Pitufa.at

Each time we set out on a nice looking weather window it turns out that the wind is blowing much harder than predicted and also more easterly. Pitufa’s stomping bravely into the 20 and more knots of wind and lumpy seas, but we are pushed too far south so we have to make a few extra miles and a countercurrent of about 1 knot doesn’t… Continue reading »

We set out from Palmerston this morning into squally weather with strong winds and lumpy seas, caught a tuna within the first hour and did some extreme-fish-filetting (maybe a new discipline for the olympics?) We all got slightly seasick, so it seems it’s not the sailing that makes us seasick, but the breaks in between. Now I understand the motivation for these non-stop-round-the-world events.

We were racing all day long yesterday averaging 6 knots, but we still didn’t get to Palmerston before midnight. Fortunately a boat we know from the Marquesas and the radio net gave us the exact coordinates of the mooring here, so we managed to pick up a buoy in the dark.

Surprisingly enough the dreaded journey eastwards turns out to be more pleasant than the passage in the ‘right’ direction two months ago. Instead of the sickening rolling motion that we were used to downwind, Pitufa is now ploughing along in fortunately light winds (15 knots from the SSE) doing steadily 60 degrees on the wind. We’re not heeling too much and the boat seems calmer… Continue reading »

We set out at noon again, going through the pass with 20 knots of wind against current was quite exciting–fortunately we had all hatches closed tightly and we hadn’t lost our sea legs thanks to the bouncy anchorages… We had a humpback whale jumping next to Pitufa right after the pass, caught a big yellowfin tuna half an hour later — looks like it’s going… Continue reading »

Early this morning we reached Beveridge Reef with the last dying breeze. Just in front of the pass two whales surfaced just next to the boat, spouted a few times and disappeared again with a last wave of the gigantic tail fin. We have used this welcome break in the passage to wash some things that got salty underway, air out towels and clothes, go… Continue reading »

The wind has finally shifted to the north, but we were pushed too far south already to reach Beveridge Reef before dusk, so we’ve slowed down to get there tomorrow morning. Entering an uncharted submerged atoll at night didn’t seem very tempting, despite the fact that we have our old GPS tracks to follow.

We left Niue at noon today and are sailing in SSE-SE direction. Hopefully the wind will shift further N soon to allow us more easting.

Yesterday it was blowing hard from the Southeast again, we set the windvane to ‘go-as-hard-as-you-can’ and Wayne Vaney sailed Pitufa straight towards Niue. When we contemplated the evening grib, we found that he was probably right: there’s a phase with easterly winds coming up–no good beating into that. Instead we decided to take a break in Niue and wait for the next clocking of the… Continue reading »

Tonga’s a developing country, but the hospital is surprisingly well equipped, the staff friendly, services are free for locals and very cheap for non-residents, but they don’t have enough doctors (a few GPs, one ear-nose-throat specialist, a pediatrician, a radiologist, one surgeon who has to play specialist for everything else and two part-time surgeons) and therefore the waiting halls are full–we spent 30 hours in… Continue reading »

Hundreds of boats sail across the Pacific towards the west each year riding the easterly trades, but only a handful sails eastwards–at least in the trade wind belt. Tough boats from New Zealand who want to sail to French Poly take a ride on the westerlies way down south in the ‘roaring fourties’ and ‘screaming fifties’–their names speak for themselves… When I checked in on… Continue reading »