The end of this long sail is approaching. It was a long sail in terms of time needed. The no and low winds at beginning are now replaced with 3 – 5 Bft winds. Today even the waves are down and we can use reef 1 in the main. Yesterday, the waves where to high to use reef 1. MaRe would have crashed into the waves too hard and too often.

The most important topic on board is the wind and the accuracy of the forecast. It seems that the forecast is better now.

This morning a bit suddenly the wind changes to a few degrees south of E. This enabled us to let MaRe with wind vane angle setting of 45 deg STB run a range of 005 deg to 025 deg. With this course we gain way towards destination WPT and east to gain a few offset miles should the wind turn unforecasted towards N again.

All day long MaRe runs fine on the course I set for her.

I spent quite some time at the wind forecast screen of my PC doing calculations when and where we could be under a few conditions. This because I wanted to see when we are at the entrance of the pass leading inside the atoll, which I typically called “Tarawa Island”.

Now I have a good picture. It looks like we sail like normally towards the key WPT at the SW corner of Tarawa and watch our progress. If we are too fast, we will slow down by sailing only with reef 3 and a partially furled genoa.

A lot depends how much speed MaRe will make with her pyjama during the 5 – 6 Bft winds forecasted for most of the night and tomorrow.

As Tobi lost all his bought lures, we built one today ourselves. Materials we use are an empty tooth paste tub, a piece of an empty powdered milk bag, a hook, a lead ball, and a few cable binders.

We are still waiting for the first bite…