We departed about 15 hours ago from Tonga bound for New Zealand amidst a fleet of fellow cruisers. The seas were still rough - left over from the low that passed a few days ago to the south and a new chop produced by 20+ knot winds. We have been close reaching with water washing over the decks and coach roof and finding its way inside through hatches and portlights that no longer seal entirely when submerged in green water.
There has been much chatter on the VHF and sharing of weather data on SSB. A few of the boats have signed up for custom weather routing and are generously sharing this with the fleet. I wrote a small program to covert some of these data to a route that can be displayed on OpenCPN - my small contribution to all this.
Position at 11:15 PM local time 19 38 S 175 09 W - - somewhere off two volcanic islands in the Ha'apai group of Tonga.
Will try to do daily updates. The passage should take less than two weeks and we may break it up with a stop at Minerva reef.
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