Oso has happily settled onto her mooring on the island of Niue in the eastern Pacific, so it’s time for a quick overview of the passage:
Total distance sailed: 1073nm
Total time:5 days, 11 hours
Average speed: 8.1kts
Number of tacks required: 0
Motoring time: 1 hour – just for maneuvering into Alofi Bay and onto our mooring
While this passage across the central Pacific has a somewhat dubious reputation, we lucked out with an excellent weather window almost exactly aligned with the expiration of our French Polynesian visa. Our course was nearly due west, and we had wind from the south or southeast for 95% of the trip. That means that the apparent wind was close to the beam of the boat, and the sailing was fast!
For the first five days of the trip, we averaged nearly 200nm/day. Achieving one 200nm day is somewhat of a goal for many displacement monohull sailors, so to stack 5 of them in succession meant that we were sailing fast. And we did it almost by accident – we had either a single or double reef in the main for the entire trip, and a single reef in the genoa for much of it. We weren’t pushing the boat at all – Oso just likes to go.
We did encounter a few squalls, but none of them were strong – each only increased the existing wind by 5-10kts. The main drawback of the passage was the sea state. Several long period swells from distant storms combined with decent-sized wind waves to make for fairly sloppy seas.
So we’re happy to arrive, and we’ve heard so many good things about Niue that we’re looking forward to discovering for ourselves.
