Well I've got to say this is not at all how I imagined my homecoming would be. I've been close to land for nearly 24 hours and all I've seen is sea mist and fog,and the fog is making everything on the boat wet, and its cold and miserable. Worse than that though is the complete loss of significant visibility, so the Lighthouse lights and the lights of ships or fishing boats or other yachts would only be visible within maybe a kilometer. My AIS will warn me about ships, and did once during the night, the ship eventually appearing further out to sea from me and heading in the same direction. It was traveling at 14.6 knots and sounded its fog horn every few minutes. Earlier in the night I had heard the FogHorn from the North Cape lighthouse, about 8 miles away, a long deep note sounded every couple of minutes,but I never saw its light, which ordinarily is visible on a clear night 18 miles away. But the night was really quite scary and now though its daylight, I haven't seen the sun and its not much less scary. Sunshine and a bit of warmth to dry everything out would be lovely right now....
So we remain in the fog and the one blessing, such as it is, has been the wind increasing from a useless 5 knots to closer to 10, which can enable some useful sailing, albeit still slow, around 4 knots. I listened to the forecast and they were predicting winds to increase to 20 knots today, but I'll believe that when I see it. Meantime I'll just wait and watch, hopefully to see the sun and improving wind and boat speed, and maybe New Zealand, the nearest bit of which Cape Karekare is apparently only 5 miles away. I heard its fog horn earlier. Soon though I will have to gybe back seaward to keep the boat moving with the win directly behind, so I will be surprised if I get to Opua before 6....I just hope it not raining there!
Sapphire Out
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