We're at Minerva

As you can see from Marcus' post we safely made it to Minerva. But this past day was testing our nerves. The waves started to break more and more as the current went against the wind waves. I don't think we ever had so many waves constantly breaking over Alita as today. We even closed up the companion waya in fear water would come down. But our construction with the dodger, the hardtop and the clears held most of the splashing out of the cockpit, thank god. Just before the entrance to Minerva a shark greeted us so that we know we're back in the tropical waters. After anchor drop and clearing the boat from lines and sails I went into the water and had a short hot shower afterwards. Man that felt so good.
Now I need you to pray for us that the tropical cyclone which is thinking about creating itself north of Fiji between Fiji and Tonga is not going to happen. That would be really bad news for us. There are a couple of scenarios to avoid it if it came, one of them would be going back to New Zealand. I would not survive that, especially then having to come up all the way again. There is NO WAY. We'll keep an eye on the weather, like all the other boats here in Minerva as well. There are five of us here including the one that came up with us and stayed at equal distance for a while and actually wanted to go to Fiji but apparently never did because they can't in these wind conditions and because of the possible cyclone Ella. They arrived here 2 hours before us- because we slowed down today deliberately. We will have to decide the next days what to do. The poor guys and girls in the catamaran that left Opua 2 hrs after us had to turn around, they were already a day behind us yesterday and have no chance of making it into Minerva theses days so they are on their way to Raoul Island - where birdie came from. Their friends who left a day before us actually turned around after 3 days and went back to New Zealand. It's all not that easy. We'll keep you posted.

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