Bula Fiji!

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We’re off to New Zealand tomorrow! It's been one heck of a wait - almost 10 days since the crew arrived before we’re actually leaving Fiji. Admittedly, there are worst places to be delayed. Neil and Warren worked hard to make sure it was time well spent and we had a great time.

Our fourth crew member - Bryan Suthard ended having to fly home and could not make the trip.  The 10 day delay is very difficult to manage when you have airline tickets, families, and friends waiting for you at the end of the trip.  It's not easy waiting, but you must, if you want to have as safe and comfortable passage.

Waiting for a weather window
View from boat as we paddled down river
Still waiting for weather window...
We have 1,100NM to sail to Opua, New Zealand. This passage can be challenging. We're using Bob McDavitt to do our weather routing, and have a couple of new toys we are using for the trip.

This is an overview of the trip prepared by Bob. As you can see, we should overall have favorable conditions, and are avoiding any significant low pressure systems (at least that is the forecast for the next week).


We are also excited about our new install of the Iridium Go! on our boat.  Neil brought this down and Bryan and I installed while we were in Denarau, Fiji.  This gives us unlimited data, SMS, phone and tracking in one small package.  It also sets up a hotspot so we can check mail and weather on our iPad or iPhone over the satellite network.  

You can view our new tracking site at the top of our blog and at this link.  You can zoom in and see our route, course and speed.  We have set the updates to occur every hour while sailing.  PredictWind is the provider of the website and they are working on fixing the BoatSpeed indicator...as this seems not to be working at this point.  Regardless, you can now actively follow our travels in near 'real time' as we sail.  Pretty cool stuff. :)

Well, that's it for now.  We will be posting FaceBook and Blog updates while traveling.  Once we get 350NM south of Fiji, our KVH V3 Broadband internet will be working (finally!) and that will help with photos and pictures.

Until then, we are heading south for some real changes in latitude....brrr......

STILL WAITING............. :-)

And STILL waiting.......... :) :)

Comments

  1. SarahNovember 14, 2014 at 5:01 AM

    We have a lot of "what we're doing while we're waiting" photos, too! Can't wait for Daddy to get here so we can celebrate his birthday together!! Have a great trip... we're still waiting...

    ReplyDelete
  2. Mary GraceNovember 24, 2014 at 2:16 PM

    We are looking at an Iridium Go and would love to hear your thoughts after you have used it a while. Good luck with the crossing!

    ReplyDelete

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