Day 18 of ? – More Boring Boating Stuff

(you don’t have to click on this one)

So here is where we’re at with respect to the passage. There are four main parts:

1. The Radio – not yet operational.

The VSWR meter arrived on Friday but without the correct cables. Ross called the guy back and he shipped them right away so they should be here some time today. The weather is supposed to be crap for the next three days so this will give us an opportunity to get the stupid radio up and running.

I shouldn’t say the radio is stupid, he’s just misunderstood.

2. The Batteries – need to be replaced.

Long story short, the batteries are reaching their end of life and they are behaving too unpredictably for us to rely on them for passage. Charging them with the engines remains a good contingency plan but the way things are right now the contingency is the primary and that’s not something you want when you’re in the middle of the Tasman Sea.

You should really open up a globe and see how middle-of-nowhere we’re going to be on this passage. The 2D maps don’t do it justice – you have to go spherical.

3. The Food – needs to be purchased.

All the sustenance we need to survive is sitting right there on the shelves of the local food jobber. All we need is money and a few strong backs to help move our provisions from store to shore to boat.

4. The Weather – who knows.

We still need to wait for a proper weather window. The good people over at windy.com have a neat little service where you can see the wind forecast for up to nine days into the future. Just hit the play button at the bottom of the page and you can see all the colourful little arrows dance across the map. I still don’t know what they all mean, but they are nice to look at.

So how does all this affect our departure date? Well I’m not basing this on anything other than living on a boat for three weeks, but I imagine that we’ll be in a good position to start looking at the weather window by around Saturday the 24th.