Passage to South Minerva Reef

[Kyle]By the time we finally left New Zealand, we were in the company of LOTS of other boats. Staying in one location within the marina grounds, it never took long to overhear passersby talking about the weather and when they were planning on leaving. This sounds collaborative, but that is somewhat misleading. Most of the boats leaving were part of a big rally going to either Tonga or Fiji, so "When are you going?" was really more like, "What do you think about being told we're all going on Saturday?" Many of the remaining non-rally boats had also hired the same weather router, and were thus getting the same answers. I even overheard one briefing where the boaters were told which headings to steer when and which sails to use.

Looking at the forecasts, I could see why everybody was being steered toward Saturday. After a couple of weeks of gale-force direct headwinds, a five-day period of almost gale-force winds, mostly to one side, seemed to be solidifying.

The thing is, the previous big group of departures had departed with winds that were basically from the same direction (ESE), but about five knots less. Their reports of conditions on passage were anything from miserable to downright frightening. Some even gave up their initial destinations and diverted further downwind. In my opinion, going out into even stronger conditions did not seem like it would be any fun.

Most of the big, comfortable catamarans are not particularly good at going to weather and I have yet to meet the owner of one who makes that claim. Apparent winds in the thirties, particularly when going upwind, is not generally considered fine sailing. Begonia can do it, but it is definitely not pleasant. I would say that is probably about where Maryanne and I change modes from normal sailing towards our destination to a much more conservative heavy-weather mode, where our primary goal shifts toward keeping us and the boat safe until the end of the storm, hopefully without being blown too far off course. Since it would probably not be sensible to be flying any sail in such conditions, it was apparent from the number of boats with dozens of jerry cans of fuel strapped on deck, in addition to their already large tanks, that many of the boats were planning to motor most or even all the way.

Uh, no.

The same weather window looked like it would be the best one for us, but my plan was to deal with it in a completely different way. Rather than depart on Saturday to the NE, with strong winds and waves coming over our starboard bow, we left on Thursday in the northerlies before the front. With fifteen-knot winds on our port beam, we sailed just slightly south of east until we were three hundred and fifty miles east of New Zealand. When Saturday's winds finally caught up to us, we were able to turn NNW and sail with the strong winds and waves aft of the beam for the rest of the passage. Our ten-day passage was undoubtedly longer than the Saturday crowds were expecting for theirs, but conditions aboard Begonia were moderate at worst, with easy speed, despite having half the sail we could have flown, just to keep the loads on the rig down. Only one of our two 'bad' days was due to the strong winds and big seas (the other was a day of getting soaked in heavy rain). Even with that, we knew how much worse it would be if we were trying to sail sixty degrees closer to the wind in this. The bummer thing was that we were still probably going to arrive behind a bunch of boats that left three days after we did and 'only' burned a few hundred gallons of fuel.

After departing NZ, we had mixed Weather on the passage; we headed quite a way east at the start to avoid headwinds or having to pound into big seas.
The last picture is of us rounding the reef to get to the entrance, and seeing a couple of boats within the calmer waters of the reef itself.

About a day and a half before we got to South Minerva, it became apparent that tomorrow wasn't going to happen without flogging the hell out of our poor boat. That was fine. Instead, halfway through Maryanne's last night watch, she sheeted in the scrap of sail she had been flying, lashed the helm over, and hove-to. All I had to do for my night watch was make sure we stayed away from the reef and check the horizon for new vessels.

Once we were done with breakfast, we turned downwind and unfurled some more sail. Within an hour or so, we could see the breakers on the eastern rim of the reef, as well as two monohulls anchored inside the lagoon at the northeastern end. We sailed along the outside of the reef past them, then started our engines for the pass transit and the two-mile upwind bash to the sandy shelf at the southeast edge of the lagoon. It took more time than we thought to tidy up after being thrown around for ten days, but soon, we were able to relax and enjoy the view, while bug-free trade winds kept the interior temperature in check. I like that way better than using the heat...

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Anchorage location >> On google maps