We were ready to go, but we were at the mercy of the weather. This is a serious passage. It takes you out of the coconut milk run and into the temperate latitudes, where storms in the Southern Ocean can be fierce as you approach New Zealand. Timing your departure is paramount, because you want to depart with good weather and reasonable winds for sailing right off the bat, and, more importantly, you want to time your arrival sufficiently in between cold fronts, so you don’t get smacked in the face with a brutal southwesterly right when you are starting to feel like you are almost there. I spent a fair amount of time reading and studying the weather patterns for this passage, and it seemed that picking a good weather window for arrival would mean spending a fair amount of time on passage transiting through a high pressure, which would mean light winds. But we understood that this would be no time to be miserly with our diesel, because the longer you’re out there the higher your chance of getting hit by a severe storm.
What was keeping us tethered to Tonga so long was not New Zealand arrival considerations, but rather departure considerations and our desire to stop at Minerva Reef. There was actually a low-pressure system that was going to blow right over Minerva causing strong winds all around, including a strong westerly that we had to endure while at Big Mama’s. We had 30+ knot winds from our unprotected side so we were bouncing around on the 2–3-foot wind chop that was building over the entire width of the harbor. But we all just hunkered down on our boats, and we all got through it with minimal drama. After it passed, it was eerily quiet. The skies were clear, there was hardly a breath of wind, and the water was like glass. After that low pressure system passed, we were sitting on a high-pressure ridge. What a difference a couple days makes. All in all, we were in Tonga an extra week or so as we waited for the storm to approach, pass over us, and then move on.
Gresham Family Exodus 