I love night sailing when the moon and stars are out. Today only the lying sickle of the waxing moon is to be seen. It creates still a nice moon river, flowing to MaRe from about 45 – 50 deg PRT.

In directions away from the moon, plenty of stars are to be seen; towards the moon, the moon creates too much light pollution. Therefore only few very bright stars are to be seen.

Just above me, I recognized right now the typical constellation of the belt of Orion.

The (southern) Crux is not be seen. We are too close to the equator. It is just behind the southern horizon.

The moon river makes wind and swell waves very well to be seen. The wind waves are low, less than 50 cm. However, we have a clearly to be seen main swell of about 1 1/2 m from ESE and weaker one from south.

MaRe doesn’t wear her normal pajamas but only top part, the genoa. I was thinking about setting the main sail,
However, MaRe would be too fast, in her full pajama, thus we would arrive before 0500 and that’s what we don’t want. So I kept her with only the genoa. At an AWA of 100 deg STB and an AWS of 17KN, she still ploughs with around 7 KN through the nightly sea.

Inge, who is off watch takes her “power nap” in the cockpit . When my watch ends at 2200, I expect to fall asleep before my head will reach the cushion.

ETA at Taiohae Bay will be currently 07:43. Let’s see what will happen through the night.