Sailing Freestyle in Opua

I had been feeling a bit anxious to get to Opua (Bay of Islands). We think we have our best chance of finding our boat in Opua as it is the marina where the majority of boats sailing to the South Pacific are currently docked waiting out the cyclone season. I was worried we could literally “miss the boat” if we didn’t hurry up and get there already. Turned out we were not too late as boats will not be sailing until mid to late May as the cyclone season has been longer than usual.

Sailing on Freestyle

While in Opua we met Rick, a sailer from Alaska who will be sailing to Fiji, New Caledonia, and Vanuatu before heading to Japan. We met up with Rick for a coffee and the following day he took us out for a “test sail” on his pretty boat Freestyle. Obviously it is very important to spend time getting to know someone whom you are considering spending long periods of time in close quarters.  We enjoyed getting to know more about Rick and had a good sail on a sunny day around the Bay of Islands.

Tom steering the tiller

Me chillin on the deck

Rick has several others on his potential crew list and plans to meet a few more in the coming weeks. Ideally he would like to find a crew to sail with him for the remainder of his journey, which is way longer than Thomas and I can afford to be gone. So if he picks us he will have to find a different crew to sail with him from the South Pacific to Japan and eventually back to Alaska.

We are of the mindset “if it’s meant to be it will be” and we are also considering other options as well. We plan to meet a couple later this week who are also looking for crew and will set sail for Vanuatu in early June.