Blog

We are officially back in the land of the Kiwis or Aotearoa, the Land of the Long White Cloud!! We had an amazing five months on our visit back to the States and were so blessed to spend time with friends and family. We ended our time with a 10 day visit to Atlanta to spend time with Nick, Gabby, Kat, and Bert, which was lovely and so much fun. We left Atlanta on Saturday, 4/11 and after over 24 hours of travel, 2 airplane flights, 2 buses, we arrived back to Whangarei on Monday, 4/13. The jet lag from this trip has been real! Day 1 we were awake by 4am and ready to sleep at 7pm. It is slowly getting better – we actually stayed up past 8pm last night and I slept until almost 6am today!

Meraviglia has seemed to weather our time away pretty well. So far, we have found a broken hatch handle and our gear shift was seized due to corrosion. We were able to get the gear shift back in shape and the hatch is still usable so we will live with that. We also had to have our refrigerator/freezer serviced but both thankfully seem to be back in working order. We are still working our way through all of our systems so it is likely we will have some other fixes but so far so good.
We are officially in Fall here and the weather is a bit crazy. New Zealand fall runs from March to May and so far it seems very rainy and very windy. And it changes by the minute – literally. Daytime temps so far seem to be a high of 65 with lows overnight down to around 50. We do not have heat on the boat but do have a portable heater that we use in the morning to warm things up. Fortunately, being a small space it warms up pretty quickly. Unfortunately, we can only use that at the marina so once we leave here, we will need to bundle up to stay warm until we hit the warmer weather as we head to our next location. And that location- drumroll please, is Fiji, via Minerva Reef!

After lots of discussion and consulting with Jamie and Behan, our sailing coaches, we have decided to slow down a bit and return to Fiji to further explore. So far, we have been on a very fast pace through the first 23 countries we have visited with over 12,000 nautical miles sailed. Plus we really loved Fiji and did not get to visit even half of it on our first season there so we were excited to return and see some more. Our goal is to be ready to leave New Zealand by no later than May 1. The actual departure date will of course be dictated by the weather so we are beginning to look at the weather patterns and get a feel for when we can leave. We hope to travel to Fiji via Minerva Reef. Minerva Reef is a group of two submerged atolls between Tonga and Fiji. Both North and South Minerva Reefs are used as anchorages by private yachts like Meraviglia traveling between New Zealand and Tonga or Fiji. North Minerva offers the more protected anchorage, with a single, easily negotiated, west-facing pass that offers access to the large, calm lagoon with extensive sandy areas. South Minerva is in shape similar to an infinity symbol, with its eastern lobe partially open to the ocean on the northern side. Both lagoons can be dangerous in stormy weather so stopping is definitely dependent on the conditions. But it helps break up the passage to Fiji and the marine life within these atolls are reported to be amazing so we hope the weather cooperates for a stop there.
In order to get ready for the big passage to get back to Fiji, we are working our way through quite a checklist. We will need to get Meraviglia hauled out of the water to get the bottom cleaned and do some checks on the hull. We then would like to do a few shorter sails as well as test our anchor after the repair we did before we left for the states. We also have a new sail coming hopefully this week and a new electronic system to install. We are definitely back on boat projects full time! But definitely trying to also enjoy our final weeks in New Zealand as well – it’s an amazing country and one we hope to return to!

One other big news announcement is that we have updated our website, sailingmeraviglia.com We hope you will check it out and see all the new features! You can now see us in real time including our current location, boat speed and course, and weather. You can take a virtual journey through a curated photo album of each of the countries we have visited so far. You can ask us a question, read our latest blog, and read our “hot takes” ! We hope you will take a peak and share it with others – we love sharing our ocean adventures!