We plan to arrive in New Zealand sometime in September with possible calls into the Northern Cooks and Tonga. Stay tuned!

After two months preparing Interlude to sell or to sail to New Zealand, fate has decided that we should take another voyage to the South Seas. We are now underway again with our next planned port of call in 3400 nm at Penrhyn (Omoka, Tongareva). A nice big ebb tide washed us out the…

After six years of downtime the old Skanti SSB radio is back to working. A last-minute effort that included swapping some components with other old radios has got Interlude and Kurt KG6HFA back on the air with the strongest signal in the cruising fleet. We are now back to giving daily positions/conditions on the…

It did take us about an hour to rig the Code Zero (we were a little out of practice) but it has been well worth the effort. This sail is now 20 years old and has been bent on only about a dozen times. It, associated furling gear and sheets cost about $10,000 in…

  Although this saying was coined by sailors in the Atlantic heading for the New World it has some merit for the passage to Hawaii or the South Pacific. As the May 14 photo of us off the Farallons shows, we were quite bundled up for the first few days. We look forward to…

25 years after his death and sailing his ashes around the world, we scattered Harry, Kurt’s dad just outside the Golden Gate on May 6. Aboard Interlude were Kurt’s brother, sister and Katie. After anchoring at Angel island to read a few passages and letters, we headed out the Gate. Harry provided instructions for…

We have so far now spotted two ships visually (five total using AIS or RADAR). The one this morning, the 299m ‘Saga Discovery’, saw us first from a range of 10nm and hailed us on VHF channel 16. The watch thought we were flashing a distress strobe light but what he was seeing was…

Our new Starlink installation has been working great and has greatly improved crew morale by enabling free video phone calls to friends and family. Starlink coverage is now global and we even have a separate system/account for our home in New Zealand that was too far down our private road to install fiber. If…

We are making tracks with the winds now 15 – 20 kn from behind. Interlude will do half wind speed with the wing and wind sail configuration. The seas however have been quite confused with swell directions from two distant storms and the local wind waves converging. This gives us quite a rolly, bumpy…

We are now at about the same latitude as Hawaii and are feeling the tropics. The daytime temperature is over 85 F (29 C) with a sea temp of almost 75 F (24 C). We are down to shorts and tee shirt. If the sky clears and it gets any hotter we will have…