Pitufa.at

The passage ended as it began–with fickle winds and lots of sail changes. On our slowest day we only did 78 nautical miles, on the fastest 150 We had quite a few hours with only 6 knots of breeze and an interesting hour with 35 knots gusting up to 43 when a front passed over us. All good now, we arrived yesterday, the friendly officials… Continue reading »

A friend asked, how we can post from underway. We don’t have a sat phone, so we write our blog and send it via SSB and pactor modem to a sailmail station (service for cruisers). This station sends the blog on to our homepage www.pitufa.at and from there it is automatically forwarded to facebook. We are almost in Savusavu, 25 nm to go!

We ran into calm weather yesterday, but now a breeze is coming back. 120 nm to go!

..so no May 28 this year. My Mom’s birthday–she didn’t like them, so it’s very fitting… 250 nm to go!

We bought our sails 12 years ago in Croatia, the mainsail has been up ever since and is still in good shape–amazing quality made in Croatia. On this trip it was flogging against the spreaders in our first week of light winds and a batten chafed through, so it will need some maintenance once we arrive. 380 nm to go!

Our wind pilot Wayne Vaney does a fabulous job steering Pitufa tirelessly through all conditions. As long as there’s a breeze to be felt, he steers. Maybe not quite as accurate as an electric pilot, but without using any electricity–purely mechanical. Therefore he’d continue to keep us on course even if our batteries died or if the electric system got fried by a lightning strike…… Continue reading »

Today we are passing by south of Samoa–such a pity we can’t do a stop-over, but their borders are still closed. Yesterday we saw some wildlife, a few boobies and petrels (the wildlife sanctuary Rose Island wasn’t far away) and then we got more wildlife on the lure–a bonito! The first fish we’ve caught on this passage. Nothing big, but easy to handle and process… Continue reading »

People are often astounded when we say that we prefer sailing close-hauled to downwind. Pitufa’s performance is better close to the wind and downwind we hate the rolling motion she gets into when surfing down waves. Corkscrewing is even more annoying–even though you wedge yourself into the sea berth with half a dozen of cushions you’re never quite stable. No matter how carefully we declatter… Continue reading »

We’re rushing along with an average speed of over 6 knots in winds between 15 and 20 knots from the ESE and still rather smooth seas, fantastic sailing! Bread is on the stove, later on we’ll do a bit of laundry and then we’ll settle down in the home office. Christian is working on the new firmware for the Pitufino and I’m translating. Last year… Continue reading »

Finally the wind has set in! We’ve had a wonderfully starry night with Scorpio, the Southern Cross and Orion twinkling above us, before the half moon rose in an eerie orange glow. Now it’s a bit squally all around with winds shifting between SE and ESE and we’re running with 5 knots. 1090 nm to go!

Ever since we started out the grib file (wind arrows for an area to give you predicted speed and direction) have been promising more wind in two days. We just never quite reach it, like a carrot dangling in front of our bow… Yesterday morning the grib showed a bubble without any wind ahead, so we decided to sail straight north in order to avoid… Continue reading »

When we know we’ll go downwind with the wind shifting slightly, we put up two genoa poles, so we can flexibly adjust the course, swapping the headsail port and starboard. The poles are fixed with lines (foreguys and aftguys), so we can pull them back and forward and sail up to 100 degrees. When the wind moves forward of that, it’s no big job to… Continue reading »

The winds are still light, but steadier. Yesterday we hoisted the gennaker again, once it was up we realised that we had forgotten to roll the genoa in. Much to our surprise the boat sailed well downwind with the main up to port, the blister to port and the genoa poled to starboard. We’ve never had that much canvas up before, but we were still… Continue reading »

We waited patiently for a weather window with a stable high to ride steady southeasterlies on top of it–only to sail right into a convergence zone that was only mentioned in the forecast after we had set out. Well, we’re making the best of the light and fickle winds. Yesterday we put the gennaker (big lightwind sail) up in the morning, soon after black squally… Continue reading »

Finally we have a stable enough looking weather window and we’re sailing towards Fiji! So far the wind is light, so we have only made 100 nm in the last 24 hours. We wouldn’t mind the slow progress, but the sails are banging quite badly in between and we hope for more wind. 1450 nm to go!