Still waiting.

Hey folks,

Ardea remains at anchor in Uoleva. There is a low pressure system forming over the next few days just west of Minerva Reef with winds up to Force 9 or 10 (something in the range of 45-55 knots sustained) so it was a rather easy decision to remain here and wait it out. We are likely to see westerly winds in the 25 knot range as the system materializes, but this anchorage has good holding and a reef providing at least some protection from the West.

This system is the first such tropical depression to develop this season; such depressions are the types of systems that can turn into cyclones and some New Zealand based weather gurus indicate this may well turn into the first named storm of the season. Anyway, if you care to see the information I'm getting via my radio here on the boat, the following are a few sources with essentially the same information.

1. http://metbob.wordpress.com

This is the Bob McDavitt weekly weathergram, which provides great overview information of what's happening in the southwestern Pacific. I can download the text of these updates using my radio.

2. www.passageweather.com

This website uses the GSF weather model. Though it displays the data slightly differently, I can get the same model data for a rectangular area that I define using the radio (these are sent as GRIB files). If you follow the menus on the site to Oceania you can see surface (pressure) charts, wind charts and wave charts for various times. Note that once you push the model beyond 72 hours, the confidence level diminishes very rapidly.

3. New Zealand Met Service

I'm not sure what the website is called, but if you do a search for "NZ Met Service Future Maps" you'll find the surface pressure/wind charts that cover a broad area that includes Australia, New Zealand, Fiji, Tonga, New Caledonia, etc. If you look now you'll see a Low forming in the southwestern portion of the Tasman Sea, a strong High above NZ, a strong High well East of NZ, and the Low forming by Minerva (approx. 20 S, 175 W). Until you go out to 48 or 72 hours, the Low by Minerva looks like little more than a dip in the isobar toward the South Pole. Know that the wind direction generally follows the pressure isobars, the closer together isobars are drawn, the higher the resulting winds; also, Lows spin clockwise in the Southern Hemisphere and Highs spin counterclockwise. These maps I can receive using the radio as weather fax (the difference from the above two being that I need only to have computer software that decodes an incoming sound signal, like a phone-based fax, whereas for GRIBS or for sending this blog update, I have to be able to control the radio with the computer, a more complicated, time- and electricity-consuming process).

With any luck, the Low will move on a SSE course after forming late Wednesday and the High that is East of NZ right now will weaken or move on so that the High that is behind it doesn't get stalled out over NZ. If those things happen, we (i.e., Ardea, Saltbreaker, and a few other boats around these parts) will head out on Friday or Saturday, capitalizing on the winds following the tropical Low. From here it is about 350 miles to Minerva. If the Tasman Low doesn't find it's way to the northern part of the North Island of NZ by Monday, we'll have to wait a day or two in Minerva so as to avoid encountering that system too close to landfall in Opua. If it does get up there, which is what predictions are calling for, then we'll skip Minerva and carry on, passing through that front several hundred miles north of NZ where there is nothing to hit should we need to heave-to in heavy winds and wait it out. It would be a shame to miss out on Minerva, but right now we'd rather time things so that we'll hit about 29 S on 14 Nov. so we have a shot at seeing the total solar eclipse from sea.

Until then I will continue to mosey about, swimming, reading, watching pirated t.v. series and taking care of little projects on the boat that I don't really care to be doing but that are nicely occupying my time. I'm sort of pushing through my fresh provisions so eating may get pretty boring by the time I am actually sailing to NZ, but I don't much care- at least it will mean having to forfeit less to the NZ agricultural inspectors.

So far, attempts to have Blue House fried chicken delivered to us by fellow cruisers have failed. I'll update again when we know we can leave Tonga, or if anything exciting happens in the next few days, though that seems unlikely. Until then, I remain a nowhere man, officially not in Tonga, not at sea, not in New Zealand, not anywhere. Except Uoleva. I'm in Uoleva. I haven't gone to shore in two days, though, because I just haven't bothered to; it's weird when you get to that point as a sailor, not going to shore even though there's a perfectly good shore right there. In fact, it's one of the nicest beaches I've seen on this trip. It's all sandy, though.

Sincerely,

Connor