Cleared Out to Papaeete

Roger, Steve’s friend and our third for the voyage to Tahiti arrived Friday night and we scheduled our clearance for Saturday at 10 AM. On nights before a passage, I don’t sleep particularly well and this time was no exception with heavy downpours overnight. Finally gave up around 0630 and got ready for the day. Morning dawned grey and foggy but no rain.

Steve and Roger weren’t far behind and after our coffee, we set about last minute preparations. This included a thorough review of the helm station and electronics – autopilots, stabilizers, engine instrumentation, the Maretron system, MaxSea navigation program and our Furuno NavNet 3D integrated system. Next was the power panel and power management on the inverters when underway. This was followed by extensive time in the engine room going over Iron Lady’s myriad systems and reviewing the items to be checked during our engine room inspections while on watch.

Steve conducted a safety briefing on emergency systems, fire extinguisher use and locations, life jackets, flare kit, EPIRBs and individual assignments if we were to have to abandon ship. Steve would activate the SSB emergency signal, Roger would grab food, water and the overboard bag, I would retrieve the medical kit and we would all assemble on the back deck to launch the life raft and release the dink so it could float free. All while keeping in mind that the only tine you leave the boat is when you have to step up.

Finally, we set the watch schedule – I am on from 4 to 8, Roger is on from 8 to 12 and Steve is on from 12 to 4 – each doing 4 on followed by 8 off. Engine from checks are performed at mid watch with a more extensive check at the end of each watch including taking numerous temperatures with our IR heat gun. At the end of each watch, entries are made in the ship’s log detailing position, heading, distance traveled, barometer, sea state, wind speed and direction, engine RPM, oil pressure and temperature.

On my evening watch, I am charged with contacting the other boats ahead of us that are on a sched on the SSB. I am also responsible for downloading the latest weather and routing information from our professional weather router. Steve on his day each is responsible for downloading weather faxes from ZKFL (New Zealand weather service) over the SSB. I also download GRIB weather files along our route.

With that behind us, we still had almost an hour to kill until Bruce NZ Customs was to come at 10AM and the time passed slowly. Fortunately, Bruce was early and we quickly completed the clearance formalities started the engine and had the lines off at 1000 hours.

The skies had cleared as we motored out past the Whangarei Heads and we enjoyed a pleasent morning on the flybridge before the next front was to arrive.

Waves were from the north from the front that had passed the night before and while dying, theses were still 10 to 12 feet just forward of our beam. Iron Lady handled them with grace and ease. As the afternoon wore on, the next front arrived bringing clouds and showers and building winds from the northwest with 2.5 meter seas just aft of our beam and those conditions have prevailed thru our first 24 hours at sea as we are running on a heading of 50 degrees magnetic (roughly 70 degrees true) on the great circle route from Whangarei to Papeete.

At the appointed time, I was headed for the SSB to call Dave Berg on the Catana when I was hailed by him over the VHF. There he was – just 3 miles off our starboard bow when he should have been some 120 nautical ahead of us. Seems they had computer issues which slowed them up but those issues had now been resolved and he was underway again. Dave tried to change the bet that the last to arrive in Papaeete had to buy the drinks but no dice on that one. Dave slowly disappeared over the horizon behind us.

At present, New Zealand lies some 220 nautical miles behind us and Papaeete some 2000 miles in front of us.

High pressure is slowly building over our route and winds and seas are forecast to gradually subside.

More to come.