Living & Learning Aboard the Good Ship Learnativity

LTY UPDATE: We made it to NZ!

LTY UPDATE:END of PASSAGE - Nov. 15, 2016 LTY DAILY STATS: (I’ll use this same list each day for those of you who like to keep track and experience the sail a bit more this way) ** Note: · If you’d like to see our position and track on a live map go to http://forecast.predictwind.com/tracking/display/Learnativity · If you’d like to send us an Email, TEXT ONLY Please, send these to [email protected] and we’ll get these via our satphone setup. LTY (local Fiji) time: 00:12 Nov 15th, 2016 (LTY time/NZ time = UTC +12)LOCATION: Tied up to “Q” (Quarantine) dock at Opua Marina, NZPOSITION: 35 18.787 S 174 07.350 E (can cut & paste into Google Earth)SOG: Zero; we’re on the dock!COG: WIND: 10 kts out of the North stillSEAS/Swell: Had following seas out of the North the whole way into Opua, calm now inside the bay.WEATHER: Full moon with mostly clear skies helped to light our way into Opua at midnight.SAILS: All furled up and put awayAIR TEMP: 63.5F 17.5CSEA TEMP: 71.6F 22 C Don’t think we’ll be swimming here for awhile!HUMIDITY 73%BAROMETER: 1009 TOTLAL DISTANCE TRAVELED: (from Fiji to Opua) 1191nm END of PASSAGE: Safely tied up in Opua MarinaWith apologies for taking two days to get this out to all of you, Christine and I are delighted to say that we are now safely tied up to the docks in the lovely Opua Marina in New Zealand! We had a great ride all the way into Opua with winds and seas staying right behind us making for a speedy end of passage and we tied up to the “Q” or Quarantine dock at the Opua Marina a few minutes after midnight on what would have technically been Tuesday morning over here on this side of the dateline. It is always a bit tentative coming into a location where you’ve never been before in the dark, but Captain Christine piloted us expertly through the waters coming though the pass on the NE corner of what is known as The Bay of Islands and then I looked after the last little stretch finding and tying up to the Quarantine dock here in Opua. There were soon a dozen boats all tied up as we were all doing our best to get in here ahead of the front so there were several other sailors walking the dock at midnight who kindly helped out with grabbing lines and we were soon all secured to the dock and had this latest passage in the books. We enjoyed a good night’s sleep together in our comfy Master Cabin and awoke to greet a VERY cccccccccold and stormy NZ morning. This country reminds me SO much of the Pacific Northwest both weather wise and geography so there is always this bit of déjà vu kind of feeling for me whenever I come here, but that is also a very comforting and good feeling, though we could both do without the cold temperatures! But we soon had out all our “winter woollies”, or our best approximation of such clothing we could find in the back abscesses of our wardrobe lockers and drawers and it once the initial chills and chattering teeth subsided it was wonderful to be snuggling with my Beautiful Bride beneath all those covers and comforters and we were soon both very toasty warm and “snug as two bugs in a rug” as my Dad used to say.The whole checking into New Zealand process went very smoothly and relatively quickly given that there were 13 boats including us by the time the Customs, Immigration and Bio Security officials came onto the dock. As always the Kiwi’s are truly delightful people to be with and work with and there does seem to still be a very strong affinity between the Kiwi’s and us Canucks, so I think that always helps as well. In any case we were soon all processed, had our new boat papers and new stamps in our passports, took down our yellow “Q flag” and raised the NZ royal ensign and moved Learnativity over to a dock in the rapidly expanding Opua Marina. It is now Thursday morning over here and we’ve already been enjoying our time here in Opua and running into lots of old friends and new ones as the “herd” of sailboats makes its way south to get out of the cyclone season up in the tropics. Most boats here have come down from both Fiji like us, as well as New Caledonia, Tonga, Niue, Vanuatu and Australia. Hard to know just how many boats are here all together, but probably 200+ as there is also an “All Points Rally” that is happening here and officially started yesterday so there are even more sailors and sailboats than usual. Not usually our cup of tea to be with so many other people and boats, but fun for a few days and always great to meet up with other boats and sailors we’ve been with over the past few years in other ports as well as some of the new ones we have met.Christine is struggling to remember what and where things are here as it was 41 years ago that she was last here so there has been a wee bit of chance since her last time here! What was a tiny little set of a few docks for a few boats and a simple little marina, has now become a very large marina and a whole village of marine shops and facilities. They are still doing a LOT of new construction here to expand the marina even more, apparently putting in 150 new docks alone and most of those sized to accommodate cats or catamarans which are quickly becoming the most common type of sailboat but require very different accommodations due to their large beam or width. Therefore, docks must be much different and you need much larger TraveLifts or other devices for hauling out a cat compared to a monohull like Learnativity. But this already a very well equipped marina and most of the facilities such as washrooms, laundry, café, and marine shops and services are all very new. Monday is apparently the official opening of even more of these and the management of Opua Marina is on a mission to turn Opua into the #1 destination within the whole Pacific and sure seems like they are well on their way to achieving that already.Mostly our time is now being spent catching up to things after the passage. Christine is hard at work with everything from laundry to getting all our internet connections, routers, boosters, etc. all setup and starting to dig her way through the mountains of Email backlog that has accrued in the ten days we’ve been off the network grid. Meanwhile I’m busy repairing the various “souvenirs” from the passage such as replacing the solar panel that bit the dust, some new lines, getting our recalcitrant Honda outboard running again and a long list of other items we want to have looked after before we leave LTY to fend for herself down here in NZ while we head back to visit friends and family in Canada and the US in about a month or so. We continue to love living life fully on the NPP or No Plan Plan so no flights or any such silliness yet booked and we’ll simply max out on enjoying the beauty and wonders of New Zealand for the next month or so and then figure out where to from here and when. We do know that our first stop will be in Fiji for a few days so we can see Barney & Ruby still remember us and if we can talk them into leaving the lap of luxury they’ve become accustomed to with their favorite people they are staying with back there, and then we’ll most likely grab the non stop from Fiji to LAX to start the “2017 Naughty Grandparent’s World Tour” by spending some time with our two granddaughters Brynn and Blair and then figuring out what form of transportation we’ll use to get up the West coast to BC to see friends and family up there and then make the jump over to the East coast to see more friends and family there and most especially our “big” grandson Liam in the Boca Raton area of South Florida and other friends in the Ft. Lauderdale and Orlando areas.Having missed our weather window of opportunity to sail up through Indonesia and across the Indian Ocean up the Red Sea into the Med this year, we are still mulling over all our various options of where to go next both with Learnativity and for building our new boat Möbius. One big draw for coming to NZ is that we get to spend some time with our fabulous designer Dennis who lives and works out of Auckland so we’ll spend a few weeks down there working on the zillions of details and decisions that are part of designing a big complex new boat. In addition to being tons of FUN, this will also help us get a better sense of what month next year we can most likely have the design process pretty much finished and be ready to start cutting up tons of aluminum plate to start building the hull. This will obviously help us then know when we need to be wherever it is that we are going to end up building Möbius and so for us and the NPP, that’s getting VERY specific! JIn the more immediate future, we’ll stay here in Opua for a few more days to enjoy this area and we most especially want to make the short hop on a ferry across the straights here to the town of Russell as that’s where Christine lived and worked for six months back in 1975 so that will be a real fun trip down memory lane for her and more insights into her densely packed history of adventures. Then we’ll sail down to Whangarei which is where LTY, Ruby and I spent the 2009/2010 cyclone season and a spot Christine has not been to before so our roles will be somewhat reversed and I can show her around that beautiful spot that I got to know so well in my seven months there. Then we’ll make our way down to the south end of this North Island to the Auckland area for some time with Dennis and his lovely wife Raquel on their LRC58 “Koti” which is somewhat of a “little sister ship” to what Möbius will be like. We’ll do some of this aboard LTY and some of this on land, perhaps renting a car. Not quite sure where we’ll leave LTY for the few months we’ll be away, but most likely to be Whangarei as I know that area to be safe and a good spot to leave a boat from having done so for several months back in 2010. Plus, we have several very good friends both ashore there and on boats there who can help look after our beloved LTY while we are gone so that all seems to be the most likely and best scenario that we can see so far. With that, I will now sign off and bring this latest series of Learnativity Updates to a close. We sure hope you have enjoyed the ride along with us, we have certainly enjoyed having you come along and it really DOES make our passages even more wonderful and awemazing than they would otherwise been when we always have this sense of having you along with us and staying in touch via your text messages and notes that came in along the sail down here. FYI, We are now back to the land of the constantly connected and so we are now back to our “regular” Email addresses, which are:[email protected]@gmail.com In addition, Christine will continue to delight and entertain you with her artfully articulate writing on her Sailing Writer blog which you can see at any time at www.sailingwriter.com And of course we are now also back on Facebook and the like for messages, updates and connections via those mediums as well now. Please do be patient with us though as we really do have mountains of backlogged Emails, postings and updates that have been pouring in by the hundreds every day we’ve been out on passage so it will take us awhile to get through all those as well as all the new ones coming in and do this in all our “spare time” between getting LTY all ship shape and exploring this truly beautiful part of the world and the even more beautiful Kiwi people here. BTW, if you are a sucker for punishment and want to go back and read any of the daily LTY Update blog postings we put up on the LTY blog you can find all of those anytime you like at http://learnativity.typepad.com Thanks for joining us and Ciao for now! Christine & Wayne

DAY #9 DOWNWIND DASH TO NEW ZEALAND AHEAD of the FRONT

LTY UPDATE:
Day #9 - Nov. 14, 2016

LTY DAILY STATS: (I’ll use this same list each day for those of you who like to keep track and experience the sail a bit more this way)

** Note:
• If you’d like to see our position and track on a live map go to http://forecast.predictwind.com/tracking/display/Learnativity
• If you’d like to send us an Email, TEXT ONLY Please, send these to [email protected] and we’ll get these via our satphone setup.

LTY (local Fiji) time: 17:20 Nov 14th, 2016 (LTY time/NZ time = UTC +12)
LOCATION: about 1141nm south of west end of Fiji
POSITION: 34 32.182 S 174 20.984 E (can cut & paste into Google Earth)
SOG: 7.0 kts
COG: 193
WIND: 14 kts @ 150 degrees over Stbd aft quarter out of NNW
SEAS/Swell: 1.5m coming at us @ 45 degrees Stbd stern so lots of rolling
WEATHER: Another beautiful sunny morning and then increasing overcast as the afternoon has worn on.
SAILS: Main furled 3x and out to Port full to going poled out full Genoa in this downwind dash to NZ to beat the next front.
AIR TEMP: 65F 18C
SEA TEMP: 71F 21.6 C
HUMIDITY 52%
BAROMETER: 1010
DISTANCE TRAVELED last 24 hrs: 158nm
APROXIMATE DISTANCE to go to OPUA: about 52nm Almost there!

DAY #9 DOWNWIND DASH TO NEW ZEALAND AHEAD of the FRONT
Another wonderful and largely uneventful night and day of sailing for us and looks like it will also be our last and great ending to a great passage. We had clear skies and an almost full moon all night last night so we needed to have our moontan lotion on and made for a truly magical night to be out here. With zero light pollution on these passages, nights are often even more awemazing than the sunny days. I wouldn’t have any way of measuring how many more stars we see out here but let’s just say that you have NO problem understanding Carl Sagan’s famous line about “billions and billions and billons”. Stars and the whole cosmos above us appears totally different and perhaps a bit like the way I described how time for us on passages is this single contiguous flow. In the case of the stars, there are SO many of them that the sky is more white than black so you have the impression that you’re not seeing individual stars but rather this massive array of twinkling little white lights that look more like someone tripped and fell and spilled a huge bucket full of diamond dust on a canopy of black velvet. Words, mine at least, certainly don’t do Mother Nature any justice in this description but I hope you not only get the idea but have been in situations where you’ve seen skies like this yourself.
However it looks like we are now nearing the end of this passage which is a bit melancholy for us in that we do so enjoy the gift that passages are and never want them to end. And yet we are also very excited about the whole new adventures and experiences awaiting us in New Zealand for the rest of this year. Our chart plotter now shows land for the first time and our current waypoint we are aiming at just around the NE corner of the top of NZ is now just 40 nautical miles away! At our current high speeds (for us) of about 7 knots we should hit that before midnight which is about six hours from now.
Opua, which is where we need to go to check into NZ and do all our Customs and Immigration clearances is about another 12-15 nm from there and given that we have a new front barrelling at us from the west, we will probably choose to keep on going all the way there in the wee hours this morning. We would not normally go into any port or bay at night, especially one we’ve never been to, but in this case we need to weigh the fact that there could be quite high winds and waves with this newest front and we also have the significant benefit of our dear friend Philip on Blue Bie who arrived in Opua about a week ago and has confirmed for us that the charts are all very accurate in this area and there are no lurking dangers in the waters going in. This channel is also very well marked with lights and becons so we think it is a better choice to go all the way in tonight rather than wait out off shore till morning light and need to have a rather uncomfortable night as the front goes across.
So wish us well and we’ll let you know tomorrow how it all went. With luck we’ll be blogging to you with Learnativity all safely tied up to a mooring ball or dock in Opua and we will be officially in New Zealand.

Christine & Wayne

DAY #8 PASSAGE PARADISE

LTY UPDATE:
Day #8 - Nov. 13, 2016

LTY DAILY STATS: (I’ll use this same list each day for those of you who like to keep track and experience the sail a bit more this way)

** Note:
• If you’d like to see our position and track on a live map go to http://forecast.predictwind.com/tracking/display/Learnativity
• If you’d like to send us an Email, TEXT ONLY Please, send these to [email protected] and we’ll get these via our satphone setup.

LTY (local Fiji) time: 17:32 Nov 13th, 2016 (LTY time/NZ time = UTC +12)
LOCATION: about 983nm south of west end of Fiji
POSITION: 32 01.222 S 174 21.961 E (can cut & paste into Google Earth)
SOG: 5.9 kts
COG: 175
WIND: 12 kts @ 50 degrees over Stbd bow out of SE
SEAS/Swell: 1.5m, much calmer out of the SE
WEATHER: Another beautiful sunny day of sailing. Getting colder and colder for us warm weather wimps with nightly lows down under 60F now! Brrrrrrrrrrr Who’s idea was it go to New Zealand for the summer?? Oh yea, mine so never mind!
SAILS: Main and Genoa both up full
AIR TEMP: 63F 17C
SEA TEMP: 73F 22.7C
HUMIDITY 40%
BAROMETER: 1010
DISTANCE TRAVELED last 24 hrs: 114nm
APROXIMATE DISTANCE to go to OPUA: about 217nm

DAY #8 PASSAGE PARADISE
Today reminded us how much we love to be out on longer passages, although this one is only going to be 9-10 days and is already nearing the end. Typically, we get into full passage mode by the 3rd day out for us, as we adjust to this very different and lovely new rhythm to our lives. It is much more of a continuum of time where time flows like the water sliding under our hull in a gentle contiguous stream. We remain very aware and tuned into day and night of course as the sun and the moon rise and set, so much so though that there is no hard day/night change and rather this gradual transition of light and dark that feels more like a sine wave on an oscilloscope as we go from first light to bright sunny days and then gradually dimming towards sunset as Mother Nature slowly turns the dimmer switch down into inky black nights with diamonds of lights showing through like someone has punched billions of little holes into a black velvet cloth stretched out up above. We live full 24 hour days without the land based break into awake “days” and asleep “nights” and so time seems to flow at this gentle constant rhythm with no real natural breaks. We take watches of various lengths throughout these 24 hours and we do lots of napping rather than “a full night’s sleep” so these too seem to flow with the soft ticking of time. We read, write and talk a lot throughout all this time and have both times of being very intimately connected as well as times of wonderful solitude being lost in our own thoughts and tasks. Not something that would suit most people we understand but fits us to a T and is one of our “Goldilocks” states as everything is so “just right, just for us”.
Today, as with most days, also saw us busy with various “chores” onboard with everything from meals to boat repairs. We were able to get pretty much all the collateral damage from that nasty little blast the other night and now have that runaway forestay all back reattached to the foredeck and fully tensioned. We remounted the set of 3 big solar panels on the cockpit roof, replaced some fuel filters and did more “polishing” of the fuel in the keel tank to filter out the last bits of crud and water that has gotten in there during the steel work and hull renovations over the past 15 months. I noticed yesterday that the sea water pump on the main engine that pumps water into the exhaust hoses after they exit the engine, known as a “wet exhaust” system, has started to leak but this is relatively minor and experience has taught that this simply means the outer bearing and seal are reaching their end of life and need to be replaced. I’ve got new ones and a whole new raw water pump onboard, of course, so I’ll just keep an eye on the rate of this leak for now and most likely not need to remove and fix it till we get to Opua.
And so another 24-hour day since writing you last night has flowed by every so beautifully and I’m sitting here up in our little mini solarium of a cockpit when we put the side “clears” down (think convertible top window material) and stay both completely dry and out of the wind. The sun is setting later and later now as the Southern Summer approaches and we also just had the Daylight Savings change the day before we left Fiji so it is setting much later than we were used to in Fiji, almost 20:15 here vs 18:15 in Fiji so we’re enjoying these later and longer daylight hours out here as well.
I’ll leave it at that for today and get back to enjoying the warmth of the sun while it lasts a few more hours before we need to get all bundled up for what feels to us to be freezing weather at nights. Imagine, we have even had to start wearing lots of clothes again, even SOCKS if you can believe it and we need to have a good comforter wrapped around us for our naps and night watches.
Oh and BTW Skyler, yes we are still using your “Mexicali blankie” that you had when you and I were sailing together back in 2008 so we think of you every night as we snuggle in with that.
Hope all of you are also staying warm and dry and enjoying your days and nights wherever they might be. We sure to appreciate your Emails (sent to [email protected]) and smile all the time thinking about each of you coming along with us on this latest adventure.
Thanks!

DAY #7 MOTHER NATURE’s SMACKDOWN!

LTY UPDATE:
Day #7 - Nov. 12, 2016

LTY DAILY STATS: (I’ll use this same list each day for those of you who like to keep track and experience the sail a bit more this way)

LTY (local Fiji) time: 17:45 Nov 12th, 2016 (LTY time/NZ time = UTC +12)
LOCATION: about 870nm south of west end of Fiji
POSITION: 30 27.821 S 173 10.356 E (can cut & paste into Google Earth)
SOG: 6.1 kts = 60 degrees over Stbd bow
SEAS/Swell: 3m & confused out of the SE
WEATHER: Winds and waves continued to build all night with one gust over 50kts and seas over 3m. But now starting to ease off slightly as evening approaches.
SAILS: VERY heavily reefed main & genoa (furled in to be very small)
AIR TEMP: 63.9F 17.7C
SEA TEMP: 73F 22.7C
HUMIDITY 52%
BAROMETER: 1005
DISTANCE TRAVELED last 24 hrs: 137nm
APROXIMATE DISTANCE to go to OPUA: about 330nm

DAY #7 MOTHER NATURE’s SMACKDOWN!
I LOVE Mother Nature! I can’t count the number of ways but I can tell you that one of them is how effective she is at keeping me humble and balanced. She reminded me of this again today.
I’ve been waxing poetic about how fabulous our sailing has been the past few days with the wind and the waves right behind us and our two sails poled out “wing on wing” one on each side. Mother Nature also threw in bright sunny days and a big moon to add to the positive effect and the ride has been fabulous. Until it wasn’t.
We had been dashing downwind as I’ve been describing and it continued after dinner last night and on through the rest of the night. The winds and the seas were high, winds about 25+ and seas building up to 3 meters but with both wind and seas directly behind us, they combined to give us this rolling magic carpet ride you’ve been reading all about, ad nauseum no doubt! As the winds started to build up to 30 we reefed in the main to be less than half its full size and reefed the Genoa in even more to give us a very well controlled, comfortable but still fast ride south. However about 4am this morning, a bit later than the usual 2am schedule such things seem to always happen, we got hit by a very big gust out of nowhere that took wind speeds gusting up over 50 and ……………………………..BANG!, like someone shot a revolver in your ear, one of the blocks on our preventer system blew out and set off a whole chain reaction of fun events. The preventer is a line on a 6:1 block and tackle that we use when we want to have he boom moved out as far sideways as possible in these downwind conditions. However when you do so there is a danger that when the boat rolls, the wind could catch the front side of the sail and suddenly swing the boom the opposite direction. Quite easy to “prevent” hence the name by using the preventer to keep the boom pulled forward and unable to move back. We run the preventer from the underside of the boom down to one of the big bollards/cleats about midships and cinch it down nice and tight pulling against the regular mainsheet lines on the opposite side such that the boom is now locked solidly in this position and can’t move. Works great, till it doesn’t!
When the preventer broke the boom now swung very quickly over towards the opposite port side but fortunately with the unusual way we have rigged up a double main sheet system, it was only able to move about 25 degrees back towards center but it did so VERY quickly. In and of itself, not big deal but with the winds now staying up in the high 40’s to 50’s and in 3+ meter seas, things got interesting for awhile as Learnativity rounded up into these big winds and seas which overpowered the rudder and we can’t correct. This too is not that big a deal except that the genoa (sail on the front) is no longer filled and is flailing wildly in these high winds. The sail is like a rag in the mouth of a very big angry dog who is shaking the living $%& out of it with unbelievable force, speed and noise. To make things even more interesting, we have it poled out from the end of the spinnaker pole so it is all the trickier to get this sail furled in. But we do so as quickly as we can, also get the boom and main sail under control and pulled back in closer to center and fire up the motor to give us the power to take control of steering instead of having Mother Nature and the winds controlling our direction. So we now have the boat under control and safe, now time to check out the consequences of all this action out on deck.
Normally quite easy to do but in the dark and with the boat pitching and rolling like a wild bronco and these big winds and seas blasting all around, it makes it a bit more challenging to make your way around out on deck and fix things. However I’ve got lots of practice with this, as you faithful followers all know, so out I go for this latest adventure. We’ve been able to reef in the big Genoa but there appears to be some damage to it with some bits and pieces flapping around it as it is all rolled up on the furler. Can’t see just what is wrong in the dark and not something we need to deal with now, so I leave it till morning and pleased to say that it turns out to be just a severed leech tension line with its normally Velcro’d on cover out flapping. Easy to fix when we get to Opua. The sheets or lines that pull the clew of the sail aft are a different story as the whipping has turned them into a huge spaghetti like tangle that is now whipping around near the end of the spinnaker pole. Again, normally bringing in the spinnaker pole is something you do in light winds and is very easy, but wrestling this 23 foot long 4 ½ inch diameter pipe back onto the boat and locked in place vertically up the front of the mast is a slightly different technique in these winds, washing waves and rollicking deck. Fortunately, so to speak, this isn’t the first time I’ve needed to do this and so I prevail once again and manage to raise it up the mast on its mast end car, pull the outer end back onto the boat, up over the lifelines, release the tangled mess of sheets from the end jaws and get the pole locked back into place against the forward side of the mast. OK, what’s the next challenge?
Untangling the rats nest that is supposed to be our two Genoa sheets which are 9/16” lines running from the Genoa back down each side to turning blocks and the very aft corners of the hull, goes rather well and gives me a chance to take in the full glory of Mother Nature’s show going on all around me as I sit on the gyrating deck. She even throws in a free salt water pressure wash to save me the trouble of needing a shower later in the day. As I say, I LOVE Mother Nature!
As I’m getting ready to make my way back from the bow to the cockpit, a large stainless steel over center turnbuckle swinging with abandon out off the far Starboard side of the bow catches my eye. Hmmmm, what’s that? Looks very similar to the inner forestay that runs from near the top of the mast to a point about 2 meters aft of the bow, and now that I glance over there, sure enough its missing in action. VERY big action in these conditions and with the weight of this very large solid SS mass swinging every which way, I can see that it has that mischieveous look as it eyes up potential targets back on the boat it used to be attached to. I can see it thinking that Gee, those big glass salon windows would be fun to crash into. Or maybe I should go for those big shiny freshly painted blue sides of the hull. Hmmmm, so many great choices. What’s a wayward forestay to do? Fortunately I seize this momentary indecision on its part as my chance to go grab it as it swings back onboard, hopefully without it choosing me as a target to bash into, and am finally able to wrestle this mass of SS turnbuckle on the end of a 50 foot stainless wire cable back to one of the side shrouds. As luck would have it, the line from the broken preventer is available so I take the forestay over there and use this stout line to lash the recalcitrant forestay to one of the side shrouds and keep it under control till I can attache it properly in slightly calmer conditions. Lest you be concerned about the integrity of the mast and rigging by the way, this inner forestay is an optional extra which we use for both added strengthening of the mast and for raising a small storm sail on in very high wind conditions rather than using the larger forestay. So no problem in having this forestay unattached and now safely secured off to the side as it often is.
OK, everything up on the foredeck seems to be under control, at least all that I can see in the light of the two foredeck lights shining down from the spreaders above which I fortunately replaced with new halogen bulbs before we left. On my way back to the boring serenity of the fully protected cockpit, I check for any damage the broken preventer might have caused and it is quite minor but too dangerous to remove the broken block from the underside of the boom, so with one end now lashed to the Starboard shroud holding the forestay I tie off the remining line so it doesn’t go overboard or start getting into more mischief onboard.
That should do it for now, but as I make my way along the Stbd side of the cockpit roof, I hear a noise and a bit of movement catches my eye and I see that the naval naughtiness of Learnativity’s equipment has extended there as well. Climbing up on the cockpit coaming to see the roof, the whole SS pipe rack with the three big solar panels has pulled itself apart in the big winds and rolling seas and is now slid all the way over to Port and hanging off that side of the roof. A bit tricky as the coaming, the flat area surrounding our cockpit seats, is very slippery and not too grippy in these rock and roll conditions but I’m eventually able to wrestle this whole assembly back close to where it belongs in the center of the dodger/roof and Christine hands me some lines so I can lash this down for the rest of the evening as well.
With all that looked after I’m able to climb back into the sanctuary of our fully protected cockpit where we stay nice and dry and warm and bask in the relieved eyes of my Brilliant Bride and give her a kiss and a “Honey I’m home” greeting. Next we set about getting the sails all reset and adjusted for these conditions, get back on the heading we want for the next few hours, turn off the motor and get back to sailing through this boisterous night. Whew!
During the day today I’ve been able to go look after things out on deck a bit better with the help of Mother Nature’s bigger and brighter light and have everything ship shape again on deck. During the rest of the day the winds slacked off a wee bit, mostly under 30 now and seem to be ever so slowly easing off. The seas are doing the same and so while it is still very active out here, it has been another bright sunny day at sea so what’s not to like?
All this weather is quite the opposite of what had been originally forecast and we thought we were going to have very little wind in this section, but what would have been the fun in that? Fortunately, Mother Nature prevailed once again with this latest set of reminders and is now back to being her benevolent and generous self, rewarding us with what is looking to be a very colourful sunset off to the west as we rock and roll our way south.
Christine just called up to say she has our nightly appies ready so I’ll sign off for tonight and be back same time, same channel, tomorrow night for the latest update in the adventures of the crew of the Good Ship Learnativity.

DAY #5 DEFINITELY a DAY to REMEMBER!

LTY UPDATE:
Day #6 - Nov. 11, 2016

LTY DAILY STATS: (I’ll use this same list each day for those of you who like to keep track and experience the sail a bit more this way)

LTY (local Fiji) time: 16:30 Nov 11th, 2016 (LTY time/NZ time = UTC +12)
LOCATION: about 720nm south of west end of Fiji
POSITION: 28 31.924 S 172 117 10.130 E (can cut & paste into Google Earth)
SOG: 7.8 kts (SOG = Speed over Ground)
COG: 180 (COG = Course over Ground, our GPS based compass heading)
WIND: 21kts = 180 degrees, dead downwind
SEAS/Swell: 1.5m following seas out of the North
WEATHER: Air has turned colder with the approaching front but otherwise beautiful sunny day heading for late afternoon clouds
SAILS: Running “Wing on Wing”; Genoa poled out to Port, Main out fully to Stbd.
AIR TEMP: 71.2F 21.8C
SEA TEMP: 77.5F 25.3C
HUMIDITY 60%
BAROMETER: 1008
DISTANCE TRAVELED last 24 hrs: 138nm
APROXIMATE DISTANCE to go to OPUA: about 480nm

DAY #5 DEFINITELY a DAY to REMEMBER!
It’s the 11th day of the 11th month over here on this side of the dateline. I may be out of touch with name changes in the past few years but as a Canadian I know this to be Remembrance Day and I think it is now called Veterans Day in the USA. With a very big dose of remembering these pasts it has also been a day to remember here on the Good Ship Learnativity for other reasons.
She has been a dashing downwind demon with the wind up and clocked around to be straight behind us, along with following seas out of the North to match. This is a somewhat difficult point of sail, referred to as “dead downwind” as there is no “side” for the sails to be filled from as with all other points of sail. What we do then is put up our spinnaker pole straight out to Port today, and thread the far end of that pole with the Genoa sheet (line) which keeps the Clew (bottom outer end) of the sail out in clean air and always fully filled because it can’t flop back the other way. Then we swing the mainsail all the way out to the other side by pushing the boom as far as it will go to Starboard and fasten it securely in place with some stout lines and blocks. If you were following us from behind then what you’d see is this enormous pair of triangles of sail cloth extending from the top of the mast out both sides which gives us the perfect shape to catch all that building wind coming over our stern. Add to this seas of about 1.5 m also coming straight from behind, known as “following seas” and you have the perfect combination for super comfy, super fast sailing which is what we’ve been doing since poling out the Genoa this morning.
It is a rather eerie sensation because the apparent wind, what we actually feel onboard, is relatively low because we subtract our forward speed away from what are otherwise wind speeds which have been building from 15 to now about 22 kts. Add to that the following seas which gently lift us up like an oversized surf board and let us surf down their forward face and finally add in the fact that we don’t heel (lean over) at this point of sail and you have a very wonderful though unusual set of sensations. So here we sit, pretty much level, feeling like there is very little wind at all, enjoying what seems like a leisurely sail as we feel Mother Nature gently pick us up and roll us forward. However, when we happen to glance over at our “speedometer”, the SOG meter which tells us our Speed Over Ground, we do a double take or two as it says we are doing over EIGHT knots! In fact Christine just snapped a picture of us hitting NINE point TWO knots on the last surfing session! Wow, what a ride to remember!
We will continue to enjoy this as long as we can but we are also keeping a close eye on the weather and wind as we are headed for the next eastward traveling front that is down south of us and will bring some much higher winds our way which are forecast to be gusting up to as much as 35 or 40 knots and changing directions. Nothing of great concern but we have a LOT of “canvas” up right now and definitely want to have most of that down before we catch up to the front.
So that’s been our day out here in Mother Nature’s big pool which she ever so generously allows us to play in and we are making great time surfing our way straight for New Zealand now. We’ll see what lies ahead in the coming days and may need to purposely slow ourselves down so that we time our arrival to be ahead of one front and behind the other and are sure to be sailing westward into the Bay of Islands with plenty of good light overhead and plenty of time to sail down around the NE coast of the tip of NZ and then around and westward to check in at Opua. For now though we’ll get back to enjoying our ride and catching more waves on this giant surfboard otherwise known as Learnativity.

Christine & Wayne

DAY #5 SILENTLY SLITHERING SOUTH THROUGH SMOOTH SLICK SEAS

LTY UPDATE:
Day #5 - Nov. 10, 2016

LTY DAILY STATS: (I’ll use this same list each day for those of you who like to keep track and experience the sail a bit more this way)

LTY (local Fiji) time: 16:40 Nov 10th, 2016 (LTY time/NZ time = UTC +12)
LOCATION: about 465nm south of west end of Fiji
POSITION: 26 16.531 S 172 17.191 E (can cut & paste into Google Earth)
SOG: 5.8 kts (SOG = Speed over Ground)
COG: 180 (COG = Course over Ground, our GPS based compass heading)
WIND: 3 kts S = 0 degrees, right on our nose so now motoring
SEAS/Swell: 1m big smooth swells @ 8 seconds, with the water surface shiny slick and smooth with no wind.
WEATHER: Turned into beautiful sunny day after overcast start but we lost our wind just after noon so needing to motor now.
SAILS: Main up to stabalise what little roll we have, Genoa furled away
AIR TEMP: 70.7F 22C
SEA TEMP: 80F 27C
HUMIDITY 42%
BAROMETER: 1013
DISTANCE TRAVELED last 24 hrs: 130nm
APROXIMATE DISTANCE to go to OPUA: about 607 nm

DAY #5 SILENTLY SLITHERING SOUTH THROUGH SMOOTH SLICK SEAS
Today is brought to you by the letter S!!
It was another cold night for we warm weather wimps but the night before had been colder so we took some comfort in that. Sunrise showed an increasingly overcast sky but by 9am Mr. Sun had burned through it all and we were gifted with another brilliantly sunny day with lots of big fluffy clouds scattered across the light blue skies. We continued to sail along at good speeds but during the night the wind had started to vary up and down and so did our speed. We were still making good time, probably averaging out to about 4-5 knots until just after noon when it died down to less than three knots and turned to be out of the south so we have had to start up our main engine and power our way through these doldrums.
This is all pretty much what the weather forecasts had predicted so no surprise and LTY is now silently slithering through the most incredible looking slick shiny seas in this windless zone. In spite of experiencing these many times before, it always strikes me as amazing that you can have these huge stretches of open ocean, water that stretches literally as far as our eyes can see in EVERY single one of the 360 degrees around us, be as flat and smooth as a mill pond. Somehow you think, or at least I used to, that the open ocean was this wild churning expanse of big waves and winds, and those happen aplenty as well to be sure, but so too do days and immense areas like the ones we are now every so smoothly sliding through as we make our way south towards the northern tip of New Zealand.
This is day # 5 of this passage and so we are now also reaching what is about our half way point, depending a bit on where we want to call our destination. If the weather predictions hold we will most likely sail into Opua on Tuesday afternoon, which will be Monday for most of you who are on the other side of the International Date Line. We have settled easily into the rhythm of life on a passage and Learnativity has made this very easy as usual so once again we will be a bit sad to see this passage end as we do so love and enjoy these open ocean passages. This one will only be 9-10 days but we still have about 5 more to enjoy so we’ll stay focussed on that and then make the transition into the great fun and new adventures we’ll have in NZ once we arrive. It will have been 42 years since Christine was last in the small towns of Opua and Russell up in the Bay of Islands so she is VERY excited about seeing how this area is the same and how it has changed and showing it all to me. Similarly I was last in Whangarei in 2009/2010 so I’ll have great fun showing Christine that delightful town I got to know so well in the 7 months I was there. Plus we have lots of other friends who are there, some on their boats, some like our new boat designer Dennis more permanent residents and so we are both VERY excited about this next new adventure we are about to embark upon.
Some of you have been asking about Ruby and Barney and their update is that they are having adventures of their own being spoiled by two of their favorite puppy sitters back in Fiji while we are away. They are both officially “Fiji dogs” now as we imported them last year and they even have their own passports to prove it! We miss them terribly and Learnativity and a passage just isn’t the same without our intrepid fellow explorers and entertainers. We thought of bringing them with us, but when our destination changed at the last minute from Turkey to New Zealand it was just going to be too much time and money to go through the process of bringing them into New Zealand. It is one of the few countries left in the world that are rabies free, along with others such as England, Fiji, Australia and the state of Hawaii, so the requirements and paperwork necessary to bring them in is quite onerous though quite understandable. We would have also been very restricted as to where we could put Learnativity and limited to only one move during our stay there so we made the call to leave them in their “home” country of Fiji until we fly back to pick them up. We, and they, have been extremely fortunate to aquire some very special friends over our many years in Fiji who love Ruby and Barney almost as much as we do, and they feel the same so we are comforted in knowing that they are both having a fabulous time and a “parent free vacation” to enjoy so it is all good.
As for Christine and I, we are still very much on the No Plan Plan so we don’t know when we’ll fly back to Fiji and just where to from there, other than we have decided to head back to North America for a few months to have some much needed and anticipated time with our three grand babies on the East and West coasts of the USA as well as some time with some special friends and family across that big continent. We remain committed and excited about building our new boat Möbius and one of several big factors that has us going to NZ is that we get to spend some time in person with Dennis our awemazing designer working away at the thousands of details of this complex new boat and capturing all of them in 3D models. As we work with Dennis over the next few weeks and months down in Auckland we’ll get a better estimate of when the models and details will be sufficiently complete to start generating the “cut files” from the models which are the instructions to the CNC (Computer Numerically Controlled) water jet cutters that convert hundreds of feet of aluminum plates into thousands of precisely cut pieced which are then shipped to wherever we end up deciding to build Möbius. This method of designing in fully detailed 3D models and then having all the materials, both the aluminum for the hull and superstructure as well as all the wood, cloth, insulation, etc. for the interior all cut to exactly correct sizes, creates what can very aptly be called one of the world’s largest jig saw puzzle kits. And then the real fun begins as we carefully fit all those pieces together and transform our visions and virtual models into a very real new home and magic carpet from which we will head off to continue to explore and experience our amazing planet.
We will keep you informed via our blogs and other updates so you’ll know about as soon as we do as this all plays out and develops so do stay tuned and don’t think it is over when this passage is over. We are “journey people” much more than “destination people” so life for us is always a verb, always fluid and always a blast!
Enjoy your evening wherever you are and we’ll be back with tomorrow’s update for you to let you know what the latest day in our charmed lives has been like.
The Crew of the Good Ship Learnativity,
Christine & Wayne

LTY UPDATE: Day #4 - Nov. 9, 2016

LTY DAILY STATS: (I’ll use this same list each day for those of you who like to keep track and experience the sail a bit more this way)

 

LTY (local Fiji) time: 17:05 Nov 9th, 2016 (LTY time/NZ time = UTC +12)

LOCATION: about 465nm south of west end of Fiji

POSITION: 24 18.421 S 173 2.511 E (can cut & paste into Google Earth)

SOG: 6.8 kts (SOG = Speed over Ground)

COG: 222 (COG = Course over Ground, our GPS based compass heading)

WIND: 18 kts SE = 50 degrees over our Port bow

SEAS/Swell: 2m big smooth swells @ 8 seconds, like motorcycling through rolling hills

WEATHER: Ideal sailing weather; sunny blue skies with 15-20 kts wind

SAILS: Both main and Genoa up and filled full

AIR TEMP: 70F 21C cccccccccccold!!!

SEA TEMP: 80.4F 26.9C

HUMIDITY 50%

BAROMETER: 1013

DISTANCE TRAVELED last 24 hrs: 148nm All sail, all the time!

TOTAL DISTANCE TO GO: (Opua, NZ): about 737 nm

 

DAY #4 A DAY in the LIFE

Feeling kindly towards all you faithful followers and knowing that you have likely lost some of your conditioning for Wayne’s typical LTY Updates I’ll do my best to keep this one short. That’s two in a row BTW, but who’s counting?!!! 

Actually there isn’t to much to say as this was another “sailing magazine worthy day” out here for Christine and I. Weather continues to be ideal for sailing with winds cooperating with direction to keep us headed about SSW and they are right in that sweet spot of 15-20 kts per hour which gives us maxiumum speed and minimum heel when close hauled. That’s when you are sailing as close to the wind as possible, in our case this means the wind is coming at us at about 50 degrees off our Port bow. In these conditions we are averaging over 6kts with bursts up to mid 7’s quite frequently and only about 10-15 degrees of heel aka lean. The seas are still very calm with surprisingly little wind waves and what we have is mostly those long rolling swells coming up from the SE. These are some of my favorite sea conditions as you look out across them in all directions like they are curvaceous rolling hills of aquatic wonderland. LTY just loves these conditions as well. She’s a big heavy boat and so she just glides gracefully up over one hill and down into the next valley with a motion for us not unlike being on a giant 52 foot steel rocking horse. Magic carpet rides just don’t get any better!

The past two days have also been typical in that there has also been the usual “little things” of boat maintenance to look after which is simply the of admission or “tax” to this life of ours. When you think about it, LTY is most closely parallel to living in a small little “village” with all the systems and infrastructure that entails. We have our own electrical “grid” supplying us with both 12 volts DC and 120 volts AC using combinations of our big “house bank” of batteries, KISS wind generator and six big solar panels along with 2 alternators on the main engine and a 6kW diesel generator. Then a series of transformers, inverters and chargers mixing all these inputs and outputs to provide us with whatever electrical power we need. We have our own onboard “water works” with a 12v watermaker that converts sea water into all the pure H2O we want and then all the drains and sewage systems at the other end of that spectrum. We look after our own communications system, our own navigation systems, food, lodging, etc. We have worked hard to setup Learnativity to be as completely self sufficient as possible and other than food we could pretty much go for an indefinite amount of time with no contributions or requirements from the “outside world”. We do so because unlike the past 15 months, we rarely spend time in marinas or near others much at all, preferring to live “on the hook” or at anchor where we are the only boat in the bay and just offshore of some perfect little beach for us and the pups and maybe a few locals ashore. Our definition of a “big population” is anything over 200 people!

I mention all this as some context and background as to why it is also a lot of work, though a labour of love, to live this way and keep this “village” called Learnativity working well and taking such good care of us as we wander our way around this awemazing planet of ours. The past two days have been typical of our life in this regard. We’ve had these idyllic past two days of sunny passage making and mixed with all this have been a few of the typical “taxes” we pay. Two nights ago at the usual time when all such things happen, two AM, I noticed that one of our bilge pumps (we have 3) was coming on intermittently every few minutes. This was our main bilge area in the middle of the boat and in the engine room/workshop so I strapped on my favorite headware, my trusty headlamp, and down I went. What greeted me was a waterworks display! Pretty enough with water streaming through the air, but not good! Quick taste revealed this to be salt water, also not good to find inside the boat, and seemed to be concentrated over in the forward starboard (right) corner of the engine room where our main intake of seawater is located. Uh, oh! However after a few minutes I quickly found that this was merely where a small but lively geyser of salt water was landing and the leak was originating from a tiny hole on the front of our transmission oil cooler. I was on watch and Christine was snoring away in the aft cabin so I shut down the main engine and went back to the engine room to figure out the problem and more so the solution. This oil cooler has salt water being pumped through it to keep our main engine’s transmission running nice and cool and it made of all copper and usually a very long lasting and dependable item. I’d replaced what was likely the original cooler with a new one less than 2 years ago so it was surprising that it would spring such a leak so soon. However a closer inspection revealed that for reasons that I’ve still yet to figure out, a small bit of the copper on one of the end transition pieces had corroded through from the inside and created this waterworks display for me. I removed the cooler and tried to solder the hole closed with my little butane torch but could not get the solder to flow and bond well as I suspect that pure copper body was dissipating all the heat too quickly. On to Plan B. I removed the cooler body, just two 1 ¼” water hoses and two oil lines, got out some 5 minute metal epoxy, sanded the cooper clean and smeared a small bit on both the inside and out side and soon had it all sealed up, reinstalled and the engine running like a dream again. All this in just over an hour and a half so not bad at all. Best of all, by the time I got back up to the cockpit to start up the engine and get back underway, the wind reappeared and I didn’t need the engine at all! Up went the sails and we were off. That was two days ago and the wind hasn’t changed much at all since and hence these past two days of idyllic sailing!

Today’s “tax” arrived last night when Christine alerted me to the fact that the light was staying on from our aft sump pump that collects and pumps overboard all our aft “gray water” from the aft head/bathroom sink, bathtub and also the drain from our aft swimsteps. I have this little pump set up in a small drain box under the aft flooring with a float switch that automatically turns on the pump and pushes all the drain water up into our Sea Chest, which is where all our grey and black water exits the boat. Normally this little red light only comes on for a few seconds whenever you are using the sink or otherwise producing grey water. I did a cursory check and tried a few of the simple tests but it was stuck “on” for some reason and wasn’t going to shut off. Not a critical item for the resto f the evening so I left it till a few hours ago when I had daylight and both of us awake to look after this latest repair. Turned out to be a problem with this all new drain box solution I had put together as part of the major refit we just finished and it wasn’t liking this constant heeling to Starboard (leaning over to the right due to the wind on the sails) we’ve been doing for the past two days. Takes a bit of time to get access to this area under the floor in our Utility room that was originally where the washer/dryer was before I removed it years ago, but I was able to get in there today and remove and remount the float switch that turns the pump on and off as the water in the drain box rises and lowers, so that it would work when we are heeled to Stbd. Total time about an hour so a quick and easy one for me this time.

Well the point of my “brief” overview is to answer some of the questions we get from many of you about these passages. You ask things like “What do you do when you are out there 24/7 for weeks at a time?” or “Don’t you get bored after awhile?” or “Why are you always fixing things?”. Hopefully this helps answer some of these questions and gives you a bit of a glimpse into these aspects of a typical day in our life here on passage.

Well I did promise to keep this “short” now didn’t I, so I’ll end there for today. I’ve got yet another awesome looking sunset calling my name and an even more awesome partner in passages, life and love, aka Christine, waiting to share it all with me so I’ll bid you all adieux se soir mate and look forward to typing up tomorrow’s update for you.

 

Christine & Wayne

LTY UPDATE: Day #3 - Nov. 8, 2016

LTY DAILY STATS: (I’ll use this same list each day for those of you who like to keep track and experience the sail a bit more this way)

 

LTY (local Fiji) time: 17:40 Nov 8th, 2016 (LTY time/NZ time = UTC +12)

LOCATION: about 325nm south of west end of Fiji

POSITION: 22 26.91 S 174 26.850 E (can cut & paste into Google Earth)

SOG: 6.4 kts (SOG = Speed over Ground)

COG: 206 (COG = Course over Ground, our GPS based compass heading)

WIND: 18 kts SE = 50 degrees over our Port bow

SEAS/Swell: 1.5m @ 4 seconds making for a very smooth ride

WEATHER: Ideal sailing weather; sunny blue skies with 15-20 kts wind

SAILS: Both main and Genoa up and filled full

AIR TEMP: 74.5F 23.6C

SEA TEMP: 81.1 27.3C

HUMIDITY 68%

BAROMETER: 1013

DISTANCE TRAVELED last 24 hrs: 140nm

TOTAL DISTANCE TO GO: (Opua, NZ): about 875 nm

 

DAY #3 A GOLDILOCKS SAILING DAY

Now THIS is what we are talking about! As Christine remarked earlier this morning “This is the kind of day they right about in the sailing magazines that everyone imagines to be every day.” We, and all you fellow sailors and/or faithful LTY followers know that it is not always like this and so we enjoy these kinds of days all the more. Frankly, one of the many lessons that sailing and passage making has taught me is how true it is that the more you put into life the more you get out of it! That saying about there being “No free lunch” is ever so true and I wouldn’t want it any other way. I’m sure you have the same kinds of experiences and lessons in your life.

For you see, Christine and I have been revelling all day in this glorious Goldilocks day we’ve been having where everything is “just right, just for us”. Our skin has been drinking up the warm sun, our eyes have been filled with the sphere of blue skies and even bluer waters that we find ourselves in the center of. The seas were flat and shiny as a lake last night under a star studded black sky. Today the winds have been 15-20 knots in just the right direction coming over our Port bow at about 50 degrees and Learnativity has been loving it too with her main and genoa (big head sail) filled full and her hull slicing though the azure seas with ease at 6.5 to 7 knots hour after hour. You can understand then how our hearts have been filled to the brim seeing all those months of living “up on the hard” and living in what seemed like a permanent construction zone aboard LTY where there was nothing but dust and grit and “stuff” everywhere be transformed into this day. The transmogrification from then to now is mind boggling and we are thus SO much more grateful and appreciative of the joys and rewards we are now reaping.

I know, I know, I go on and on about these kinds of things but how can I not when my life is filled with them. This IS my life. Better yet, this is OUR life and we do our very best to heed the sage advise to “Live the life you love, and LOVE the life you live.” So we are LOVING our day today!

And so dear friends and family, in a rare display of some rare modicum of bevity, I’m going to leave it at that for today’s LTY Update and go join my Brilliant Beautiful Bride and enjoy watching the sun dip into the watery blue horizon to our west. From the smells wafting up from the galley I think we are going to be enjoying ginger chicken and garlic roast potatoes as we watch this magical day transform into night and slither our way evermore southward towards Opua.

Thanks as always for joining us and we’ll be back for another update tomorrow.

Christine & Wayne

LTY UPDATE: Day #1 & 2 - Nov. 6/7, 2016

LTY Starting Stats: (I’ll use this same list each day for those of you who like to keep track and experience the sail a bit more this way)

 

LTY (local Fiji) time: 18:42 Nov 7th, 2016 (LTY time/NZ time = UTC +12)

LOCATION: about 150nm south of west end of Fiji

POSITION: 20 32.210 S 175 36.655 E (can cut & paste into Google Earth)

SOG: 6.7 kts (SOG = Speed over Ground)

COG: 213 (COG = Course over Ground, our GPS based compass heading)

WIND: 06 kts SE

SEAS/Swell: A bit lumpy due to neighboring squalls but smooth enough ride

WEATHER: Became grey, overcast and drizzly as we sailed south

SAILS: About half & half sail only vs motor sailing as wind comes and goes

AIR TEMP: 75.6F 24.2C

SEA TEMP: 84.4F 29.1C

HUMIDITY 78.6%

BAROMETER: 1012

DISTANCE TRAVELED last 24 hrs: 140nm

TOTAL DISTANCE TO GO: (Opua, NZ): about 1050 nm

 

DAY #1 & 2 Ahhhhhhhhh, THAT’s more like it!

After over 15 months confined to the marina, lovely as it truly is, and most of that up “on the hard” on land it feels SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO fantastic to be back on the water and back on passage! Christine and I both love the very special state of being that we experience when out here all on our own, just Mother Nature, LTY and us. We both found long passages to be awemazing when we were both doing them as single handers so now to be out here on passages as two still very twitterpated “Naughty Grandparents” is ………………………………………………… sorry I don’t have the words for it.

We got a good start leaving Momi Bay yesterday at about 09:40 as per the previous LTY Update you should have received. As I mentioned in that, there are LOTS of boats all waiting for a weather window to make their way out of this cyclone belt and get to points south and so our good friends Chuck and Lauri on “Free Spirit” also ended up anchored not far from us in Momi Bay for the past 2 days and they were right in our wake as we both headed out the pass and then turned south on a heading of about 200 degrees to make the gradual arc through the good weather down to the north end of NZ.

Even after all those months and months of work having literally every surface inside and out and every system within her reworked, cleaned, painted, rebuilt and renewed, Learnativity took the bit in her mouth and we saw some of our best speeds every doing just over 8.2 knots a few times in 15-18 knot winds, while they lasted. Our first night on passage went well and now as day two winds down with the sun setting off in the west somewhere amongst all the cloud cover, we are settling into the rhythm of a passage which we cherish so dearly. Unfortunately, the wind has not cooperated as well today (Monday) and we lost our blue skies and Mr. Moon overnight and have had grey overcast most of today. Drizzles of rain off and on all day but nothing too much and no nasty squalls to go around, just some big lightning shows way off in the distance for a few hours late last night. We were able to make good time sailing most of the day but have been motor sailing all afternoon and looks like we’ll be doing more of the same through the night as the wind has run off elsewhere it seems. But better that than dodging big squalls or winds so we’ll take it gladly and enjoy another night under this big sky with nothing but blue watery horizons for every one of the 360 degrees around us.

 

Well, that’s all for tonight folks! Dinner is about to be served so I’m off to enjoy that and will be back to give you tomorrow’s update. Thank you VERY much for coming along for the ride with us. We appreciate you doing so and makes this experience all the more special for both of us.

Night for now!

 

Christine & Wayne

LTY UPDATE: Passage to New Zealand Begins Friday Nov. 4-6, 2016

LTY Stats as our passage begins:

LTY (local Fiji) time: 09:40 Sunday Nov 6th, 2016 (LTY time = UTC +12)

LOCATION: Momi Bay, just inside western pass out of Fiji

POSITION: 17 54.989 S 177 15.977 E (can cut & paste into Google Earth)

SOG: 0 kts (at anchor) (SOG = Speed over Ground)

COG: (COG = Course over Ground, our GPS based compass heading)

WIND: 06 kts SE

SEAS/Swell: Flat and smooth inside reef & Momi Bay

WEATHER: Perfect last morning in Fiji for a while.

SAILS: Main up as we prep to head out the pass and south to NZ

AIR TEMP: 80.6F 27C

SEA TEMP: 88.9F 31.6C

HUMIDITY 69%

BAROMETER: 1008

DISTANCE TRAVELED last 24 hrs: 000 Just about to start!

TOTAL DISTANCE TO GO: (Opua, NZ): about 1200 nm

 

NOTES:

1. If you’d like to see a chart showing our position that is updated about every 30 minutes via our Iridium GO! sat phone “modem”, go to http://forecast.predictwind.com/tracking/display/Learnativity

2. If you’d like to send us an Email please be encouraged to do so by sending it to our sat phone based Email service at [email protected] These can be as long as you like, the only restriction we ask is that you keep them TEXT ONLY, no pictures or attachments please.

3. Please note that while you will see postings like the one below show up as status updates to our FaceBook accounts, we are NOT able to access or read FB or any other web site until we get to NZ and back to faster internet connections.

4. Same is true for our “regular” Email accounts, we can ONLY receive Emails to the “myiridium.net” address above. We will do our best to catch up to all your other Emails, FB posts, etc. after we get settled in NZ which should be by the 20th of Nov. or so, maybe sooner.

 

THE NEXT ADVENTURE BEGINS

Yes folks, just when you thought it was finally safe, after hearing almost nothing for a year and a half, the LTY Updates begin again!! First a quick summary since the last set of updates last year and then the daily ones will start arriving as our passage takes place.

 

As those of you on Facebook would know we, that is Christine, Barney, Ruby and I have been in Fiji since we checked in here in Savu Savu on May 22nd, 2015 after our passage down from the Marshall Islands. We spent the first few months exploring the Eastern and Southern parts of Fiji and then make our way west under the big island of Viti Levu with a few days in Lomi Bay just west of the capital of Suva and then around the SW corner and up to Vuda Point Marina. On the way there our keel cooler, which is basically a steel half pipe welded to the bottom of Learnativity’s hull which takes the place of a radiator in a car and keeps our main engine cool, gave out. So we sailed the last 50 miles and were able to tie up to the big mooring ball outside Vuda Point marina. The next day, August 1st, 2015 we were able to run the engine long enough to make it in the narrow channel into the marina with the assistance of their always helpful staff and were promptly hauled out with their big TraveLift and propped up on hard stands or what we call being “on the hard”.

 

In the ensuing weeks and months, we decided that “while we were at it” this was the time and place to do a full renovation of LTY inside and out to make her our “forever boat” and set us up for the next decade or more of wondering, wandering and pondering the planet one nautical smile at a time. And so, began what turned into 15 months of almost nonstop work as we turned our beloved LTY into a “new 1994” boat or as the marine industry writes it a 2016/1994 52’ steel Bruce Roberts Raised Salon motor sailor. Then, just to prove that we truly DO live on the No Plan Plan, somewhere in that process we really lost our minds and decided that we would design a whole new boat, build it out of all Aluminum this time and, just for added adventure and maximum learning, we would make this one a blue water voyaging POWER boat! More on the new boat, which will be called Möbius by the way, later and now back onboard the good ship Learnativity here in Momi Bay.

 

On Friday (Nov.4th) we did our official checkout of Fiji at Vuda Pt. Marina as they have become a Port of Entry which enables us to check in and out of the country there, said our quick goodbyes to the many dear friends we have there after spending so many years coming back here after I first sailed into Fiji in 2010, and then had the wonderful experience of the marina staff literally singing us off the dock with a traditional Fijian farewell song. If you’ve not seen it already, be sure to check out Christine’s post on FB with the video of their singing us off. Ian & Colleen our most special of friends and neighbors for all those years in the marina, walked along the sea wall leading out of the marina, joined by their dog Koli who is the best buddy of Ruby & Barney and soon we were off to start our next set of adventures by sailing south to New Zealand.

 

This might come as a surprise to some of you who thought we had intended to sail LTY westward to get to Turkey where we are most likely to build Möbius. We did too! We thought we were going to head out of Fiji and turn right and sail up over the top of Australia and through Indonesia, across the Indian Ocean, up the Red Sea and into the Mediterranean. Would have been a FANTASTIC six months of sailing through some of the world’s most amazing places, but unfortunately by the time we were ready to go we had missed the weather window we needed to get through all the various seasons and weather this long set of passages would entail.

 

We have known for many months that this might happen and so we quickly adapted our thinking because Nov. 1st is the official start of Cyclone season here in Fiji and decided to turn left instead as we headed out of the west side of Fiji and go down to the north island of New Zealand! That has been calling Christine’s name louder and louder as she had such fond memories of being in the Bay of Islands a few years ago when she was 21. She had lived and worked there for a cyclone season back in the 70’s and not had the chance to be back. I was last there for the 2009/10 cyclone season when I came down from American Samoa after my grand adventure with the tsunami of Sept. 2009 in Pago Pago. I also had very fond memories of my 7 months in the Whangarei area. Plus, our awemazing boat designer Dennis (Artnautica.com) lives and works out of Auckland so we would be able to get in more time with him to work on finalizing the design of Möbius with him in person. So once again, as always seems to be the way with us, serendipity and synchronicity guide us to the most awesome adventures and this is but the latest.

 

It will most likely take us 9-10 days to make the 1200 nautical mile passage down to Opua in the Bay of Islands up at the north end of the north island of New Zealand. Therefore we, well Christine mostly, have been keeping a close eye on weather patterns for the past few weeks, very ably assisted by “software” of both the digital and the human kind. The key with this passage is to time it such that you sail into the north end of NZ between the typical west to east traveling fronts so you don’t get “spanked” too badly by Mother Nature on the way down. We had our eye on just such a weather window for the past few days and now looks like a Sunday morning departure is going to be the “Goldilocks” timing to get it “just right” for this passage. So, we have come out here to Momi Bay which is a lovely little spot just inside the western most pass out through the reefs surrounding Fiji and we’ve enjoyed two days getting LTY’s bottom and prop all smooth and clean so she slithers through the water very smoothly and easily. Also gave us time for cleaning up inside, stowing everything securely away for the rock and roll show that is a sailing passage.

 

There are a LOT of boats and crew all over Fiji and other islands here in nearby SW Pacific who have bene waiting along with us for this weather window so it will be interesting to see how many other boats we see on our way south. Usually we hardly ever see any other ships other than some distant lights at night or an AIS blimp on our chart plotter screens but we were not surprised to end up sharing this lovely little anchorage here in Momi Bay with 2 other sailboats and we are all poised like runners in their blocks at the starting line waiting for the gun to go off.

 

Looks like start time has now arrived (Sunday morning here) and we are about to haul up our anchor and head out the pass so I’ll sign off for now and try to get this sent out before we lose our great Fiji cellular internet connections. If not, it will go out via our Iridium GO! satellite based connection once we are underway.

 

Glad you could join us for this latest passage of the Good Ship Learnativity. Look out Kiwi’s the Naughty Grandparents are headed your way!

 

Wayne & Christine

Sadly, Sans Barnacle Barney and Ruby the WonderDog (more on that later)