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11/1/2006 2:30:00 PM
Tonga to NZ - Day 1 of 7
Our last passage for this cruising adventure

The Final Countdown - Day 1 of 7

We are on our last passage for 'Project Marquesas' from Tonga to New Zealand and it is a bitter sweet day for us. So come along on our last passage, I will try to write daily again for the next 7 days and I hope it truly will be 7 days because otherwise we

Hello,

It is time for daily logbook entries again from Lawur ... we are on our last passage for 'Project Marquesas' from Tonga to New Zealand and it is a bitter sweet day for us. So came along on our last passage, I will try to write daily again for the next 7 days and I hope it truly will be 7 days, because otherwise weather will get bad on us. This is not like on the passage to the Marquesas where we on purpose estimated a longer passage of 25 days and then beat the time by 5 days ... these 7 days should be fairly accurate and our professional weather router suggests we need to be in Opua on Nov 8th.

Let me come back to our bitter sweet departure and how we feel about all the changes coming up on us. Here is just a quick recap of what you might have missed along the way.

The trip to New Zealand is traditionally the last trip a cruiser does during what we call the 'milk run' which for us meant going from Mexico thru the South Pacific, with stops in French Polynesia, the Cook Islands and Tonga, before you escape the cyclone season by either going South to New Zealand or North above the equator. We choose New Zealand.

In addition to the end of the South Pacific, this is for Lawur the end of what we nick-named 'Project Marquesas', at least for now. We have flights booked to Austria on November 28th and will go back to work for at least a year. Our hope is that we can continue our cruising adventure at a later date, maybe as soon as a year later, but lots of things can change during a year. Returning to 'regular' life after a year will be quite a change as you can probably imagine. For us however, it is not just the end of a year cruise but it is the end of a 4 year journey including selling our house, buying Lawur, getting her ready to cruise, live on her for 3 years and now sail her for over 8000 miles by the time we are in NZ - bringing her home since she was built in NZ 20 some years ago.

Beside the bitter part of putting cruising on hold for a while, there is the sweet part of potentially living in Austria again with family and old friends. It has been almost 12 years that we left Austria and we hear things have changed back home. It will be fun and exciting to experience the change first hand. We are a bit afraid of how we are going to be received back into the community, because I guess we are a bit out there ... first leaving the home country, then selling everything and moving on a boat and then crossing 8000 miles of ocean in a 'little bathtub' (translation of Lawur), imagine this from a perspective of people living in the landlocked country of Austria!? No matter, we are excited to move back to family for a while and just walk over to parents for a home cooked meal and maybe even drop off the grandkids once in a while ... might sound very simple to some but is a huge luxury to us and we are looking forward to it.

Ok, this is enough for new / old information. The passage ahead of us might sound like a short 7 day trip to someone who has done 20 days before, but the trip to New Zealand is know for its unpredictability ... they say on the trip down and back up you are pretty much guaranteed one gale blowing thru. Despite Niki calling me a 'butter-side' child, we didn't want to rely on luck too much and decided to hire a professional weather router ... something big yachts and ships do on a regular basis but for this trip we opted for professional advice given the complexity around New Zealand weather ... many of you have probably heard of horror stories around the Syndey-Hobard race, well this ain't quite that bad but the same kind of weather systems can affect our trip. Given this, we are a bit apprehensive about the next few days. For now, I am not seasick ... knock on wood ... and the atmosphere on Lawur is upbeat.

I will keep a few updates for tomorrow and close for now, I might even re-surface the old format but nothing for sure yet.

Happy Sailing,

Robert

TheSchmids Family Sailing on Lawur --------------------------------------------------------------------------- !!! PLEASE DON'T INCLUDE ORIGINAL WHEN REPLYING TO REDUCE DOWNLOAD TIME !!!

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