Getting to the end…. Saturday, 01/06/2024

The work on the boat is close to finished. I’m just waiting for an electrician to connect up the one new solar panel. Then everything will be ready for departure. 

My route looks very likely to be north, to Vanuatu. Ordinarily I would have sailed to the French island of New Caledonia, but recent developments there mean that is out. There has been a popular rebellion and the island has effectively been placed under martial law. Foreign boats are not being permitted to visit. This is not the end of the world: Vanuatu is about two days sailing further north. The key thing is waiting for a suitable weather window to leave from New Zealand. Frequent high winds come across the Tasman Sea at this time of the year, and the thing is to avoid them hitting you in the first few days of the journey northwards. 

From Vanuatu it will be a case of sailing westwards to the Torres Strait which separates Australia from Papua New Guinea, and then along the top of Australia to Darwin. And from there out into the Indian Ocean, probably stopping at Christmas Island and then the Cocos Keeling Islands. From there the question is whether to sail to the Seychelles or down to Mauritius; it will probably be the latter. Broadly speaking, I hope to make Durban in South Africa by early November. Timing is fine, in that June to October is the best time to sail across to Africa.

Otherwise, all is fine here. After strong winds and cool weather for a few days, the last two days have been calm and warm, daytime temperatures reaching 19 degrees. Not bad for late May/early June!

I’ve had a few interesting conversations with people. One was with a small group I got talking to up on the summit of Perihaka in the forest opposite. One of the group, a man in his seventies, was particularly interested in my sailing and the thoughts that I had sailing alone. After quite a conversation, he gave me his card. It turns out that he is a well-known Australian poet, Peter Bakowski, who has been published in several languages, including Japanese, Arabic and Mandarin. That led me to read quite a number of his poems online and watch an hour-long interview with him on YouTube, following which we exchanged a couple of emails. The world is full of interesting people – it makes you wonder how often you pass by somebody notable without knowing it.