Ahhh, New Zealand! Finally! Land of the Long White Cloud. The Maori legend of the settling of New Zealand is that paddlers in a huge canoe from Polynesia saw on the distant horizon a long white cloud, and underneath lay the promised land, a rich bounty of never-before-seen wildlife that were quickly made into dinner, and subsequently extinct.

So goes the legend anyway. On our arrival we’ve had a huge wind hole as a welcoming party with crazy wind shifts and maddening calms. Thankfully we’re not the first to find these islands, otherwise they woud be known for all generations to come as “land of light and variable, with spotted cumulus”. Not quite so catchy as the original.

Despite the setbacks Sam and I are in fine form, thanking the New Zealand customs and immigration office for giving us an excuse to mow down the snack bags in our remaining stores. “Anything you’d like to declare, mate?”" BURP, nope! She’ll be right!”

Ah, the southern ocean of legend. We had pysched ourselves up for a big blow, a heavy spinnaker run after we turned the corner of the ice gate to dive into the deep south were waves are as big as houses and dragons roam the uncharted waters. However so far Mother Nature has been indifferent to our thrill seeking has instead turned out a pearler of a day. Sam and I have been plenty busy despite the lack of natural drama. We passed the end of the ice gate and in one fluid motion furled the gennaker, hoisted the jib, hoisted the reaching spinnaker and dropped the jib again. And….. the GPS’s number kept rolling on, a silent witness to our picture perfect mark rounding. The albatross continued to whirl overhead, the water continued to sparkle lightly. The miles roll by.

I climbed the mast to retrieve and replace the chafed fractional spinnaker halyard and then passed my afternoon merrily splicing and recovering its replacement tip. At the mast head I searched ahead and behind for our tormenting companions but the sea was ours. Underlying the cruisy sunny day is still the silent competitive drive to make improve our position every 3 hours, and constant searching of the forecasts for a leg up on the others. The weather might not be extreme, but the racing is great and we’re not asking for our money back.

6 degrees 40 North and we’ve really got to the main course now. The first flashes of lightning burst on the southern horizon two nights ago and yesterday we were confronted with our first line up of squally cumulonimbus towers. These are so large that they can be individually picked out on our satellite images and develop so much thunderous energy surge vertically through difference layers of
As regards the wind, these clouds rule our world completely. Most wind is created on a macro level between high and low pressure systems thousands of miles apart that are created by uneven heating of the earth’s surface by the sun. These towers of power however totally dominate these larger scale winds and can flip the wind 180 degrees and quadruple its intensity in an instant. They operate like stock market bubbles. Warm water causes the air above it to heat and rise, which brings in more air which in turn rises. So far so good, everyone’s getting a pay off. The growing energy accelerates up, gets further heated by the sun and continues to hoover up all the air at its base. Then, at theour atmosphere until they are beaten back by cool from above. peak, when everyone knows they should sell, it cools slightly and loses momentum in the higher altitudes. Rain starts to fall which deflates
the bubble and soon all that vertical energy is going the other way. Droplets of rain push the air down which then splays out in all directions, like a jet of water on a spoon when it hits the ocean.

In our weather notes, these clouds are called growing and, significantly, crushing clouds. As the growing cloud sucks air into its center, the tactic is to pass to windward as its suction will augment the prevailing winds and your speed. However, as a crushing cloud blows out in all directions, you need to be on the other side of the cloud, relative to the wind, in order to get the boost. Confuse a growing cloud with a crushing cloud at your peril as to pass on the wrong side means to be completely becalmed. Like rutting stags in the autumn, taking two opposing forces and crashing them into each other equals no movement, of either wind or boat.

With all these gusty winds and temperamental burst of energy around, its nice to be in a well, if hurriedly, prepared boat. Our sails can take a beating in these conditions regardless of how quick one is on the take down. So is thanks to our title partner Cessna Aircraft that we have all new sails that will make it through without exploding suddenly. On previous campaigns I have spent days labouring over the twisted fibres of ancient spinnakers, as have some of our competitors in this race, and while a new sail is not guarantee, I’m appreciating the rare luxury of reliability while is lasts.

A little cloud.... view from Cessna Citation this morning !