Day 7 (sunday)

The gale was over, but it was still quite windy, and from the wrong direction, and I had a long way to go still. By early afternoon, 1319, I had crossed 41 degrees south - cape Palliser lay only 38 miles further south - quite a bit further west though. So I tacked west, and just before sunset, 2022, I sight land. I don't actually see the castlepoint light house, but I see a long line of mountains. This is the first time I've clearly seen land, since wednesday (day 3) and that was just a faint smudge. Of course, I kept on sailing, I was seeing ships, and so knew I'd need to keep a good lookout. At one point during a sail change a ship came very close, within a few hundred meters. It was a ship i'd already seen, otherwise it would have been a big shock to have something like that sneak up on me.

At one point, I was trying to write one of these posts, and the weather forecast came on the radio and I suddenly felt incredibly tired. I had made a mistake coming this close to land. Land means hazards, in this case, shipping.

Day 8 (monday)

By this point I'm becoming very interested in weather forecasts. I havn't had any cell phone signal for days, so this was on VHF radio. I'm hoping to hear that the south westerly is gonna change - pretty much anything else would be more convenient. A westerly or a southerly would at least allow me to sail directly there, but still going to windward, any other wind would let me sail down or across it.

Or maybe I'd be able to get some tactical advantage? The weather forcaste is divided into regions, but the regions are fairly poorly defined. Of course, there isn't a magic line in the sea you cross where the weather is suddenly different. So sailors listen to the forecast for the region they are in, and the adjacent regions, and then interpret it themselves, applying their own experience, local knowledge, intuition, and if they are an optimist, probably some wishful thinking too, creating their own forecast.

My personal weather forecasts certainly where quite optimistic. There was always some hope that a bit of the more favorable weather from the adjacent region was gonna bleed over here and I'd be able to sail directly.

The geography effects things, here I had a mountain range running from south west to north east, but to the south is the wider end of the cook straight, and the bottom of the north island runs along east to west. A westerly wind on the west coast of NZ would tend to become northerly through the narrow section of the cook straight (where the south end of the north island is to the east of the northern end of the south island) then that would turn westerly again around the other side. It was easier for the wind to go around a mountain than to go over it, so that westerly curls around into a south west when it gets around cape Pallisier.

Maybe by getting closer to the coast I would get wind that hadn't curled as much yet and then be able to tack south west more easily? I did a big long tack towards the west. After the windy, bumpy conditions of the preceding days it was very relaxing. I got in quite close so I could see buildings and the depth sounder could see the bottom at 70m (I'd had it turned off most of the trip, because the maximum depth it can measure is 700m)

But then I eventually tacked, sailing was suddenly much slower. Before I was sailing across the swell, but now I was sailing into it. If there is very little wind, but still waves, the motion of the boat shakes the shape out of the sails and you go basically no where, where as if it had been smooth water, with just a breath of wind you might have been able to go 2 knots at least. So this happened, and suddenly I could also hear the swell breaking on the beach. A low constant rumble.

If you look at a chart of the coast here, well, one word is uninviting, but that's an understatement. The first thing you notice is a complete lack of bays, then numerous rocks, and many wrecks littering the coast, marked on the chart. (Usually, this wreck was long ago and you likely can't see it any more, but there might be some sign of it if you visit the spot) and finally if you look closely at the coast line on a high scale chart, you see white sections marked "unsurveyed"! They couldn't even be bothered figuring out how deep the water is here!!! How many ways do you need to be told, just don't bring your boat here!

Hearing the breakers and being pushed by the waves was suddenly scary. What if you became totally becalmed and where slowly pushed into a surf coast by waves? I hadn't been afraid in the gale, on this trip, this scary parts where all when I realized I had done a foolish thing, usually get too close to the coast.

Day 9 (Tuesday)

I hand steered for some time, and made little progress, but discovered the self steering could cope very well. I made some more progress like that, then I ended up totally becalmed at 0236, I took all the sail down, but the boat rolled violently from side to side. I remembered a Moitessier book mentioning pulling the sails in hard in these conditions, and tried that - sheeted the main right in, and tied it with a second rope too. Pulling the sail out as flat and tight as I could. This worked! A lot less rolling, but fairly noisy. However, I was so tired it that didn't matter.