I (Jackie) took the easy way home, by plane, on Easter Sunday. Alex, David and Anne continued to prepare the boat and wait for the right weather to leave.
Due to it being a longer than expected trip, Alex bought and filled an extra 3 jerry cans, giving them a total of 520 litres of diesel.
For this trip Alex has been sourcing his weather information from PredictWind, the Bureau of Met., and MetBob (Bob McDavitt). The consensus was for departure on Tuesday and MetBob provided a route which would minimise discomfort, given the prevailing SW winds and a front that will cross the Tasman next week.
As you can see, the route includes a big arc to the north and has Rusalka clearing into Australia at Eden, NSW, rather than Hobart.
The total planned distance is 1400 miles, so we’re expecting it to take around 12 days to get to Eden.
At 11:00 the crew motored the short distance across the channel from the marina to the customs dock and cleared out of NZ.
Their route takes them NNE across Cook Strait and out into the Tasman Sea tonight.
I expect daily updates from Alex via Iridium and will post them as I get them. Don't forget that you can see where Rusalka is in real time by clicking on the globe on the right side of the page.
Fingers crossed for a smooth sailing!
