I've been receiving the daily reports from Katipo since their departure from Howick on the 9th of June. As you can see from the map they left just after the high winds in Auckland and took 2.5 days to get to Opua.
On route they discovered that the engine was not charging the batteries and that the batteries appeared to have lost quite a bit of capacity. A couple of days in Opua allowed a new alternator to be fitted and batteries to be replaced.
They departed on the 14th of June had a good run for the first 3 days before entering an area of low pressure around 29° S on the 18th of June. The various weather models had different views on how long this would last... the most pessimistic was correct, with the SE trades only just filling in now. I believe this is a fairly unusually weather pattern. If they had been a little further east, perhaps on a run line to Fiji they would have picked up the trades earlier. Fortunately they assure me they have little else better to do and have been thoroughly enjoying themselves.
A steady SE wind is predicted to fill in tomorrow which according to the latest weather models should see them into Port Villa in the next 5-6 days.
Below is the weather routing recommendations from OpenCPN from the 16 of June. Compare this to the same from the 20th further down the page. The later suggests going much further east to avoid the lighter winds that developed.
