Monday, December 17, 2007

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
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1 comment:

ray and ruth said...

Congratulations on the first leg of your journey. This will be exciting to follow along with you on the voyage. We did watch a friend of ours who went to help in the aftermath of the tsunami in Indonesia, and you adventures will really be watched closely. Things are quiet here, with no trips planned on our part Merry Christmas and the best of the New Year.

Ray and Ruthi

December 17, 2007 at 4:03 PM

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About Me

1291 Sanderling Island, Pt. Richmond, CA 94801, United States
Dan and Carol Seifers

Crazy

Crazy Caprice, or what

Like is so good to us. At 65, after 15 years of retirement, my wife, Carol and I have everything one could want Good health (for old folks), loving children ( one son and his wife Jenny is marvelous), wonderful grandchildren (one age 6 and one age 4, who have a remarkable ability to totally exhaust us in about 4 - 6 hours), a good home. Wonderful friends. What more could one want?

Then we were casually cruising in the Delta ( area between Sacramento and San Francisco) last summer with the Richmond Yacht Club Cruising Group. Life was serene, life was comfortable, and then it happened - WHAM - we saw a cruising catamaran tied up at the Rio Vista marina with a sign in the window which listed its adventures. Starting in Australia, across to New Zealand, up to Tahiti, over to Hawaii and on the the West Coast. What an adventure!!! That’s when Carol started thinking about the possibility of buying a new boat (we already had a Gemini 34’ cruising catamaran - life was good). Then sailing in Sydney basin for a few months, then either shipping it to California or sailing it across the South Pacific to California. Is she CRAZY?

That started our CRAZY file.

Over the next few months, she started feeding me articles about Australia, New Zealand, and multihulls. She even subscribed to Multihull magazine and would place various articles about sailing in the South Pacific under my nose while I was reading the morning paper.
She became obcessed. A devil (Tasmanian?) had her. Then around Christmas time, the bug really bit me. We were perfectly happy with our boat, but the idea of getting a new one (with all the new toys) and visiting “down under” seemed very appealling. A friend loaned me all his books on New Zealand and Australia, and the more read, the more I becaume enthralled with the idea