The sailing adventures of SV Meriwether and her crew
A vibration in the engine and prop-shaft persisted during our first week out in the Bay of Islands. I tried a few things to resolve it, and they did help, but in the end Kerri and I decided to order up some new engine mounts to knock that idea out as well. Of course, this would mean I will be...
We didn’t make it very far once we got our 2025 sailing season started. Literally only 2 miles was an anchorage (1) we needed to use. Needed. There are a limited number of anchorages one can clean the bottom of a boat in, and none are much further out into the greater Bay of Islands area. And with how much...
Upon our arrival into New Zealand, back on Thanksgiving day, we knew we would not be going anywhere anytime soon. The transmission breakage would take some time. This we had accepted. We were just happy to be done with the ocean crossings at the time, and to be tied up to a dock where we didn’t have to think about...
Our 2024 sailing year stated waaaay back in Santa Rosalia, Mexico. Soon after we met up with my brother and his wife for a week long visit in the Bay of Conception, then crossed the Sea of Cortez for a long stay in Gyuamas for some major upgrades to Meriwether. Once we got moving again, it was a 500 mile...
Some of our boat neighbors, also stuck at Minerva Reef waiting for a weather window, began leaving just short of our two week anniversary within the protection of the reef. A Tuesday it was, and a coupe boats ventured out the pass to begin their week-or-more long passage to New Zealand. It was still a little frisky out there, so...
After nearly 6 weeks relaxing in Tonga, and most cruisers already having moved on, we were feeling the heat to get moving out of the hurricane zone as well. Though all those we spoke with that had multiple passages from Tonga to New Zealand kept telling us that the longer we waited, the better the weather is for the crossing,...
If we had only known what Tonga would give us, we would have come here sooner and stayed longer. Getting here was no big deal, just 49 hours at sea to transit the 250 miles between island nations – of which nothing of note took place. We ate. We slept. We sailed. In fact, we sailed all but the final...
Once the weather gave us a good window to leave Beveridge Reef, we set sail to arrive in the island nation of Niue, just 140 miles to our North-West. The passage was an overnighter, which have become quite mundane nowadays. Just to make it more difficult-slash-stressful on me, I opted to leave the mainsail down and did the entire passage...
When we left French Polynesia we had anywhere between a single overnight sail to thirteen-plus nights. There is 1300 miles between us and our next major destination of Tonga. How long we would be at sea was fully dependent on the weather from day to day. No forecast could be trusted 13 days out, so we planned our route to...
Forty miles west of the last largely populated islands in French Polynesia is a small volcanic island surrounded by an atoll-like ring of land protecting the inner waters from the sea outside. This little island is known as Maupiti, and is home to roughly 1200 people. To enter said protected waters one must thread the needle between breaking waves and...
