Monday, November 14, 2016

Leaving Fiji for New Zealand

We are off today as soon as all the clearing out formalities are done and the Vuda Marina bill settled. The we will get "sung out" of the marina. This is a really lovely tradition. Several staff members (whomever is available at the time) come down to the boat and sing a farewell song in Fijian to you as your goodbye. We have heard them doing it for many and it feels really special.

The timing seems good as a few tropical depressions are starting to form in this part of the world. We hope the trip of 1100 miles or so will be without sighting one directly! It looks like a good, though slow, window. We may encounter some adverse winds – on the nose, but they don't look to be too big. The seas are going to be quite large – but an ocean swell with about 14 seconds between them so we should do okay in them. We are actually really glad we didn't leave on the last week window. Big stuff – besides earthquakes is hitting NZ. The North Island is getting hammered with some serious winds and huge seas over the next few days – right when we would have been arriving. So we thank the transmission.

You can keep up on our passage through YIT.co.nz (look for Astarte) and if the radio and computers all work, we'll update the position daily.

It should take us about 10 days or so – arriving on Thanksgiving perhaps.

Wish us luck – this is always a difficult passage.
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At 11/2/2016 5:08 AM (utc) S/V Astarte was located at 17°40.86'S 177°23.21'E

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