Changes:
Coming Again A work in progress by Roger Vaughan
Chapter 8: The Tasman Two and a half days out of Sydney, skipper Jan Sargent and navigator Peter Damaris, who had been watching the weather faxes, let the crew of All American know that the Low they had been tracking was just hours away. Everything had been working well so far. The charts issued by the Australian Bureau of Meteorology, based on data from sea buoys, had helped them negotiate the tricky current that runs south to north off Sydney. Like a mini Gulf Stream, the current is laced with many a strong eddy. The piping northwesterly had come in on schedule, giving them a 25-knot push in the right direction. On a beam reach, they’d been averaging 18 knots, with gusts frequently pushing them over 25. There had been some debate over setting the spinnaker, but with the wind angle barely more than 90 degrees, Sargent was adamant about leaving the sail in the bag. “Maybe it would give us another knot or two,” he told his crew, “until we either crashed and burned or
we blew it out. To win, it helps to finish.” The leg from Sydney to Auckland around the top of New Zealand isn’t that long, around 1,400 miles as a boat sails (1,200 miles measured in straight lines), but it is one of those tricky passages you wouldn’t want to do for pleasure with your family. For a race boat, it takes about five days. One sails out of Sydney into the Tasman Sea until off Cape Reinga, at the north end of New Zealand, where the Pacific Ocean is waiting. Sailors often refer to the Tasman as a bad part of the world. Boats have been lost there. “New Zealand is so small it doesn’t affect the weather like Australia does,” Grady had told Andy a few days before the start. “Little New Zealand is parked in the weather motorway. The wind just whizzes over the top.” Luckily for Andy, Grady had sailed Sydney/ Auckland a number of times. “You can’t cross the Tasman without going through at least one big front,” Grady had told him. “The highs come across the Great Australian
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