Day 1: NZ to Minerva/Tonga

Date: May 10, 2015
33° 50' S 175° 12' E
Water Temp: 66.2
Log: 16889
Distance to go: 670nm

I left New Zealand yesterday, bound for Minerva Reef. Depending upon the conditions, I may skip the reef and head directly to Tonga, but hopefully I'll be able to get into the reef on this trip.

Its currently sunny with patchy cloud. There is a light wind of 12 knots from the south and I'm making around 5 knots heading north - single reef in the main to keep it quiet, full genoa and the wind on my port at 130° apparent. The seas are a little confused but small. These are really nice sailing conditions at the moment. A large pod of dolphins found me on my way out of the Bay of Islands and played with me for a little while.

I'm expecting the trip to the reef to take something like a week. The weather window I left on wasn't ideal, but it looked like it would be manageable. I'm starting in generally light wind and am expecting it to get lighter and more variable by tomorrow. Then some strong NW wind will fill in - the further north that I am the less strong it will be, and that's my plan - head north. After two days of what I hope will be a fast beam reach I'll run into another light patch, followed by a front which will be followed by SW winds which should blow me the rest of the way to the reef. Or at least that's the way it looked when I left. I'll be downloading weather along the way and will adjust. I expect this trip to be a little 'scrappy' - I'll need to be flexible and sail as the conditions allow.

I really enjoyed my stay in New Zealand and found that a 6 month stay was just about right. It was cold when I first arrived, and it was cold when I left. The weather in the southern summer where I stayed was beautiful but I'm looking forward to the warmer weather and clear waters of the tropics which await me. A little more sun would be nice as well - as the days have gotten shorter here, energy onboard has started to become more of an issue. For tech-sailor-geeks, my batteries haven't been in float (completely full) for 55 days. In January they were regularly in float by early afternoon - time to move along!

I'll try to update this blog from time to time. As always, if my updates stop arriving, please, nobody panic. Electronics onboard a boat at sea can be finicky.

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

----------
radio email processed by SailMail
for information see: http://www.sailmail.com

Diesel Bug

This is a project post.

When I first left Seattle, in 2011, I had a new diesel tank, with two inspection ports and everything was shiny clean.  After my first year of traveling through California to Mexico, Hawaii and back to Seattle I ended up without any diesel problems, everything was still clean.

After leaving again in 2013 and heading down the California coast, again, to Mexico and then to the South Pacific, somewhere along the way I picked up a bad load of fuel, or a series of bad loads of fuel and my diesel tank ended up contaminated with the dreaded diesel bug.

I had no idea what 'diesel bug' was, or what to expect when I had it.  I've learned a little since then.

While in New Zealand, one of my chores I had on my boat project list was to inspect my diesel tank.  I had been noticing that the diesel I could see in my Racor filter was more opaque than usual, but it just seemed like it might be a different type of dye being used.  I couldn't see through the glass bowl of my Racor the diesel was so opaque.  (oh, for non-sailors, a Racor filter is a fuel-water separator along with a filter that is the first line of defense getting clean diesel into the engine.  There is a secondary filter closer to the engine which removes smaller particles than my Racor filter does.)

When I opened my diesel tank and shone a flashlight into the tank, my strongest flashlight couldn't penetrate the diesel to see any of the aluminum walls - it was clearly more opaque than I had thought.  There is a chandlery close by in Opua, Cater Marine which has a little display of some fuel additives. One of the displays has two glass jars, one with the fuel contaminated and one with the additive.  The interesting thing is that the contaminated sample looked a lot like my diesel - opaque, and in my case, reddish diesel.  There was also a brochure showing the same before/after comparison of a different additive - again, diesel being so opaque you can't see through it being bad.

Now I knew what contaminated fuel looked like, and knew that I had it, and I was standing in front of a display which advertised a product that you add to the bad fuel and over time it becomes good again!  Yay I thought to myself, how easy is that!

So I bought some, added it to my tank and waited a day.  After a day I started feeling like an idiot and doing more web 'research.'  After speaking with a few experts, it turns out that the best thing to do is to remove the bad diesel, clean the tank and lines and start again with fresh fuel.  This seems entirely obvious in hindsight, but its a somewhat ugly job and I was hoping for an easy shortcut.  Alas, it was not to be.

It turns out that the additive might kill the bug, but it remains in the tank.  The diesel bug is mostly water - its a bacteria and the bacteria is mostly water - and that it would end up possibly clogging my filters or going through my injectors as bacteria is tiny.  Sending stray amounts of water through a diesel injector is not good.  One of the things that a diesel engine likes is clean diesel fuel, burning through 1/2 a tank of bad, dead, diesel bug seemed a little reckless and possibly expensive if the high pressure pump or an injector was damaged.  Although, having said that, my engine seemed to be running just fine for all the time leading up to my cleaning the bad fuel out.  The Racor filter was obviously in need of replacing when I saw it.

Anyway, I ended up removing the diesel fuel, cleaning the tank until it was spotless, adding some clean diesel, running the pump on my engine to circulate it through the filters and lines, replaced both filters, removed the tainted fuel and called it good.  Its good to know there is clean diesel in my tank again - if I'm good to my diesel engine I'm hoping that it will be good to me in return.

During the latter part of this cruise when I started meeting people who had been cruising in different parts of the world I stated hearing their opinions on how to add fuel to the tank.  In America and Mexico the fuel seemed clean, it didn't seem to be an issue.  Cruisers I had met who were finishing up a circumnavigation had been through this process and had learned their lesson.  The general consensus is that if you don't filter the fuel going into your tank, you will get diesel bug eventually.  Its just a matter of time.  The people I met who were filtering their fuel didn't have the diesel bug problem, and most of them have pretty strong opinions on needing to filter the fuel.

The first time I left Seattle, I actually had the West Marine fuel filter on board, which seems to be very common and entirely adequate.  I bought it at the last minute and threw it in without ever trying it.  Along the way I had brain freeze when I tried to think of how to use it.  A Pacific Seacraft has high bulwarks, so the caprail is three or four inches off of the desk.  The fuel inlet is close to the caprail, which interfers with the filter.  I couldn't figure out how to use the filter and ended up giving it away in Mexico.

It doesn't fit!  Impossible!

After realizing I had diesel bug and that I needed to clean my tank and replace my fuel I started thinking again about the filter issue - and almost immediately came up with the obvious solution.  I feel like an idiot offering this to others as a solution, as its entirely obvious.  Anyway, I bought a short length of hose, a hose clamp and fashioned a way to fasten the filter to a stanchion and now it works perfectly:

Yeah, I know.  Its an amazing solution, right?

To add the fastening loop, I created a loop of 'small stuff', twine, in my case a thin dyneema.  I punched a pair of holes in opposite sides of the filter just below the top lip and whipped the dyneema loop to the filter using seine twine.  I then added a bungee and hook which I attached with a couple of hog rings.  It seems to work.

To use it, rig it up as shown, and then add fuel.  Its pretty easy.  If the fuel contains water, which the diesel bug needs to live, the water is caught by this filter and doesn't go into the tank.  It also stops bits of debris, which seems like a good idea.  

Its the water that is important for diesel bug to live, this filter stops water going into the tank.  There is a caveat though.  I used to add an additive to the diesel after buying it, so treated diesel sat in my diesel jugs.  It turns out that some additives will cause water to break up into small particles, rather than pooling together.  If you add one of these additives to the fuel before pouring it though the fuel//water filter, then the water will pass through - so I've stopped treating the diesel before it goes into the main tank.

After using the filter, you end up with some diesel at its bottom that is just stuck, it pools at the bottom.  I'm finding that one large fuel diaper, cut into 1/4's cleans it all up.  I use two of the quarters cleaning the diesel out, then one to clean the filter up, and one more to clean whatever else.  It all fits into an extra-large ziploc and stows forward in my chain locker.

I'm posting this in the hope that there is a sailor, somewhere, who might be able to avoid contaminated fuel and having to clean their tank out as a result.

---

I'm hoping to leave NZ bound for Tonga in a few more days.  This will be my last post until I'm underway.  As usual, if my blog posts stop while I'm on passage, nobody should panic, electronics are sensitive and a saltwater passage is a harsh environment.

What I did on my summer vacation

I've been in New Zealand for over five months now.  I like it here!

In my last blog posting, in December of last year, at one point I said:

"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."

Its been a little over five months now, and I have yet to leave the Bay of Islands.  I'm currently prepping Luckness for our passage back to the Tropics.  My visa expires in early May and so I'll be looking for a weather window starting in around a week or so.  The current, longer range forecast is showing what might be a nice pattern developing in a little over 10 days - I may hop onto that system and head north again.  Its about time - things are starting to cool down here, autumn has arrived.

I won't go into an event-by-event rehash of my time here.  NZ is a fun, easy, friendly, beautiful place to hang out.  Some of my cruising buddies explored NZ extensively, buying cars and traveling around.  This is somewhat typical I think and was one of the possibilities I saw for myself when I arrived.  My stay has been somewhat different from that however.

I've been wondering a little to myself "what is cruising anyway?  am I still doing it?" and have decided that cruising is whatever we want it to be.  Some sailors I know did the traditional thing sailors do when arriving in NZ: fly back home for a while; head back to NZ; buy a car; travel around seeing the island(s); return to their boats and see some more of the area.  They had a great time.  Some other friends left their boat in Fiji for cyclone season and flew to NZ and pretty much followed the pattern above except that they visited their friends who had their own boats in NZ rather than exploring on their own boat (s/v Estrellita.)  Carol and Livia were kind enough to visit with me for a week and we explored the Bay of Islands "Charter style" as Carol said, moving daily.  So, these two didn't even sail to NZ but I would say they were definitely still "cruisers" while away from their boat in a different country, exploring.  I stayed within about 12 miles of the town where I arrived into NZ for the entire time I've been here - what kind of cruising is that?!  I'd argue, its a good form of cruising.  I've had a good time, seen some beautiful areas, and feel my time was productive and am looking forward to the sailing I have in my future.

So, ok, I feel a little defensive about my not seeing the rest of the country.  Lets move on.

In answer to the question: What I did on my summer vacation - it was to find beautiful anchorages in the Bay of Islands (mainly two or three), hang out at anchor until my food ran out.  Head back to Paihia, reprovision, stop at Opua, do laundry and boat chores and then head back out until my food ran out again.  It was a nice pattern and I repeated it over and over, like a kid who can watch the same movie a dozen times.  While I was at anchor I was exercising - walking and swimming - as well as working pretty much full time on a software project which is now nearing completion.

I could say that I've always enjoyed software development, that's almost true.  There were a few years there where I grew more and more burned out and by the time I left my job at Autodesk/Alias I was ready to not see any software again for a long time other than as a user.  I thought I might be done with software development.  That gradually faded away and my enjoyment of creating something from literally nothing is back.  Developing software is pretty unique - in late November I started with an idea for a new GRIB viewer and a blank screen, and over the next five months I created something, piece by piece, which now looks like I imagined it would.  When you sit in front of the app and use it, its real - something has been created out of nothing.  Its a cool process - you start with a blank screen and then start researching/designing/implementing/testing.  There is some trial and error, a lot of satisfaction in seeing the pieces start to work together.  There were lots of little puzzles to solve along the way and it turns out that the project I chose touches a lot of interesting domains.  I've had the opportunity to implement a new data model which supports incremental update and undo; work with math again (cubics!  derivatives!  yay!); interpret the GRIB standard and implement an importer that can read GRIB1 and GRIB2 files; design and implement a simple framework for data visualization; create a UI (sorry, UX) for the app using a bunch of new stuff Apple released in their latest version of OSX.  This is now my third app on the Mac, its a nice platform to work on.  The app isn't perfect, I'd like to speed up its graphics by using OpenGL along with some other things I'll change at some point in the future, but I think its a pretty good effort for just under five months work.

The app is going to be called LuckGrib, it can download GRIdded Binary (GRIB) weather data from NOAA and then visualize it.  Its able to download hundreds of different weather parameters, many of which have no meaning to me at all, as NOAA's weather models are enormous.  These are the GFS models that are used world wide by many (most?) weather forecasters as one of the pieces of data they use to interpret and then forecast the weather.  The familiar parameters such as wind, waves, barometric pressure, rain and so on are present of course and they are what most sailors would use.  The app is fast enough to animate reasonably sized GRIB files in real time - this will be improved in future versions of the app.

For those that don't know me very well; yes, I'm a bit of a nerd.  I love this stuff.  There is a bit more on the app at the very end of this posting.

Anyway.  Cyclone Pam passed by NZ around a month ago, that was a little freaky.  At the time it passed I was thinking that I had to leave this area and return to the tropics in 6-8 weeks - and wondering if that was safe.  The official end of cyclone season is the end of April.  Of course that's not a law of nature, just a statistical guideline.  I had been planning on returning to Tonga and making my way up the island chain back to the Vava'u area I left last November and then heading over to Fiji.  My current loose plan is to head north to Vava'u a little faster so that I can be close to what I think is a very good harbor if some strong weather was to pass through.  After a month or so, sometime into June, I'll think about heading over to Fiji.

A few photos follow.

This is a "Christmas" flower, the islands were full of them during December and into January.

Here are a few LuckGrib screen shots:

LuckGrib beta testing:

If you've read this far, and have a Mac which runs 10.10 (Yosemite) and are willing to try out my new app, send me an email and I'll send you a link you can use to download it.  The beta is time limited, it will expire in 6 months, but I expect to have the app up on the Apple App Store  way before then.

If you download the beta, please realize that this is unreleased software.  If there are things you don't like, things that don't make sense, things you can't figure out, things that you really like - please let me know!

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.

---

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!