Ilovent

Leaving New Zealand Isn’t That Easy!

Last year, we left the crew of Ilovent in the Galapagos. Fabienne and Jean-Charles have since crossed the Pacific Ocean and discovered Polynesia. This postcard finds them in New Zealand, where they have just spent several months. Would you have believed it? Sailing is not always un-eventful. But everything works out in the end, as long as you are patient...

Ilovent

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Published 01/08/2025

By Gilles Ruffet

Issue: 203

Published: oct. / nov. 2025

Discover this issue

Who: Fabienne and Jean-Charles
Where: New Zealand
Multihull: Outremer 45
Blog: www.blog-trotting.fr/u/ilovent

After five months on land, it was time for us to set sail again and say goodbye to this country that we had grown to love: New Zealand. It was the beginning of May, and we had been waiting for almost three weeks for a comfortable weather window to head north. Since March, in Whangarei, we were busy preparing the catamaran. We added solar panels, cleaned and greased the winches, and repaired the solent stay. At the Mardsen Cove shipyard, we took the multihull out of the water for the usual maintenance: sanding the hulls, applying antifouling, treating the propellers with Propspeed, and replacing the saildrive gasket. Then we set off for Opua, in the far north, where we could check out with Customs to leave New Zealand. The cyclone season was theoreti-cally over, but it was taking its time, and a post-season cyclone, Tam, even had the nerve to come and brush the north of the North Island. It announced itself with 55-knot gusts and torrential rain. That’s when a sequence of bad luck befell us!

Problem/Mistake #1

Jean-Charles strained his back. The nearest osteopath was an hour away by bus, but luckily, he managed to get his back into working order again.

Problem/Mistake #2

When connecting the water hose to the dock, the pressure was too high, and the showerhead ex-ploded. The starboard engine compartment was flooded with 4 inches (10 cm) of water. We mopped it up.

Problem/Mistake #3

With all this torrential rain, we realized that the portholes were leaking, especially the one above our bed. So, on the advice of a neighbor on the pontoon, we put silicone grease around the rubber seals. And it worked...

Problem/Mistake #4

As we left the marina after the cyclone, we realized that the wind vane was no longer spinning. This meant that we no longer had any wind data on our displays. I climbed the mast, unjammed it and climbed back down.

Problem/Mistake #5

The wind vane still wasn’t working. So I scaled the mast again, dismantled the wind vane and handed it to Jean-Charles who oiled it. I re-attached the wind vane. It rotated, but the wind strength reading on our screens seemed unreliable and sometimes ridiculous.

Problem/Mistake #6

We set off for the neighboring bay. When we tried to lower the mainsail, it got stuck at the top of the mast. After a good quarter of an hour of more or less successful attempts, it finally came down. At this point, we wondered if we’d ever have a day without any problems. But that wasn’t going to be the case just yet...

Problem/Mistake #7

We forgot to bring in the deck cushions. They got soaked and, with the humidity in the air, they didn’t seem to want to dry out.

Problem/Mistake #8

With all the runoff, silicone grease spread all over the deck. As we returned to Opua Marina it was as if we were skating on ice.

Problem/Mistake #9

Jean-Charles thought he had opened the valve on the guest toilet’s black water tank. Well, actually, he hadn’t... All the overflow spilled into the bilges. You can imagine the smell. So we mopped it all up, although this time it wasn’t water!

Problem/Mistake #10

In order to dispose of the buckets of black water more quickly, Jean-Charles had the idea of opening the escape hatch to drain it faster. But when we left the marina, neither of us remembered to close it before we set off. We then set sail again, anchoring in a cove in the Bay of Islands. After a good tack with winds of around 30 knots, we heard the bilge pump alarm go off. We had taken on several cubic meters of water through the porthole that had been left open. Once at anchor, we put the covers and cushions, still soaking wet, out to dry, as there was sunshine and a nice breeze. And in the hold: we mopped up again. Why?

Problem/Mistake #11

While I was in the bilge, the strong wind blew away a cover that I hadn’t pinned down properly. I felt as though our stupidity and problems would never end. It was starting to get to be too much. We were fed up. The wait was starting to annoy us, and the rain was getting us down. We were sick of making mistakes. Nothing would dry out, the boat stank because we couldn’t air it out and mold was starting to grow. In the wettest corners there was even green moss!

Fortunately, patience is often a sailor’s best ally. The weather improved a little, even though the temperatures were really starting to cool down, and the catamaran was drying out. We could open the hatches again and air it out. And we were enjoying every ray of sunshine. Finally, a weather window opened up, and it looked as though we’d be able to set sail in good conditions. We were leaving New Zealand, but we were going to miss a lot of things. It was like leaving another piece of our hearts behind, because if New Zealand wasn’t so far from Europe, we would have settled there. But we weren’t going to get too upset about leaving. Awaiting us were the white sandy beaches, coconut palms and crystal-clear waters of New Caledonia...

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