Last leg - to the Promised Land!
Bob Marley is blasting out of our Bluetooth speaker as we motor through the windless centre of the 1032 anticyclone whose breezy perimeter has propelled us, at great speed, south and west from Minerva Reef towards New Zealand.
It’s almost exactly 26 years since a Bob Marley CD, played on a cumbersome ghetto blaster, kept us endlessly entertained during our first Atlantic crossing in 1999. I remember the anticipation and excitement of fetching up on an exotic Caribbean island. That ‘arrival’ excitement and anticipation has not dimmed over the decades.
As Bob booms across the big blue ocean, we are excitedly preparing for our imminent New Zealand arrival aboard our own boat. The culmination of a journey that started 10 years ago when we dropped our Traighuaine mooring (in Scotland) and pointed the bows north and west towards the Arctic, the Americas, Galapagos and beyond - not the shortest route to New Zealand! That was the beginning of our awesome journey.
The excitement of an arrival on a distant shore is made more precious by the challenges that we have faced and had to overcome along the way for it hasn’t all been plain sailing. Hitting a rock in the deepest recesses of an East Greenlandic fjord still sends shivers down my spine - one of the few times expletives flowed freely! Then there was the time when Shimshal sat in the path of a major hurricane and we tied her, it seemed, to every tree in Nova Scotia before retreating to the safety of our old liferaft ‘launched’ in a forest clearing! Shimshal survived unscathed but our ‘safe haven’ filled with the torrential rain that comes with a hurricane.
This season’s challenges have been gear failures caused by anno domini and 3 years in the tropics. Sourcing spares mid-Pacific requires endless patience, deep pockets and a relentless spirit of optimism. Crossing of the ‘Dangerous Middle’ seemed a significant obstacle but turned out to be a delight which Shimshal carried us through without complaint.
But we, like most others, have been apprehensive about the final leg down to New Zealand and we were pleased not to have to wait too long for the perfect conditions as a lengthy pause would have fed anxiety.
As soon as a forecast low tracked south of our anchorage on Minerva Reef, we pulled up the anchor and, along with 7 other boats, set off on a sleigh ride powered by a brisk southerly wind into 3 metre swells. Gradually the wind backed to the SE and Shimshal, on a beam reach, was in her element surging through the waves at 8-9 knots and, occasionally, crashing off the top of one. Exhilarating, fast sailing under a full moon.
The weather windows to New Zealand are short and getting it wrong can be treacherous as a cold front strikes Northland 7 days after the departing high fires the starting gun. The ferocity of those cold fronts gives this passage a fearsome reputation and we didn’t want to get it wrong.
Neck and neck, all 8 boats roared southwest anxious to arrive before next Tuesday’s forecast cold front. And most of us will make the 865 mile passage in 5 or 6 days with only one of the slower boats having to pause north of 30 degrees for a couple of days to let the front pass below.
As I write, Shimshal has 294 miles to go to the quarantine and interrogation dock where we will face our last source of anxiety for this season. We should arrive on Sunday afternoon. Once tied up a platoon of officials (and their dogs) will descend on Shimshal for a guided tour of our squeaky clean bilges, emtpy food stores and freshly polished bottom. Our last onion will definitely be confiscated.
Like all the other challenges we have faced, we have done our best to prepare. Whatever happens on the Quarantine Quay, Shimshal will, at last, be in the land of expert and affordable technicians, boat hoists that don’t break and an abundance of easily available spare parts. Shimshal’s promised land!
