December | 2013 | dragonsbanevoyage

New Zealand Passage Photo’s

Hi everybody!

I hope that you are enjoying the holidays back home and doing all the wonderful family traditions that you have. After arriving in New Zealand two and half weeks ago we have been very busy. If you recall we landed in Opua after our passage 1100 nautical miles from Fiji. We then rented a car drove on the left side of the road down to Auckland and then Tauranga to review the boat slips for Dragonsbane and dropped Jade off which I was sad to see her go. We then sailed a 130 nautical miles south and sailed into Auckland harbor and watched the new NZ Cup sailboat being tested out for the first time. The following day we sailed 121 nautical miles to Tauranga navigating through many little rock islands at night, which was fun.

Currently I am saying goodbye to Jess as she will begin her tour of New Zealand and then fly back to Alaska. Ben and I will remain on Dragonsbane for a few more weeks working on our boats. Yes that’s right, as I was bricking up the sails for storage on Dragonsbane a man stopped by and offered a free 24 foot Clark Sailboat named 4-Play. I said no but I knew Ben would be up for it and well he now has a very nice fixer upper sailboat. I also have been getting into adventures here in Tauranga with Ben, Jess, and our new Friends Bex and Denise. We also have been wrangling penguins, the worlds smallest penguins “Blue Penguins” live right down the bay and we volunteered to catch them, weigh, and tag them for a evening this week, it was awesome.

As promised I will begin posting photos from our adventures in Tonga, Fiji, and New Zealand. I will begin by our most recent photos working all the way back to Tonga. So for this evening I will post pictures of your New Zealand crossing and then in the next few day post pictures of Fiji etc.

Sailing into a new day on the edge of the world NZ Passage

After three days of sailing due south it got very cold and the crew got worn out pounding through the swells, but we average 7 knots.

Jade taking over the afternoon watch and Ben asleep in the cockpit after his watch ended.

After Bens nap he decided to scrub the water line as we sailed heeled over, looks great.

The last three days we had only 8 knots of wind so we put every sail that I could Drift on the port, Spinnaker on the Starboard, Staysail, and Trysail. We stayed at 5 to 6 knots with all this sail up, it was tons of fun.