a last-minute grib. The damn thing had changed completely since yesterday, a low had changed course, gone was the steady wind for the trip, instead we’d be becalmed for two days only to arrive with scary strong winds in the tricky anchorage of Rapa.
We’ve learned the hard way that heading out into an unstable weather situation guarantees an uncomfy trip, so we’ll stay a bit longer and we’ll keep on playing the weather game…