The conditions remained ugly for about the next 4-5 days so grazing was the order of the day and not much food was consumed. Being off the boat for three years it took longer than my usual 2-3 days before I found my sea legs. Its funny, the transition from feeling seasick, not being hungry and knowing that mount Vesuvius could erupt at any given moment to going....."geez, really fancy a cheese toasty right now" is remarkable. So after five toasties my sea legs returned, the stereo pumped through some Dire Straits and my concentration improved. Happy days.
Off the continental shelf the seas were about 3m and breaking. The old Rogue punched her way forward over one and through the next leaving a wall of water cascading down on the coach roof behind the mast at every second or third wave. On day 3, the wind was forecast to back to the NNE......I waited.
By 11 Mar the breeze had finally backed to ESE but the sea state was still confused but at least I could shake out the second reef. By 12 Mar the breeze backed further and dropped to 5 knots but instead of NNE it backed through to NW in the early evening and increased to 15-17 knots.
By 13 Mar the sun had finally appeared and the breeze had me on a tight broad run trucking along at 7.2 knots. The Raymarine e7 Multi Function Display (MFD) at the nav station began to have sporadic data drop outs that also impacted the AIS display, so I performed a factory reset and thankfully that fixed the issue.
Over the next few days the sailing was great and until the plastic mainsail slugs that keep the mainsail attached to the integral mast track decided to let go. I had replaced about half with the next size up after the 2014 race as some had broken during club racing. Again, another job where time was a against me. I tucked in a reef to take the slug out of play so I could replace it. The slugs are stitched to webbing loops so out with my trusty 40 year old sewing awl to make repairs. By the 16 Mar I was wing on wing sailing down down the line for New Plymouth.
My run of good sailing ended on 17 Mar as I approached New Plymouth. The breeze backed and increased to 25 knots. When I installed and tuned my rigging at Port Stephens I would normally re-tune after a few days sailing . Out here there is nowhere stable to re-tune and the rigging and the lowers had loosened. I reefed down to #2 (only has 2 reefs) and with the beautiful Mt Egmont dominating the skyline we bashed onward to New Plymouth. About an hour out from port the engine was engaged as we pressed on through strong currents and short steep waves.
Typical, just as I was approaching port a ship was scheduled to depart so I slowed my approach. The committee came out to escort me to my mooring and by 1900h the old Rogue was safely attached to her assigned mooring.
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