2016-05-30 Waiting in Marsden

Whistler docked at Marsden Cove

We have everything fixed now, including our oven!  We are here in Marsden Cove with many other boats waiting to leave.  Here is what Bob McDavitt, a local weather guru, said this morning about departing NZ for the tropics:

“After two weeks of disturbed westerly pattern with active troughs, it looks like there should be a pattern change over NZ this week as , finally, a HIGH moves across Tasman Sea and then onto NZ on sat Sun Mon 4-5-6 June, our Queen’s Birthday Holiday. Yippee!

There are still a few days to go with disturbed SW winds over Northland. One more trough embedded in the SW flow is expected to deepen into a Low that may travel NE across the North Island on early Wednesday local, preceded by strong westerly winds on early Tuesday and followed by strong SE winds on Wednesday night.

So that means the next good looking departure is THURDAY, local, in quiet southerly winds.

There is the option of a good enough departure late on Tuesday, using the lighter winds near the middle of that passing LOW to sail with, but it rather tricky as the real world is delivering an outcome somewhat different for the ideas from the models.

Than Annual Auckland to Fiji yacht race starts on Saturday. This year it is ANZ Sail Fiji 2016, see sailfiji.co.nz/. Early indications is that the fleet are likely to encounter a front around mid-next week 8 June and the northerly winds ahead of this will slow them down, and may thwart any race record this year.”

We decided not to check out this am.  Instead we are going to go for a little sail out the mouth of the river, raise the sails and see if everything works!  Back in the marina tonight.