Why Are We Waiting?

Let's just ignore for a moment, the fact that we are not quite done with the polishing and fitnessing that our annual haulout entails. The weather gods are not favouring our departure for a while yet. The Rally's notional departure date was "the first weather window starting from 11th May".  Of course 11th May has been everyone's target day. A delay is somewhat of a relief as we are physically pretty bushed. Our planned 3 day stay on a marina berth at The Boatworks has been extended by a couple more. When we drop the lines we'll likely just anchor off for 1 night just to take a breath, then find somewhere to hang out during the Waiting Period.

The images below are of Tropical Cyclone Donna that intensified to a Cat 5 system before giving the Loyalty Islands and New Caledonia a spanking earlier in the week as a reduced Cat 3 event. This is the 2nd late season Tropical Cyclone. TC Cook visited Vanuatu less than a month ago. TC Ella has been declared near Fiji too. Although not as severe as Donna, we are watching carefully as it will non-the-less impact the region.




The Downunder Go East Rally has 26 vessels signed up this year. The fleet is split 50/50 between monohulls and multihulls (there is even 1 trimaran). Boat sizes vary as greatly as the experience of the skippers. The smallest in the fleet is SV Frozzie at 10.21m (around 33') and the crew is 30ish with no previous off-shore experience. The largest boats are 14-15m (up to 50') with crews varying in ages from 50's -70's and include some world cruisers. The challenge for John Henbrow, the cruise organiser and Met-Bob, our weather router, is to select a weather window that will likely see all crews safely and comfortably across the Coral Sea. As it is, there are a couple of boats who have agendas beyond fine weather. An imminent birth of a first grandchild and a delivery crew on limited-time vacations for example. There is nothing so dangerous on a yacht as an airline ticket!

We can certainly use this extra time to to get finished up and recover from our savagely busy time at The Boatworks boat spa. At this stage, it looks like it will be at least a week before we leave. A couple of catamarans might make a dash leaving on Monday and they might get across before the predicted 30knots and 3-4m swells coming off a low in the Tasman Sea have an effect. From our point of view, we don't mind heading out into slightly willing weather while we are still fresh and so long as we can see that the weather will be improving. What we won't willingly do, is set off knowing that there is a high prospect of strong winds and high seas at the end of a long passage when we will be fatigued and arriving in a strange port that requires a careful transit through a reef as a final hurdle.