After a last beautiful morning in the Bay of Islands, we upped anchor and motored out through the north west pass on Vanua Balavu with Chao Lay right behind us. The morning radio chatter had brought word that big weather was coming in this weekend. We changed our destination plan from Tavenui to Savu Savu. It seemed like a good idea to get the boat into a protected place, rather than in a questionable anchorage. Besides, the good diving can also be accessed from Savu Savu as easily as from Tavenui, and we could use some fresh eggs, fruit, and veggies. On the way we had great 15-18 knot wind to start. We put up the pole on the port side and boomed the main way out to starbrd with the Hoyt in the middle and just barrelled along for a few hours. It lasted until about 19:00, from then on the wind spun in weird circles, we put the mainsail away and we found out the poled out Genoa plus tight Hoyt would work on almost any point of sail. So after having this boat three years we learned something new....we can sail quite nicely with the tight Hoyt and poled out Genoa even when the wind is 110 degrees on the SAME side as the Genoa! Ha! Obviously, the Hoyt just funnels the air straight to the genny and voila we were doing 6.5 knots! Well, well. Old dogs DO learn new tricks!
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