Haven’t written much since the main broke yesterday. I feeling a bit down.

This morning I wanted to speed up our slow getting approach to Hiva-Oa because the wind came from 70 – 80 deg STB and was stable around 10 – 12 KN. AWS and TWS was almost the same.
Forecast also indicated 10 KN, which has +-.

So I decided to use gennaker. When it was up MaRe started running. While we fine trimmed the gennaker there was another bang. A sudden gust was too strong and the gennaker broke.

Now we are running at an average SOG of 3.2 KN with the genoa and I’m thinking when to start the engines.

We discussed it and decided it would be good to arrive at Sunday noon at the anchorage. We don’t know how the situation there really is. But we know we need stern anchor as well. For this week have to consider 2 h. Because we needed to get the tender ready to transport the stern anchor at the right spot.

Roughly estimated we have time 2100 to night to start the engines. As the distance, which needs to covered depends on the time and sailing speed, a differential equation needs to be solved.

There is a possibility that a brilliant young man, studying Theoretical Physics in the second term, reads this narration, and becomes eager to solve the differential equation, here are the parameters for the differential equation.

At 14. Jul 1200, the boat is 200 NM from the anchorage away.
The boat moves along a straight line towards the anchorage. When sailing the boat moves with 3 KN, when running under engines it moves with 5 KN. The boat should arrive on 16. Jul, 1200 at the anchorage.
When does the skipper needs to start the engines.

Young man, you can send the solution to skipper-car-mare@myiridium.net

Having now outlined the conditions for the differential equation, I’m feeling a bit better and would love to discuss and solve the equation together with the brilliant young man.