LIfe at the Bay of Islands

Hi Everyone,
Life here at the Bay of Islands is everything we could have imagined. Clear water, a bit chilly, lots of fish and diving is excellent. Vaughn and David dived for scallops the other day and had a ball. We feasted on scallops and oysters for Xmas eve. The local Opua Cruising Club had a wonderful Xmas day dinner. We find local shopping a bit unlike Costco, but are getting along fine. Today we will go back to the Islands to do some more diving, and the grandkids playing on the lovely beaches.
We will stay in this area thru the month of January and then perhaps work our way down south a little toward Auckland.
Cheers,
Dan and Carol

Greetings from Opua!

Hi Everybody,
Made it to Opua NZ in 9 days 6hours from Sydney, pointing most of the way with NNE winds that ranged from 0 to 40 knots and seas from flat calm to 3-4 meters. We are told that this is one of the worst 4 ocean crossings. Caprice handles very well, even in rough seas, although when we spotted a huge lightning storm behind us, Vaughn put the "pedal to the medal" with both engines and Carol hugged the EPIRB most of the night. I really enjoy the Spectra Watermaker. It is so neat to be able to take a shower in 15 -25 knot winds. I can't imagine doing that in a monohull. We only saw 5 ships during the entire Tasman Sea crossing and no airline contrails. But now we are in the quaint little village of Opua, Bay of Islands, New Zealand. The marine facilities are excellent and the local supermarket has most of the provisions we need.
The local Opua Cruising Club is a lot like RYC - family type, cook your own steak and reasonable prices. We will join them for Xmas day dinner, where everyone brings something and helps out. Met Commodore and Nancy Tompkins here yesterday. Small world.
David Rasmussen and Vaughn were perfect crew members for the Tasman Sea crossing - pleasant, skillful and very helpful. Couldn't have asked for a better crew for our maiden voyage. Of course Carol kept the stew pot full although we didn't eat nearly as much as she anticipated.
Jenny and the grandkids are due in Auckland tomorrow morning, so Vaughn and David are driving down to pick them up. Looking forward to cruising out to some of the Islands to do some snorkling and to test out our Hookah.

Land Ho!

Hi Everyone,
Can you imagine, here we are beating upwind in 15 - 20 knot winds at 6.5 knots in the Tasman Sea and taking a shower? With the watermaker, we can enjoy such luxuries every few days. We spotted the Three Kings Islands at 1530 today. Soon we will fall off and head for Opua (Bay of Isles), where we will check into customs, set foot on land and find a laundromat. We may even get some time to try our our Hookah in the clear waters of Bay of Isles. We expected the crossing to haved taken 10 days total, so we are right on schedule. Much of the trip we motorsailed to keep moving during the light winds and to get to New Zealand as much before Jenny's, Michaela's and Westley's arrival as possible. We have all enjoyed the trip, learned a lot about Caprice and ourselves along the way. Had a variety of weather from zero wind and flat, calm seas, to 35-40 knot winds with 4 meter seas. All in a day's work. Caprice handles beautifully and takes even gale winds in stride. Vaughn and David have been invaluable crew members, handling all situations with precision and calm. They have been a real pleasure to have aboard. We found that the iPods (one per person) are extremely useful and help the watches go by very quickly.
Cheers.
Dan, Cook Carol & Super Crew

All is well!

All is well aboard Caprice. Little rain for the last 24 hours. We are all ready to see land. we figure that we have about 2 to 3 more days to New Zealand.
-Caprice

We're On Board

We made it!!!! We have been on board for 3 weeks now, and are finally settling down to normal life aboard. We have been cataloging where we put "stuff" since there are 33 compartments in the interior and once something is stashed, it gets lost unless we have a log of where we put it. All systems are go except the watermaker which hasn't been commissioned yet and the life raft is due to arrive on Tuesday. Then we will be kicked out of the marina and set off to explore on our own. We are actually looking forward to it. We have only sailed a few days up to Manly Beach and back, but have successfully gone out of the slip several times. The twin engines are a dream. We have met many lovely people here, who have opened up there homes to us. We are learning the local lingo and actually can say G'day almost like the locals. Sydney is a wonderful harbour with tons of boats. They actually race almost every night of the week, plus weekends, regardless of the weather. Looking forward to Vaughn and David joining us in a few weeks to start the voyage to New Zealand. Our SailMail is up now, so we can send and receive short messages.
Cheers,
Dan and Carol

Its almost done

Its almost done. This picture was sent from the factory as a "tickler". We still plan on going to Australia on Nov. 1, to arrive on Carol's birthday, Nov. 3.

We had a wonderful party on October 6. Great friends from all over the western states helped us celebrate our adventure. Mike Roper was very gracious in sailing his Seawind 1160 to our home so that our friends could see the "sister ship". Tom Hansen, Ted and Pat Stuart, Lucie Mewes and Vaughn Seifers all sailed back to Alameda with Mike and crew. All seemed impressed with the speed (10 knots) and handling in moderate winds.

11/03/07 - 12/11/07 Australia - Sydney vicinity - seatrials/shakedown
Dan and Carol

12/15/07 - 12/23/07 Passage to New Zealand
1200 miles
Vaughn and Jeff

12/23/07 - 04/01/08 Cruising New Zealand
Vaughn, Jenny & family
Jerry & Toni
Tom & Merrie
Ted & Pat
Bill & Jill

04/01/08 - 04/15/08 Home: taxes, family, friends, poodle fixes
Dan & Carol

04/15/08 - 05/10/08 Passage to Tahiti
Ted & Tom
2800 miles

05/10/08 - 06/15/08 Pacific Island hopping
Ted
Tom & Merrie
Roy & Dione (?)

06/16/08 - 07/06/08 Passage to hawaii
2200 miles
Ted & Tom


07/07/08 - 07/21/08 Hawaiin Islands
Jerry & Toni
Don & Mary

07/21/08 - 08/09/08 Passage to Sitda, Alaska
2400 miles
Don & Mary
Paul B (?)

08/10/08 -08/30/08 Passage to San Juan Islands
George R.
Ernie & Lynne

08/31/08 - 09/06/08 RYC Cruise in San Juans
Dan & Gerri

09/17/08 - 10/15/08 Passage to San Francisco

Note: All passages are "weather permitting" and are tentative (loose for safety) reasons. We reserve the right to change the itinterary at a moment's notice. Remember the name "Caprice" means'Impulsive change of mind'. However, we will try our best to make time on board memorable. However, we will try our best to make time on board memorable and fun for everyone. We appreciate those who sign up for the more difficult passages.

Lists. lists. and more lists.

As the time nears for us to go to Australia to pick up the boat, we have compiled a dozen lists, and lists to remind us to look at other lists. One friend suggested that we are in a process of "risk management", because we are trying to think of everything we will need to safely cross the Pacific Ocean. Almost everything we need to depend on will need at least one backup. Of course we like the idea of duplicate hulls, steering, engines, fuel tanks, alternators, rudders, beds and heads; but with only one water tank (135 gal.), we need to consider what happens if 1. the water pump doesn't work, 2. the electrical system doesn't work, or 3. the main water tank becomes contaminated. We have ordered a Spectra 3000 series water maker which will provide about 12 gal/hr. of fresh water from sea water, but it depends on battery power. We have 3 banks of batteries giving us 900 amp-hrs of power, and two 120 watt solar panels to charge the batteries, but we will be using about 500 amps of power daily. Since we can only use about half of the rated battery power before recharging, this means we will have to run at least one engine about 1 - 2 hours daily. With 95 gallons of fuel, this should not be a problem.

We are really lucky to have volunteers to help us cross the Big Blue. Our son Vaughn and his cousin Jeff have volunteered for the first big leg from Sydney to Aukland, New Zealand. This is the real first test of ours and the boat's sailing abilities across the Tasman Sea (1200 miles). We plan on leaving Sydney around December 10, 2007, so we can get to Aukland before December 23, which is when Jenny (Vaughn's wife) and two children plan on arriving in Aukland (by air). We will have additional visitors from the USA while we stay for three months in New Zealand: Toni and Jerry Smith (RV buddies from El Dorado Hills, Pat and Ted Stuart, Tom Hanson and Merrie Bailey, and Bill and Jill Case (friends from Oregon). And maybe others. We want to stay in New Zealand until the hurricane season ends before heading up to Tahiti. Ted Stuart and Tom Hanson will stay on as crew for the next big leg to Tahiti in April.

The Exploratory Trip

I hadn’t thought much about Australia. It was so far away and after all there is plenty to see here in America. But....the more I read, the more I became captivated by the country, it’s history and people. Suddenly it became a place I really wanted to see. And now we had a good excuse. We not only had to have all our questions answered, determine the options we wanted, determine what “stuff” we had to buy that we couldn’t have shipped, look at the boat factory and hopefully “our” boat during construction and do some sightseeing while we were at it.
We scheduled our flight so that we could attend the Santuary Boat Show along the Gold Coast south of Brisbane. The long, long flight was tiring and we lost two days!!! We stopped over at Aukland, thinking that we could see a little of New Zealand from the air, but at 4:30am, it is still dark there.
Arriving in Brisbane, we rented a car since we had planned on traveling a bit during our stay. This was quite an experience - driving on the “proper” a.k.a.”wrong” side of the road. Carol had to keep reminding me, “Stay on the left. No, you are going to hit the curb. Not quite so far.”. Several things come to mind as I think of Brisbane: curvy, narrow streets - many of them one way, no pennies, no tipping, no highway patrols (they have radar and cameras, so everyone follows the speed limit), lots of shops, bakeries, ice cream shops, no homeless people, no trash ($150 fine for a cigarette butt), beautiful people (blue-eyed blonds are all over the place), and generally not very many obese people and they are all sports nuts - everyone.
The factory visit was very comforting. The owner, Richard Ward, opened up the factory and his office to us. After a complete tour of the factory (we even saw our hull completed), and all our questions answered, and a commitment for several more “boat bucks” i.e. thousands of dollars, we flew back home. This time we gained a day and actually landed before we took off - time wise.

Sailing

There is a sense of adventure in everyday life aboard a sailboat. The sun rises and sunsets are magnificent, the storms more exhilarating, the calm is more peaceful, the marine life is more fascinating, the stars are brighter and cleaner and the continual movement and change is most soothing.
To share the wonders of cruising life with loved ones and dear friends is the most rewarding of experiences one can imagine. The challenges of navigation, seamanship, maintenance, weather predictions and the most challenging: interpersonal relationships in a confined space, taxes all the skills required to face nature and the environment one one’s own. One is free to go in any direction, yet is restricted by the speed of the wind, the elements - mostly weather and ocean conditions. If something breaks, you must fix it, or go without. The people one can meet and enjoy “their” life style is unlimited.