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Sailing from New Zealand to Australia (Part 3 – Arrived)

Tracking Map from Whangarei, New Zealand to Bundaberg, Australia (November 7 to 20, 2024)

(November 13 to 20, 2024). We arrived in Bundaberg, Australia, after sailing 1,600 nautical miles, 13 days. The last part of the journey was a bit stressful, mainly due to the wind direction coming directly from behind us. Despite this challenge, this trip was the best among our long passages.

We hardly slept during the final days but worked diligently on arrival requirements, focusing on cleaning and organizing the boat and managing food restrictions. I prepared the restricted items as follows:

–Raw rice → Cooked rice

–Ham → John ate it for breakfast,

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Sailing from New Zealand to Australia – Autopilot Problem and Engine Issue

Tracking Map on GPS: Green (Autopilot Driving), Red (Hand Steering while Troubleshooting), Yellow (More Hand Steering during Diagnosis), Blue (Hove-To = Boat In Park)

(Written by John) Famous last words ” I have an idea, let me try this”

During my normal watch period of 8 until 2 I decided to try and manual steer the boat for an experiment to see if we could get more downwind performance. I turned the autopilot off and tried to manually steer us downwind while easing off the Genoa sheet and letting it billow out in front of the boat.

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Sailing from New Zealand to Australia (Part 2)

My Best Friend “Auto Pilot” Navigating in the Coral Sea

(November 9 to 13, 2024) “The Coral Sea is the body of water east of the Great Barrier Reef, bounded by Papua New Guinea to the north, the Tasman Front to the south, and the west Pacific island chains of the Solomons, Vanuatu and New Caledonia to the east.” (Source: https://eatlas.org.au)

We’ve been sailing in the Coral Sea, currently about 300 miles south of New Caledonia.”

Our total sailing distance over the past six days is about 750 nautical miles (nms),

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