The ‘ocean passages for the world’ is a book that cannot lack on any seagoing vessel.
Although the book is initially intended for merchant ships, published by the British Admiralty, it gives the best routes for sailboats, these routes should be followed when you are sailing a large passage.

These beautiful old sailing routes are also mapped through lines that shows the most convenient routes per time of the year. The book advises, when sailing from Tahiti towards Sydney, to sail just south of New-Caledonia and then set a more south direction.
It is a detour of 100 mile, then if you sail in a straight line, but given the circumstances it is the fastest route.

Since our departure from Tahiti, it seemed that a depression was developing west of the Society Islands. This depression could influence our journey towards Sydney.
We must stay south of this depression to keep the wind in our favor. The wind is running in this hemisphere clockwise, around the centre of it.

To be sure of this fact, we are sailing since the start more southerly then the “sailing routes” indicate. Afterwards it seems the right choice. A low pressure area takes a more southern path then everybody had calculated, and this pressure area is renamed: ‘Nisha’.
How sweet the name ‘Nisha’ may sound, when a pressure area is given a name, the sweetness is usually far away.

Fortunately, the development of ‘Nisha’ gave us a good move to the West so we are spared of her most venom… at least, as it seems…

Richard Slootweg
Captain Clipper Stad Amsterdam