First month in NZ

I've been in New Zealand for over a month now.  I like it here!

When I first arrived in NZ I was a few days ahead of a strong weather system, and after checking in and moving over onto a mooring, the wind blew and blew for a bit less than a week.  In that episode, I was experiencing winds of around mid 30 knots in strength, in Opua, which is a pretty well protected little bay.  Following these winds the weather has been generally very nice.  It warmed up and the sun came out which made enjoying the area that much easier.

I arrived in Opua a few days before the start of the All Points Rally, which is a free rally offered to all yachts leaving from anywhere and arriving in Opua.  There were probably something like 50 cruising yachts in the area during the rally, and it was a fun, social time.  The local businesses sponsored many BBQ nights, there were seminars on various topics ranging from polishing your diesel to which of the local kiwi candies are the best.  It was a fun time and I encourage anybody who is planning on arriving in NZ to attend, there is really no downside - its all good!

After spending two weeks in Opua I wanted to get out to start exploring the local anchorages.  Opua is in an area called The Bay of Islands, which is one of the premier cruising areas in NZ.  I've only been to a few of the anchorages now, but it is a beautiful, easy area and I think I'll be here for several months, at least.  At the start of my exploration of the area I was pretty well provisioned, not to the standards I would have done for a long passage but I had quite a lot of food onboard.  After 10 days I had eaten my last onion, I had no more wraps left, my peppers were long gone and I was down to a couple carrots - so it was time to return to civilization and buy some food.  There are two local towns used for provisioning, Pahia and Russell.  As I went past them toward Opua I decided to keep on moving as it was rolly at both locations and I had grown to like being able to be in a calm anchorage, so I continued on to Opua and anchored toward the back of the fleet.  I spent a couple of days in Opua, ordering some parts, visiting with some folks and buying a few onions.  A couple of days later the forecast was for variable 5 knots of wind, followed by NE 15 and stronger the following day, so I moved along to Pahia, three miles away, and made three trips to shore buying food.  I managed to spend over $500 in those three trips, one of the dangers of being close to civilization after having spent some time in the wilderness...

After my second run into town buying food I decided to update my weather forecast.  The NZ Met service was now announcing a Gale warning, with the wind in my area increasing to 35 knots by the evening.  It was time to finish my time at Pahia and move along to somewhere with some weather protection.  Pahia has a good BBQ restaurant, and Indian, a Pizza and craft beer place - all of which I was hoping to sample before leaving, but with gale force winds arriving, it was time to move along.

The distances in the Bay of Islands are never very great, and 6 miles away was a little harbor which is a popular place to hang out in a gale.  I arrived at around 5pm and anchored in light winds.  By that evening the wind was blowing and the Met service called the following 6 days perfectly.  The following day the winds were to go light and then switch around to the S and SE, so I moved across the bay in light wind to get a little more protection.  Then there were 4 days of 35 gusting 45, 40 gusting 50 and so on, with almost constant rain.  The winds may have been that strength in open water, but with my surrounding protection I mostly saw winds in the low 20's with gusts up to low 30's.  I've been boat bound for 6 days now.  Yesterday evening the winds fell off, as forecast, and today the winds are much lighter and the sun has peeked out.  I'll move along to find some more hiking tomorrow as I have plenty of food left and I need to start working on my fitness again - there are some good hiking trails in the islands, and I have another one I want to explore.

I start the pictures below on my trip between Tonga and New Zealand.

On my way to New Zealand from the Tropics

Could you ask for better conditions in which to tow a vessel?  Flat seas, no wind.   Perfect.

Luckness at the Opua Quarantine dock.  Large and easy.

Quarantine dock 'cleats'.  These were a bit of a surprise...

Some boats had a harder time 'out there' on the open ocean.
This is the second jib I've seen torn to shreds on this trip

As is somewhat typical of me, I didn't take a single photo during the two weeks I was in Opua attending all those seminars, BBQs and social events.  I resume the photos after leaving Opua, going to start exploring the Bay of Islands

Robertson Islands.  My first anchorage in the Bay of Islands

Robertson Island has a little hill, with a path leading from the shoreline to its top.  The first time I walk up the hill I was out of breath and my heart was pounding like it wanted to escape my body.  The second day I did the walk twice, and it felt a little better.  By the fourth day it was time to move along to find a longer walk.

Looking NW from the top of Robertson

Luckness at anchor

The view from my companionway, one calm day at Robertson

Cruising boats tend to arrive somewhere, anchor well, and then stay for at least a day.  Often we stay for many days at each anchorage.  The Locals seem to arrive, stay for a few hours and then move along to another anchorage which is often less than a mile away.  I woke in Robertson Island's anchorage alone one morning, and then over the day 15 boats arrived and had left by that evening, leaving my alone again overnight.  During the time when all the boats arrive, things can get a little crowded.  Also, many boats seem to simply throw an anchor out followed by some rode and 'call it good', without setting the anchor to know whether or not its going to hold.  I've started to relax when seeing this, as I know they will likely be gone in an hour or two.

I moved to Army bay after leaving Robertson Island.  Army bay is on an island which has a track (trail) which circumnavigates it.  The track is something like 7km with some up and down.  I built up to walking the trail twice a day before leaving.  Its really nice to be able to improve my fitness level a little.

My second anchorage: Army Bay.

A different perspective on the square rigger I had seen earlier at Robertson Island

Two boats, neither of which is Luckness, at anchor

Luckness at anchor, one fine morning.  Taken from s/y Sheer Tranquility

That's the end of the sailing photos.  I'll update the blog again when I've gathered some more photos, but probably not for a while.

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I re-started my programming hobby while at Beveridge Reef and have been continuing with it ever since.  I'm currently working on what may become a suite of cruising related software.  The first piece of the puzzle I needed to solve was to create a base map widget so that I could provide geographical context to the other things I want to work on: weather, passage planning, position reporting, and other stuff.  Being holed up inside Luckness for 6 days straight, not being able to get to land due to the high winds and rain, provided a good opportunity to get some good software development in.  This is the best hobby ever...if you happen to be an introvert software developer.

Here are a few screen shots of my base map widget in action. I'll build on this with more pieces over time.  The widget scrolls and zooms smoothly, on my 2011 Macbook Pro.

The World

The Pacific Northwest

Seattle

The base map doesn't have enough resolution to navigate by, which is ok, that isn't my goal.  When the next gale roars through, which likely won't be all that long of a wait, I'll be ready to get started on the next piece of the puzzle!

Passage to NZ: finished!

I arrived on the customs dock in Opua, NZ, at 4:30pm, Nov 10th.  That makes this passage 10 days 7 hours in length, from start to stop.

In my previous post I was writing about the sailing conditions turning slowly lighter and lighter.  By around 12:30 on Nov 10th the wind was blowing at around 6 knots and the boat was making between 2.5 and 3.5 knots.  I was still happy with that as I would be at dock the following afternoon.  Then the wind started to veer (clock) around and I was no longer able to sail to my destination.  I was something like 30 degrees too far toward the west of my destination.  I could have continued, but then I would need to tack at some point in order to get there, and that would add time, and I was sooo close!  Anyway, I turned on the engine while 40nm away from Opua and started motoring at around 1am.  I like to sail but I'm not a sailing purist.

I was motoring along comfortably, the seas light.  I saw one set of navigation lights behind me and to my port, a second set ahead and to my port, but they were each at least 3 miles away and so I was comfortable going through my sleep cycles.

The sun rose in the morning and it was a beautiful blue sky day.  I could see NZ clearly on the horizon and in fact had been seeing it for hours as there was close to a full moon lighting the night up.

At around 8am I was hailed on the VHF by a cruiser that I had met in Mexico over two years ago.  They were coming in from Fiji and had been motoring into the wind for three or four days and finally ran out of fuel.  I said that I had a full fuel load onboard, including 15 gallons on my deck in gerry jugs and volunteered to head over toward them and drop it off.  They were sailing slowly toward Opua and as I headed their way the wind finally died off.  Luckily they had a dinghy on davits and they were able to lower it into the water to make the transfer easy.  I arrived at their location within 45 minutes and we were able to get the fuel onboard their vessel by 9am.  I said I would wait around to make sure their engine started before continuing my voyage.  After 1/2 hour the engine still wasn't starting, and the owner started working the problem by taking the fuel hoses off one by one trying to find the problem.  He was able to contact a friend on shore for some advice, followed it, and still the engine wouldn't start.  By 11am we had to make a call.  The coast guard doesn't tow vessels around here, but they were able to supply contact information to a service which did this - at $250/hour with likely a 8 to 12 hour charge.  Yikes.  I thought I could tow him at around 3 knots toward our destination, and that it might take up to 6 hours to get there, so by 11am it was time to get that started.  I arranged a bridle, he arranged a tow line and we started the tow.  This was my first time towing another vessel and the conditions were perfect for it.  There was almost no wind by this time and the seas were pretty calm, maybe a two foot well spaced swell.  I was surprised how difficult it becomes to maneuver when towing, it probably doesn't help that the other boat was around twice the displacement of Luckness.  Luckily the owner of the other vessel was continuing to work the problem and around 2 hours later he got his engine started!  Yay!  We stopped the tow, and I followed him into Opua.

The final few miles into Opua were beautiful.  Its a busy place with lots of boats enjoying their waters.  It felt a bit like rush hour after the sailing I had done in Tonga, where there just weren't that many boats around.  I arrived at the customs dock at 4:30pm and was able to talk the customs officers into letting me stay on the dock that night and be checked in the following morning - score one for NZ hospitality!  They came by the following morning, checked me in, I spoke with the marina and arranged a mooring, went over, got settled down, ate a little food and went back to sleep.  Wonderful.

There is currently some weather moving across the area, I've had gusts up to 35 while on the mooring.  I've been to shore once, and will head in again tomorrow when the forecast is for the winds to start dwindling.  I have wifi on the boat and am seeing download speeds in excess of 1MB/sec.  I haven't seen this type of internet since leaving Seattle.  I bought a month of internet for $40NZ ($30US) with a limit of 6Gbytes and have already burned through it updating the software on my computer.  As a tech-geek, this was one of the things I missed.

The anchorage in Opua is surrounded by absolutely beautiful green rolling hills and I'm looking forward to getting out and exploring the trails (tracks.)  On my trip into the Marina I met a lot of sailors I knew from earlier in the season.  There is a week of festivities planned next week as part of the All Points Rally, which was a loose knit rally for people sailing to NZ.  That should be a social and fun week - the start of many I think.

That's about it for now.  Its so nice to be here.

Passage to NZ: day 9

Date: Nov 9, 2014
34° 15' S 174° 34' E
24 hour run: 99nm
Previous 24 hour run: 113nm
Water Temp: 62.6
Log: 16625
Distance to go: 64nm

If all goes well, this will be my last night at sea before my arrival. If everything remains relatively constant, I should be there tomorrow afternoon. Yay!

After going through the trough, as I mentioned, its been an upwind bash. Yesterday the winds started to mellow, but I remained as high into the wind as I could point. The current wasn't helping, it was pushing me west when I wanted to make east. This morning, the wind turned even lighter and then finally faded to 6 knots - which was not enough to make headway in the seas. I was pondering on my next move, still, 20 minutes later, when the wind arrived. It arrived from a new direction - it had backed by 40 degrees which was perfect for the course I wanted to run. I trimmed the sails for a beam reach, which was wonderful, and started moving faster and faster. The winds built from almost nothing to 20-25 knots within a hour. Reefed down to a double reefed main and my double reefed genoa I was sailing comfortably, making good time to Opua. The wind has kept the same direction, more or less but has fallen in intensity all day.

Its currently just after sunset where I am, the seas have been mellowing out over the last 6 hours, I'm sailing at 5.5 knots through the almost flat water in 10 knots of wind, wind at 60deg relative, port side. This is what the sailing literature is full of - absolutely wonderful sailing conditions.

Behind me, by roughly 150 to 200 nm, the winds are blowing 25 to 30+, and have been for a little while now. There are a few boats I'm in contact with via the SSB net back there. I'm really happy with how this weather window has worked out for me.

Through this passage, I have come across 4 freighters so far, but I haven't seen any sail boats. This afternoon I heard two boats hail each other on VHF. VHF doesn't have a very great range, its meant to be 'line of sight' although sometimes goes a bit further. At around 4pm someone hailed 'the sailboat on their starboard side' and the signal sounded super clear, so I answered but couldn't see them. Turns out they were 20 miles east of me. Later they hail a different boat they see, and again the wrong boat answers - that's at least 5 boats now, all headed to Opua and all within VHF range of each other. For a while I thought I may have been one of the only boats on the customs dock when I arrive. Now I'm hoping there's room for me!

I'll try to send an update out once I arrive. That may happen after I sleep, as I'll be up for a while dealing with a close coast, then a channel into Opua, then docking, then waiting for customs, then dealing with customs, then moving off the dock to find a mooring or somewhere to anchor. I'll be looking forward to shutting the boat down, after checking in and sleeping without my timer going off.

All is well onboard.

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---- Update Nov 12, 2014

I try not to edit the posts I send in while underway.  There are plenty of mistakes in them, my writing about the wind backing when I mean veering, spelling mistakes, poor grammar and so on.  Its part of the passage - you get a little more tired and editing your writing is more difficult when the sailing is more difficult.  This post was sent out without a title.  I've edit it to have one now.  Oops.

Passage to NZ: day 7

Date: Nov 7, 2014
30° 21' S 175° 57' E
24 hour run: 115nm
Previous 24 hour run: 75nm
Previous Previous 24 hour run: 108nm
Water Temp: 66
Log: 16391
Distance to go: 300nm (straight line to Opua, my destination port in NZ.)

This is being written in the afternoon of the 7th, and will be sent out tonight when the SSB frequencies I need are less noisy - they are pretty noisy these days. Could be sun spot, weather or some other cause.

I went through the trough on the 5th. Before it arrived, the winds turned northerly at low teens strength. I went through one side of the trough, and as I was fairly high on it, the winds simply turned NW for a while. Then the wind died off for two hours and then came back as south, eventually backing around to SE. A typical southern hemisphere trough! I lowered my sails when the wind died, and eventually, after one of my sleep cycles at night I heard the wind arriving and I was able to raise a sail, get turned around and then raise the other. Knowing the weather forecast and what to expect is so nice. I knew the trough was moving east and the calms wouldn't last long, so waiting was an option.

When I was in the NW wind section of the trough I came across my first ship on this journey - an AIS contact 45 minutes away, freighter, traveling at 12 knots. I first saw it on AIS at 12nm away and almost immediately my AIS unit started its buzzer warning me of a collision alert. It was calculating a closest point of approach at 1 mile ahead, then 0.5 miles behind, then 0.5 miles ahead, 1 mile behind etc - as my boat would ride the waves the solution was changing but when it becomes random, close and on alternating sides - ahead, behind, that's a good sign I needed to change something. I waited 10 minutes, the CPA stayed as random so I altered course, passing it port-to-port 1/2 hour later. I spoke with them, they saw my signal at 7nm, which seems typical for small boats like me. AIS pays off again.

Once I was clear of the trough the winds were expected to back around to the SSE, SE, ESE, and east, then hover between east and ESE for four or five days. My trouble was that with taking the trough high, and then going through the south winds, I had ended up further west than expected. Since then I've been sailing into the wind, as close to the wind as possible in order to make more southing. This is working, although sailing close to the wind as I am is not nearly as comfortable. Last night was the first night of the trip I didn't bother making a 'good' meal for dinner - I opened a can of Dinty Moore stew, added a can of corn, heated it up, added a few crackers and that was that. Even doing that is an effort. Moving around the boat is an effort. Every movement has to be planned and it ends up being very physical sailing in these conditions. Too bad all sailing can't be downwind.

In one day I had gone from warm downwind sailing, sailing in shorts and a t-shirt day and night, barefoot to something a little more harsh. I'm wearing shoes again - you end up bracing more strongly, more often with your feet when upwind, and you don't want to break a toe... The south wind has brought cold from antarctica, or so it feels like, so I'm wearing pants and four layers on top, with a light toque. I'm already missing the tropics.

I should add a note about these sailing conditions. I know some people who are considering going cruising read this blog - Hello! The vast majority of the sailing on this coconut milk run is really nice. At the moment, its not, it happens. Luckily, it doesn't happen that frequently, but when you do happen to need to sail through some weather to get somewhere, there is no turning it off. You can often heave to in order to avoid weather, but on this passage the longer you hang around this area the more likely you are to be hit by something really nasty. What I'm in is not as fun as going downwind but is nothing compared to what you can get in this area at this time. In fact, what I'm in is really nothing - upwind in 4 to 5 foot seas with the wind 10 to 20 - and I've seen the wind at all those strengths, back and forth, so reefing, unreefing, trimming. Its real sailing. This would be ideal for a nice afternoon daysail. But this sailing isn't daysailing and you've got to respect it. If you are outfitting a boat for these conditions make sure you have a solid handhold to grab everywhere. In the head, every path you may need to walk in the cabin, getting up to the cockpit, and in the cockpit. When I go up from down below to the cockpit I never carry anything - I put what it is I'm taking up and place it on the companionway top step, then brace myself carefully while very deliberately placing my feet, hands, then elbows and forearms. The boat will and often does suddenly move in an unexpected direction. The handholds need to be strong enough to support your weight and placed such that if you were to put your weight onto them you wouldn't dislocate an arm in the process. My dodge is super strong with plenty of handholds, make sure your cockpit has lots to grab onto. If you have weather cloths put them outside the lifelines. Sailing in these conditions resembles a carnival ride, the ones where you get bounced around, leaning this way and that, jumping up and down. Except once you are in these conditions and going somewhere there is no getting off - you're committed. Eat well, get plenty of rest, look after yourself and the boat, and try to stay amused. And remember, that it won't last forever, that the boat is well maintained and strong and that you are the weak link. I try not to let Luckness down during these periods. Anyway. Most sailing is really nice. I'm doing fine Mom, really! I realized recently that most of my writing about sailing is 'all good', I'll try to add some of the not-so-good to balance it out. I continue to have a lot of respect for this Crealock designed and Pacific Seacraft built boat, they got so much, so right.

I think I have 3 1/2 or 4 days left. This sailing close to the wind is slowing me down and I'm unsure the weather will cooperate with its forecast, so I'm going to overshoot my ideal bearing to Opua so that if the wind veers around I won't need to tack to get there. So far, I haven't had to run the engine on the passage, it would be sweet to arrive having sailed the whole way.

All is well onboard.

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Passage to NZ: Day 4

Date: Nov 5, 2014
27° 27' S 178° 37' E. (East!)
24 hour run: 140nm
Previous 24 hour run: 133nm
Water Temp: 71
Log: 16161
Distance to go: 513nm (straight line to Opua, my destination port in NZ.)

This is being written at 6am, which makes it still day 4, although day 5 is only 4 hours away.

The sailing so far has been wonderful. I think I'll look back on it and realize this has been the easy part of the trip. The winds have been mainly from the ESE and E initially, and overnight they have started to back around toward the N where they are blowing from now.

There is a weather feature up ahead, looks like a trough - an elongated low. I'll pass through it tonight or early tomorrow, after which the winds will come from the south and then clock around to be more easterly again. After that, there will be one more weather feature I may need to deal with, there may be a high centered on the northern tip of NZ, in which case there will be no wind in the area. From yesterday's GRIB weather data, it looked like I could slow down a little and then when I arrive in that area the high may have moved along and there will be wind. Fortunately (?) the wind where I am has turned a little lighter and I have indeed slowed down. I have been making a consistent 5.5 - 6+ knots on the trip up until last night, currently I'm doing 4 to 5 knots.

When I left the Vava'u group I thought I had the perfect weather window for the trip. Two days later I had changed my mind, as the GRIBs were showing a much more confused jumble of light wind, highs and lows in my path. Yesterday the GRIBs had changed again and I started seeing a reasonable path through everything which I could sail - I could turn on the engine at any time to power through light wind, but I would rather not if I can avoid it. Its part of the game. The other part of the game is to arrive in NZ before any really bad weather arrives in the area, as it has a tendency to do, and so far I'm looking good there. I'm not sure if there is a lesson in how fast the weather is changing other than that it is a challenging weather passage, as everybody who sails it knows.

I had a little squall yesterday, but aside from that its been beautiful sailing so far.

All is well onboard.

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Passage to NZ: day 2

Date: Nov 2, 2014
22° 44' S 178° 16' W
24 hour run: 156nm
Previous 24 hour run: 150nm
Water Temp: 78. Water temp in Vava'u: 82deg
Log: 15857
Distance to go: 970nm (this distance is along an approximate route, which I won't follow too closely..)

I'm two days out from Vava'u, heading approximately toward New Zealand, and all is well. The sailing so far has been fast and good. The days are warm although the nights are cooling down a little. This is the easy part of this passage, the weather up here is still pretty organized, lots of east and east-south-east winds right now.

I've decided to not stop at Minerva Reef. The weather patterns right now are changing quite a lot each day, but I generally like continuing on over stopping at the reef. I have heard really good things about the reef and it would be fun to join the Minerva Reef Yacht Club, and anybody who stops there can claim membership, but I think I'm better off continuing this journey.

I'm downloading weather forecasts, GRIB files, once a day. Their forecast keep changing and I think if I were to wait at the reef until they were perfect it could be quite a wait. A number of boats at the reef left yesterday and today. Yesterday the weather forecast looked a little more organized, I would have to cross one front a few days from now and then might have been able to make it into NZ without crossing another front. Now it looks like I may have to go through two of them. Things keep changing each day and I suspect a few days from now I'll have more detail on what to expect. Nothing I've seen so far looks too uncomfortable, although there is some light wind ahead of me and unless I motor quite a distance that might not be much fun.

I'll try to post again in a few days, but as usual, if I stop posting, please, nobody panic. There are lots of reasons why my ability to post could be compromised while at sea.

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Tonga Part 2 and onward

I've been in Tonga for almost 3 months now, its been a good stay but its time for me to move along. When I first arrived I thought that I needed to be out of Tonga, to be safe from the cyclone season, by around the first of November. After talking to many people here, I've learned that the people who sail a lot between New Zealand and Tonga often wait until the end of the month, they sail in late November to New Zealand. However, I've been wanting to move along for a little while now, and I think my weather opportunity is coming up.

I was preparing to leave a little over a week ago, but watching the weather systems develop I didn't like the look of the weather window that was opening, and so skipped that one and have been waiting to see what the next one looked like. I like the look of this next weather window, and will make the final call on it tomorrow morning to either stay or go.

There is a definite feeling of the place starting to close down here. One of the popular cruisers hangouts, The Aquarium, has changed its hours from 7 days a week to 6, and from 9am to late to the new hours of 2pm to late. Whale watching boats are coming out of the water, the mooring field has thinned out dramatically. There is still the occasional boat that arrives, but more boats are leaving these days. I heard on a SSB radio net this morning that there are 13 boats currently at Minerva Reef waiting for a weather window to continue on to New Zealand. 13 boats are in Tongatapu, the southern most group of islands in Tonga, waiting for a chance to sail to Minerva. The exodus is clearly on.

Minerva Reef is a stop along the way to New Zealand, roughly 4 days from where I am, leaving roughly 7 days remaining. It can make a nice stop along the way to wait until the weather develops until you like it, and then continue. It sounds like a beautiful reef, with an easy, large, deep entrance and good anchoring inside. I may stop at Minerva, but also may continue depending on how the weather systems look. Minerva sounds a little like Beveridge Reef, which I enjoyed so much, although Minerva sounds more comfortable as the reef is higher and offers more protection that at Beveridge.

Weather between this area and New Zealand is a little tricky, as there are migrating highs and lows which come from the west over Australia, traveling east, in a continual stream. There is low followed by a high, followed by a low, then high, etc. Each weather system is slightly different, with the highs being higher pressure or slightly lower, and further north or south, or wider or narrower, The same with the lows, they can be deeper, in higher latitudes, faster, more elongated, etc. The trick is that the lows are roughly a week apart, and it takes me around that long to travel from Minerva reef to New Zealand. You don't really want to approach New Zealand and be slapped by a front, as that will leave you with SW winds afterwards, then S, making travel towards the destination rather challenging. There are different strategies I've heard, and I'll choose something that makes sense to me at the time, depending on what I'm seeing in the weather forecasts as I approach Minerva.

Sorry, no pictures this time.

My next post will likely be from sea, when I'm underway. As usual, if my blog posts while underway stop, please, nobody panic. There are lots of reasonable reasons why I may not be able to send my blog posts out.

New Zealand, here I come!

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Watts = Volts x Amps

As the title suggests, this post is going to be technical, and probably boring for many readers.  If you aren't interested in batteries and battery charging, on sailboats, go back to what you were doing.  I'll be posting another article before I leave Tonga, which may happen in less than a week.

If you are looking for a general theme for this posting, it could be something like how much there is to learn about this cruising lifestyle and how the learning process is constant.  Or, how you think you know a lot about something, only to later discover how wrong that thought was and how much more there is to learn.  Or you could think of the theme as being about batteries and power.

While I was sailing between Bora Bora and Beveridge Reef, as on many passages, I had a lot of time to think about random things.  For some reason I started reviewing a conversation I had had with a cruising couple a short time before, talking about their battery bank, my battery bank and power in general.  Something they said reminded me of something I have heard from other cruisers and seems to be generally adopted as true, which is that solar power is not able to fully charge your ships batteries - every now and then its good to run a generator or plug into shore power in order to fully charge the batteries as doing so is good for them.  I had always found these comments somewhat strange as on Luckness my solar was able to fully charge my batteries, on a sunny day, early in the day - I had plenty of power...or so I thought.  I had also noticed that my battery bank seemed to be degrading and I thought that I would need to buy a new battery bank when I arrived in New Zealand.  The battery bank seemed to not be holding its charge very well, which is one of the signs that the batteries you have are nearing their end of life.

While out in the middle of the ocean, on July 4th, many days from anywhere, I decided to dig my battery manual out and read it, followed by my solar controllers manual, and read that as well.  I had read both manuals a few times while back in Seattle and thought I understood everything those manuals had to say, but this time I read the manuals and discovered something new.  After understanding what the manuals said, I realized that I had been under charging my batteries for the entire time I've been away from docks, not plugged in.  Undercharging batteries is bad for them and can shorten their lifespan.

At this point in this post I have to start getting more technical.

My boat, as with most boats, is powered with 12 volt, lead acid batteries.  I have 400 amp hours of battery capacity on board, four group 31 Odyssey batteries.  You can think of this as four large car batteries for simplicity, although these are quite a lot larger than car batteries.  Being a battery, you can't just look at it, like you can a water bottle or lighter, to see how full it is.  You can't weight a battery, like you can a propane tank.  The definitive way to learn how 'full' a battery is, is to measure its Open Circuit Voltage, OCV.  To do this, you disconnect the batteries, let them sit for at least 6 hours, preferably overnight, and then measure the voltage across the battery.

For my Odyssey batteries, the OCV voltage of a fully charged battery is 12.84 volts.  90% of capacity is around 12.7 volts.  80% is just under 12.6V.  50% is 12.2V.  At 12.0 volts the battery is at roughly 35% state of charge - you hope never to see voltages this low.

Nobody ever measures Open Circuit Voltage - its highly impractical to disconnect your battery bank and wait 6 hours on a cruising boat.  The reason you need to disconnect the battery and let it sit for a while in order to have its voltage be a meaningful measure of its state of charge is that batteries are not at all like bottles of water in terms of being full or empty.  The lead plates inside the battery have two types of charge - a 'surface charge' and a deeper charge.  I think of electrons hovering around the surface of a plate being the surface charge, and electrons deep inside the lead plate as being the deeper, or 'real' charge.  In order for a battery to be in a fully charged state, the voltage for the entire lead plate, inside and outside, needs to be at the fully charged voltage.  You can bring the surface of a lead plate to a high voltage fairly easily, the hard part is to have the charge be absorbed by the entire plate.  I'll return to the surface charge being absorbed into the interior of the lead plate a little later.

As measuring the Open Circuit Voltage is impractical, most cruising boats use a battery monitor to keep track of their batteries state of charge.  There is a device called a shunt which is able to measure current (amperage) going into or out of a battery.  A battery monitor is hooked up to a shunt which is hooked up to your battery bank.  The battery monitor monitors the shunt which is constantly reporting back if the battery bank is being charged, depleted, and by how much.  Think of a shunt as measuring the flow of electricity into or out of the battery.  If everything on your boat is turned off, the shunt will report '0' - no activity.  If you then turn a light on, the shunt may report 0.2 amps going out.  If the solar panels are charging the shunt may report 13 amps going in.  As the various chargers and loads on the system turn on and off, the shunt is constantly measuring the net load in or out.  The battery monitor keeps tracks of these loads and essentially counts up and down.  Assume that at some point you have a fully charged battery bank and the battery monitor shows its capacity as 100%.  As you start using power the battery monitor watches the shunt and tracks the power remaining in the battery.  One hour after a 1 amp load is on, the battery bank is down by 1 amp/hour, one 1 Ah.  My battery bank holds 400Ah, so it would now be at 399Ah left, or 99.75% of capacity.  On Luckness, if the batteries were fully charged in the evening, by the morning the batteries will be down from between 30 and 45Ah, depending on how hard the fridge worked and how much I used my computer.  Measuring current over time and counting down, for a battery monitor, is easy.

That same battery monitor measuring the charge going into a battery has a more difficult time.  If 10 amps go into a battery for 1 hour you would think that the battery is now 10 Ah more fully charged, right?  But it turns out that the charging process is not 100% efficient, there are loses along the way and not all of those 10 Ah end up being stored.  Something like 90% to 95% will end up in the battery.  The battery monitor needs to account for these loses.  The voltage of the current going in also affects things, and over time the battery monitors idea of the state of charge can stray further from the truth.  Every now and then the battery monitor needs to be told: the batteries are full - it can then reset its counters and the monitor will be more accurate for a while.

Watts = Volts * Amps.

The amps being measured at the shunt is only part of the power story, the other is voltage.  Everybody with solar panels has some sort of solar controller.  If you have an alternator, it has a charge controller.  Wind generator?  It has a charge controller.  Battery charger?  Another charge controller.  Luckness has four independent charge controller, however the most important one is the solar controller as that account for almost all of the charging in my cruise.

A solar controller is responsible for converting the voltage of the power being generated by the solar panels into a suitable voltage for your batteries, and to ensure that the batteries do not become over charged.  You can think of the solar controller and the solar charge controller as being the same thing, it probably is.

Now, lets return to the idea of surface charge and the deeper charge.  My batteries are fully charged if they measure at 12.84 open circuit volts.  However, you do not charge these batteries by holding a 12.84 volt charge on the battery for a long time.  Analogies rarely work with electronics, but you can think of the voltage of the charge being applied to a battery as pushing the electrons into the lead plates.  If the pressure isn't high enough, the charge isn't pushed into the plate, its left on the surface.  In order to spread the charge through the whole battery, you need to raise the voltage.  Again, going back to my batteries, there are two charge voltages - one is the voltage you hold the battery at while its being charged and the other is the voltage you hold the battery at once it is fully charged.  The first is called the absorption charge, also knows as the acceptance charge.  The second charge, the one you apply once the battery is fully charged, is called the float charge.

Battery chargers are typically two or three stage chargers.  Three stage chargers are better and more common.  Its what I have on Luckness and is what I'll focus on.  My solar controller has a three stage battery charger.

The three stages in the battery charge cycle are: bulk; acceptance (or absorption); and float.  During the bulk charge the charge controller is basically working as hard as it can to deliver as many amps into the battery.  This is the stage where the controller is not holding back at all, its delivering all it can to the battery.  This is where I will see my panels delivering 21 amps on a sunny day, which is good to see.  During the bulk phase of a charge cycle the battery is trying to accept all the power delivered to it and as it does so its voltage slowly rises.  At the start of my charge cycle my batteries are typically somewhere around 12.6 volts, and the voltage slowly rises as the charge is delivered.  At some point the voltage rises to the acceptance voltage limit - this is the first trigger for the charge controller.  For my Odyssey batteries, once the voltage hits 14.5 or 14.6 volts, the charger changes mode into the second stage, the acceptance phase.

The first phase is characterized by a rising voltage, for example from 12.6 to 14.5.  The second phase has a constant voltage.  During this phase, the charge controller will try to hold the voltage at a constant level, 14.5 volts for Luckness.  In order to do this, the charge controller will need to start throttling the power going into the battery.  I typically hit this stage of charging between 10am and noon which is when the sun is starting to deliver its maximum power to my panels, but when the charge phase goes to acceptance, I will see the solar controller start to throttle the amperage going into the battery bank down from 20 amps to 10, then 8, 6, 4 and so on, delivering less and less power as the battery becomes more fully charged.

At some point in time, and this is the whole point of this posting, the charge controller will decide the batteries are full and move into the third phase, the float phase.  The voltage drops, for my system, to 13.5 and is held there indefinitely - or until the sun is not able to deliver enough power to keep up with the demand at which point the batteries start depleting and we start another night/day cycle.

So, how does the charge controller decide when the battery bank is full?  I have a Blue Sky charge controller with a remote panel on it, which gives me a combined solar/charge controller and battery monitor.  You might think that the charge controller would simply be counting the amps going into the battery - when the charge has replaced the amps which left the previous day it would be charged?  I.e. if you used 40 Ah overnight and the charge put 40 Ah back, the battery would be charged.  This doesn't work.

It turns out there are two accepted methods of deciding when the batteries are fully charged.  For Odyssey batteries, and its different for different manufacturers and battery designs, if you hold the acceptance voltage for 8 hours the batteries are fully charged - so if the controller can hold the voltage at 14.5 volts for 8 hours its finished for that cycle and the batteries are full.  This never happens with solar controllers as there isn't enough sun in the day for this to happen.

The other method of triggering the transition between the acceptance and float charge phases is to measure the amperage going into the batteries.  Remember that the voltage is constant in the second phase and for that to be true, the controller is reducing the amperage to lower and lower levels.  The default setting for the Blue Sky controller is to trigger the transition to float when the charge going into the battery bank is 1.5 amps per 100 Ah of capacity.  I have 400Ah of battery capacity, so the controller would go into float when the charge hit 6 amps.  When the controller goes to float, it resets its shunt counter so that it measures 0Ah, when you deplete the battery from here it will show amps going out.  It also switches to the lower float voltage, and in order to do so the controller will be delivering even fewer amps into the battery.  If the controller was delivering 6 amps into the battery at 14.5 volts and hit the trigger to transition to the float charge, it would need to deliver many fewer than 6 amps to hold the battery at the lower voltage of 13.6 - so the controller is shedding more amps and perhaps only delivering 1 amp or less now.

I didn't understand the transition between the acceptance and float phases very clearly when I left on my first cruise in 2011.  I would constantly look at my solar controller and see it doing its fast LED blink, which indicates that the controller is in float and that it thinks my batteries were full.  I would recall people mentioning how solar controllers can't fully charge a battery bank and think: "well mine can, look at that blink!"  During my second cruise, starting in 2012 I noticed that the voltage of the battery bank was lower than I thought it should be for a given state of charge - but since I wasn't measuring the OCV I wasn't too surprised by this.  I thought my battery bank was aging and would soon need to be replaced.

As I was reading my Odyssey battery manual, between Bora Bora and Beveridge reef, I came across something talking about the charge cycle:

If the charger has a timer, then it can switch from absorption mode to float mode when the current drops to 0.001C10 amps. If the current fails to drop to 0.001C10 amps, then the timer will force the transition to a float charge after no more than 8 hours.

What's 0.001C10 amps?  My eyes glazed over when I read this in 2010.  However this time around, I was out in the ocean with nothing else to do.

Batteries have different capacities depending on how much of a load you are drawing from them.  My batteries are rated at 104Ah each, but at a C20 charge rate, which is a load designed to fully deplete the battery in 20 hours.  My batteries C10 capacity is 97Ah.  So 0.001C10 is equal to 0.001 * 97 = .097amps.  What the quote above is saying, is that for my battery bank, the charge controller should transition from acceptance (14.5 volts) to float (13.6 volts) when the current being delivered is 0.001 * 400 amps = 0.4 amps.  Oops.

The default current trigger on the Blue Sky controller from acceptance to float is 1.5 amps / 100Ah.  For my batteries it should have been 0.1 amps / 100Ah.  This is why my batteries have been undercharged for so long.  The solar controller was moving into float when the charge going into the batteries was 6 amps, the transition should have been when 0.4 amps are going in.

I tried finding this information for other battery types a little while ago.  For Lifeline batteries, I found a mention in the manual to the trigger being 0.5% of capacity, which is 0.005C10 which for 400Ah would be 2 amps.  For Trojan flooded batteries, the trigger amperage seems to be 1-3% C20.  Again, for my battery capacity, 400Ah, this would be 4 to 12 amps (which appears to be a rather large range...)

So.  My solar controller was transitioning into the float charge way too early.  Before making the change, I would notice that the charge controller would be in the bulk phase for a while, then hit acceptance and very quickly switch into float - it would rarely be in acceptance for longer than half an hour, often much less.  I read in the Odyssey manual, that for these batteries, you switch into acceptance at roughly 80% state of charge.  This would be when charging a fully depleted battery.  However, as I have been undercharging my batteries for so long, the battery monitor would have been resetting its current counter to 0 at lower and lower levels and I may have ended up with my batteries at 80% state of charge while the battery monitor was showing them as being fully charged.

I changed the setting in the Blue Sky controller to 0.1 amps/100Ah on July 4th (what were you doing that day?) and started watching the state of charge.  The next day, the controller moved into acceptance at noon and stayed there all day.  Same the next day, and the next.  By July 8th, a series of bright sunny days, the charge controller finally reached the float trigger and transitioned into float at 2pm, the first time my batteries had been fully charged since leaving my slip at Shilshole.

Since then, I've noticed that the voltage of my batteries is higher in the morning and the voltage is held higher during the day.  For a given state of charge, as reported by my battery monitor, the battery bank voltage seems to correspond to the OCV voltage more closely.  I think my battery bank condition is fine - I am no longer planning on replacing the battery bank in New Zealand.

Returning to the folk lore I had heard about solar panels not being able to fully charge a battery bank - its not true.  My battery bank is truly being fully charged now - it no longer happens every day but does normally happen every few days.  If its cloudy I get close to fully charged but not into float, which is now a very high standard.  If its sunny, and I start the day less than 30Ah down, I'll enter float that day.  Occasionally the system will enter float when the charge is lower, but rarely if its down 40Ah or more.

This has been a good learning experience for me.  Understanding your boats batteries and charging/monitoring system is important.

Here are a few more random points:

• Luckness is an energy efficient boat.  All of the lights are LED, except the mast mounted steaming/deck light.  My chart plotter draws 0.75 amps with its backlight on full.  My AIS/anchor alarm is on constantly, 24/7, and draws around 0.25 amps
• At night, at anchor, I have a constant draw of 0.9 amps (handheld VHF 0.2, AIS/Anchor alarm 0.25, anchor light 0.3, computer plugged into 12v trickle charging, iPhone plugged in, various monitors and controllers on - fridge, solar controller).  When the fridge comes on the load goes up of course
• On an offshore passage, during the day, my power draw is 1.3 amps: chart plotter 0.75, AIS 0.25, handheld VHF 0.2, timer, etc the rest.  At night add 0.3 for the tri-color and subtract some for the chart plotter backlight being set to its lowest level
• On a coastal passage, my base station VHF adds 0.7 amps.
• After my first cruise, while in Seattle, I found a 12 volt charger for my MacBook online at Amazon.  This has saved me a lot of power and allows me to run my computer as long as I want.  If you are planning on using your inverter to charge anything routinely, try to find a 12 volt replacement for that charging system.  The only thing I'm charging on my inverter now is my toothbrush, every two or three weeks
• The Frigoboat Capri 35 fridge I installed before leaving Seattle, without a keel cooler but with a digital thermostat and the adaptive controller, has been very efficient.  I would be down a little over 40Ah in the morning when I was in the hotter tropical waters months ago, but I'm routinely down a little over 30 Ah now (with a lot of computer use.)
• My wind generator has been useful and I like having it, but I rarely turn it on if its sunny or will be sunny the next day.  If the wind generator is making power during the day when the solar controller is charging the batteries, there can be a case of dueling charge controllers.  Once the solar controller has entered acceptance it tries to hold the voltage constant by lowering the current it delivers.  If the wind generator is making power in this phase it confuses the solar controller and the solar controller may throttle the panels or move into float too early.  I have also seen the voltage rise above 15 volts for periods when the wind generator is making power into a system which is already fully charged.
• I only use the wind generator when I  need it.  I think of it as a mechanical system which has bearings that will wear out and I try to save it for when its really needed
• You need the system to enter float every now and then, as doing so resets counters in your battery monitor to the zero point.  If you don't enter float the value shown by the battery monitor for how many Ah you are down will become less and less meaningful.  This is partly conjecture on my part - but it was my experience while I wasn't fully charging my batteries.  Every now and then the monitor needs to know that the batteries are at a full state of charge
• If you plan on using a generator to charge your batteries every now and then, do so at a time when the battery charger can deliver the maximum amount of current possible.  This is the bulk phase of charging.  Once the batteries have entered acceptance, the controller will throttle the current going in which is a poor use of a generator.  So perhaps run the generator first thing in the morning, bring the state of charge up to a reasonable level and then let your solar take it the rest of the way.  This implies that if you only use a generator, or alternator, to charge batteries that they will rarely be fully charged - unless you don't mind running your generator as it delivers less and less current for hours and hours, finishing the charge into float.  Solar seems ideal for this
• I left Mexico with a working water maker and had problems with having enough power to run the boat and make water in the Marquesas.  The conventional wisdom is that the South Pacific is sunny and you should make lots of power.  The reality is that there are cloudy periods.  Many anchorages have little wind.  If I decide to replace my water maker, I'll also be buying a generator

Questions?  Comments?  Email me.

Tonga, Part 1

When I was back in Seattle thinking about cruising through the South Pacific, I wasn't sure what to expect.  There have been a lot of surprises along the way and I've visited many astoundingly beautiful places.  From my experience so far, the Vava'u group in Tonga is a tropical paradise.  You are probably familiar with the classic image of a South Pacific island - a small island with palm trees swaying back and forth surrounded by many hues of beautiful blue water and with a white sand beach down by the shoreline.  I keep running into this image in this group and am not getting tired of it at all.  There are quite a few cruising boats around but there are enough anchorages to spread the fleet out and I have spent nights at anchor with lots of neighbors as well as been by myself for days at a time.

I've been in Tonga now for a little over six weeks.  Of that time, I've spent 16 days moored in Neiafu and 30 days out at anchor.  I've only visited 8 anchorages, all of them beautiful.  Only one of the anchorages has had a challenging bottom, with a mixture of sand and coral.  In all of the other anchorages, I've been anchoring in 12 to 25 feet of water onto an all sand bottom.  The water colors have been beautiful and the water is warm enough to swim in without a wetsuit.  When snorkeling in this area, I've mainly seen fairly drab coral with a lot of it dead or otherwise boring.  One theory I've heard about the dead coral is that the last cyclone to come through, which was around 9 years ago, stirred up a lot of sand and sediment.  The sediment was deposited on the coral and a lot of it died at that time.  Its coming back slowly, but at the moment there are pockets of excellent coral and fish life, but you have to search for it.

I've visited 8 different anchorage and gone back and forth to the main town twice and have only traveled 36 miles.  36 miles!  If I backup 8 anchorages from arriving in Tonga, I would be in Fakarava in the Tuamotus which is 1600 miles backwards along my path.  I'm enjoying the short distances and beautiful surroundings in this country.

Tonga has also a social place, I've been meeting many of the boats I met earlier this season again, as well as meeting people who came the same way that I did but have not met until now, as well as boats from New Zealand who I am coming across for the first time.  Most of the boats traveling through the South Pacific in any season arrive in the Marquesas, travel to the Tuamotus and then the Society Islands.  From there the fleet splits up, with cruisers choosing which of the Cook Islands they will visit, if any, and if they will take the north or south route west of the Cooks.  Most of the fleet seems to come together again in Tonga, where they again get to choose if they travel further west to Fiji or hang around here until the cyclone season approaches and they need to get out of its way.  Many of the people I have met are traveling to New Zealand, some to Australia and a few haven't decided yet.

Tonga is easy cruising.  There is pretty decent provisioning in Neiafu, with lots of vegetables, dried goods, frozen meats and treats.  I found bacon on my first few trips into town, but not since then.  Provisioning is a little hit and miss, but there is no problem in obtaining enough food to eat if you don't mind changing your ideas slightly on what you'll take away.  Diesel is easily available, there are several working ATMs, extending your visa beyond the initial 30 day period is easy, there is (slow) free internet available on shore from several establishments, there is a good variety of cruiser food - pizza, hamburgers, fries, nachos, along with a wider variety of good food.  The beer is decent and fairly priced.  All in all, this is turning out to be a very pleasant, easy and social visit.

I'm not sure if I will hang around this group of islands for the time I have remaining to me before I head off to New Zealand.  There are two more island groups to my south, one of which sounds very appealing.  I'll either take the easy route and stay here, or explore further and head south.  Exploring the local beautiful anchorages or go exploring the more remote southern anchorage - these are the types of hard problems I'm working on at the moment.  One issue with heading south is that I'm not sure if I'll have easy access to shore water - since I no longer have a working water maker, I'm not sure if my arriving at a small island and asking for water from the locals would be so cool...  There is a drought starting in the area now and Neiafu appears to have a good water supply - the smaller islands may end up a little starved for water if the problem continues.

I will be heading to New Zealand by sometime in late October or early November.  Until then, I'm in a tropical paradise and am in no hurry to leave.

Here are a few photos...  As with all the photos in this blog, click on any image to see a larger version.

Neiafu on a calm morning.                  Photos credit to Carol on s/v Estrellita.

A typical anchorage in the Vava'u group, Tonga.

One happy sailor!

On a reef at low tide, looking between Kenutu and Lopo

Luckness and The Southern Cross, at anchor, Kenutu

Catherine, Peter and I exploring a cave

Looking out of the cave!

The Octopus

I was snorkeling with Peter and Catherine from The Southern Cross when Peter noticed an octopus below us.  The octopus had moved and Peter noticed the movement, otherwise we would have passed by without seeing it at all.  Its in all three of the images above if you look closely.  Try clicking on the images to see the larger versions.  In the image its head is white, brown with black spots.  There are also large spikes in its flesh.  The spikes and colors are part of its camouflage - its picking up cues from its environment and making itself blend in by adopting the same colors and textures.  How cool is that!?  Octopuses are incredible.  A few months ago I was walking along a beach when I looked into the water and saw an Octopus swimming along - as it moved it was changing color according to the bottom it was traveling across.  They are masters of disguise.

We humans think we are so clever with our opposable thumbs, which presumably let us rule the world.  Well, how hard is it for us to even move our eye brows in opposite directions, one up, one down.  If we can pat our heads while rubbing our tummies we congratulate ourselves.  Octopus would likely be laughing their heads off, if their personalities lean toward that type of thing.  I challenge anybody to imagine spikes appearing all over their bodies and then to have them appear.  Wouldn't that be fun!  Instead of our limited non-verbal ways of communicating, winking at someone across a room for example, imagine the possibilities if we could change color and textures - going suddenly to a spiky head says much more than a wink, imagine the possibilities.  Octopuses rock.

All is well onboard, I hope the same is true with all of you!

The Niue post

It seems that I've mentioned Niue twice now, but haven't really blogged about my stay there.  This is that post.

However, before getting to Niue: I'm currently moored in Neiafu, which is in the Vava'u group of islands in Tonga.  I'm planning on leaving Neiafu to go exploring some of the 40 or 50 local anchorages for a week or two, soon.   Its beautiful here, as well as easy, social, sheltered and many other good things. More on all of that in some future post.

Ok.  Back to Niue.

Niue is a small coral island, a raised coral atoll, and is one of the world's smallest independent countries and one of the largest coral islands.  Niue is in 'free association' with New Zealand, and all of the Niue citizens are also citizens of New Zealand, which seems like a pretty good deal if you're a Niue'ian.  While walking around the island, the New Zealand connection is pretty apparent and seems like a good thing.

There is only one harbor in Niue and the surrounding coastline is too deep and the seabed too rugged to allow anchoring.  Its not that the seabed would be poor holding, rather, it would likely be really excellent holding.  However, the holding is so good you may never retrieve your anchor as there are many limestone chasms where your anchor could slip in and have a very hard time slipping out.  There is a Niue Yacht club on shore which maintains around 20 moorings, and that's what you use when you're here.  The moorings are inspected regularly and are very sturdy.

When the winds are from the predominant direction, between east and southeast, the anchorage is very comfortable.  When there is any west in the swell, then the anchorage becomes very rolly as its completely exposed to anything with any west in it.  These were the conditions for the first four or five days while I was there and the boat was rolling from rub-strake to rub-strake, side to side.  For those who don't know what a rub-strake is, or where it is on a PSC37, that's a pretty deep roll.  Rolling far enough that cups left on counter tops launch themselves across the cabin.  However the swell backed around to the south and continued further to the south east and the area became more and more comfortable.

Going from your boat to shore involves coming to the wharf and then raising your dinghy onto the wharf using the crane supplied.  I had read about this before coming and was nervous about how it would work for a singlehander, but it turns out to be pretty easy and I ended up going back and forth to shore without any problems.

There are great opportunities to stretch your legs here.  You can easily rent bicycles, motorcycles or cars - I opted for a bicycle.  The local roads are in good shape and they are often shaded by trees as you pass through forested areas.  As you ride along the coastal roads there are many signs pointing from the road down to the sea identifying a sea track.

All of the sea tracks I saw were in very good shape and were well built, leading to a view, a cave, the shore line, a swimming area or some other attraction.  Often you would get all of those in one track.  Most of the sea tracks that ended at or close to the sea also had a fresh water shower toward the top of the track, so you could swim in the ocean and then rinse off with fresh water before continuing along the road to the next track.  There appears to be lots of water on the island, all of it drinkable.

The island is mostly composed of limestone and the shoreline is very rugged - there isn't a lot of beach here, although there is a little.  Its, mainly, not a shoreline you would want to walk along in bare feet.

While the shoreline is rugged and not barefoot friendly, it is absolutely beautiful.  The water clarity at Niue is well over 100 feet.  My boat was moored in 90 feet of water and I could see the bottom clearly.  From what I have read, Niue seems to be a diving destination.

The sea tracks often lead down a steep trail to shore, going through caves and ending up in more caves.

s/v Estrellita pulled into Niue a few days after I did and we got to hang out for a while.  Estrellita is not a large boat, perhaps around the same volume as Luckness, but they have really packed a large number of cruising-toys into their boat.  They have dive gear, and while were were there I accompanied them on a dive - me in mask and fins, them with all their dive stuff.

As you can tell, its Livia on the left, Carol on the right

Another amazing feature of the waters around Niue is that humpback whales frequent the area.  They were here while we were, and it was amazing.  (There I go again, over using the phrase 'it was amazing' or 'it is amazing'.  Oh well.)  Most nights you can hear the whales breathing as they dive through the mooring field and during the day they were frequently around, diving, broaching, hanging around.  We tried a couple of times to swim in the same water the whales were in, and on one occasion got pretty close.  Or anyway, Carol and Livia got close.  I ended up on the wrong side of those two and the whales...I could see the whales better than you would imagine from the photo.

Look close, and you can see that there are whales in the background.  Carol and Livia in the foreground.  Those two have pictures of the same encounter and Livia's pictures are National Geographic quality, really outstanding.  So when you look at the photo above...just try to imagine the whales being very large, close, interesting and amazing, that's how I remember it.

A hurricane hit Niue in January 2004 and did quite a lot of damage.  From what I understand, the population of Niue before the hurricane was something like 20,000 people. Currently its around 1,600.  A lot of people left after the hurricane for New Zealand - around 90 to 95% of the Niue population is currently living in New Zealand.  This has left many properties unoccupied and abandoned, which is a little sad to see.  Each property does however have a caretaker, and you can see that the lawns are all kept in check, which is no small thing in this area.

As I was going through the photos I had taken while I was in Niue, here in Tonga, I realized that I have been a bad photo journalist.  I have no pictures of Alofi, the capital city of Niue, where I spent most of my time.  Its a nice little town, mostly a single main road with a variety of restarants, stores, a bakery, a hardware store, gas station, etc.

Niue is a fantastic little island.  They are currently promoting themselves to New Zealanders as a tourist destination - so if you want, visit now, before its 'discovered' by the masses!

So, that's Niue.  While I'm posting to my blog, I can't help but to add some boat project related stuff.  When I first got to Niue my dinghy hadn't been used for over 20 days, as I hadn't used it while I was at Beveridge reef.  When I got to Niue, I put the dinghy in the water, mounted the engine and went to start the motor.  It wouldn't start, or would start, run poorly and then sputter and die.  This engine had been causing me problems for quite some time and it was back causing problems again.  Getting from Luckness to shore would be a little challenging by rowing my dinghy as the wind was initially fairly strong and blowing through the mooring field - but I could have moved to a closer mooring and this might have worked.  However, I decided to finally try to fix the damn thing, or destroy it in the process and deal with that.  So I remounted the engine onboard, reviewed the information I had about rebuilding the carb and started taking it apart.  I managed to get the carb off the engine without losing anything - while I was doing this there was a pretty good swell coming into the anchorage, rolling Luckness deeply, side to side.  I took the carb down below and took it apart further.  I found a bunch of gunk inside, sprayed it liberally with carb cleaner, squirted compressed air through the little passage ways I could find, sprayed more carb cleaner, more air, etc until it seems to be about as clean as I could make it.  I didn't break the carb down to its smallest bits, just opened it up and cleaned what I saw.  Anyway, I reassembled, remounted and it started on the second pull and has been running like a champ ever since.  I should have done this months ago - it wasn't that hard.  I did lose a gasket when I remounted the carb - the boat lurched and the gasket got away...at least I didn't lose anything really important as it seems to run fine without the gasket...

On the topic of losing important engine parts, I almost lost the entire engine.  Remember that I was moored in 90 feet of water.  Half way through the carb cleaning I was hearing my dinghy engine lift contraption banging against the hull, as I had forgotten to secure it.  So I went out and brought the block aboard.  I grabbed the end of the hook-thing and dragged it aboard, and as I was doing this it just came apart in my hand.  It seems that the pin that held the shackle together had been slowly untwisting and it must have been just barely being held by the last thread.  It finally came apart at the best possible time - I managed to lose the pin overboard but saved the hook and the body of the shackle.  A few hours earlier I had attached the engine to this shackle/hook as I lowered and then raised it from and to the boat - in 90 feet of water.  If the shackle pin had come lose either of those times, and it easily could have, I would have lost the engine to the deep until I arranged for a diver to retrieve it, and then would have had to deal with a salt water logged engine.  That was a close call!  The hook is now attached with a little piece of dyneema, which is plenty strong enough for this application.

So, anyway, I'm in Tonga.  I've been here for a little over a week now.  Its nice here and as I mentioned earlier, I'll talk about Tonga in a future post.  I'll only show one teaser photo from where I am.  There is a good, daily market here full of local produce.  Lots of tomatoes, peppers, potatoes, onions, and so on - all organic and super fresh.  They had carrots on display at one of the vendors, so I bought one.  It should last me for a few meals.

Later!