With an hour delay we got up, lifted the hook, and took off.

Nora & Hacko were still sleeping on board of SY Anixi, so we didn’t call them on VHF to say again good bye. We will meet again! Where, is another question.

Currently we are sailing very comfortably with an SE wind. It was just 4 Bft now it’s 2. It could be that the land covers the wind, thus I changed course by 20 deg to STB to gain distance from land.

Sailing live!

Gusts are coming in again. This indicates that land blocks the wind and the 20 deg course change could be good.

What happened the last days?

On 1. Sep I wanted to get my wheat grain out of the bilge for baking bread when I discovered weevils. The boat was bug free since Panama. But somehow weevils came again on board with food or food packages. Because all paper etc package are removed already in the cockpit and all remaining non-removable packages are cleaned with detergent, the weevils could also have been inside food. Currently, I think they came with a newly bought bag of rice because there we saw them first. It seems that wheat grain is the most preferred grain. I had to throw about 15 kg of wheat grain over board. One bag was still safe.

With a strong insect spray I treated all the possible areas and especially the bilge where grains are stored. The remaining wheat grain is currently in the hull fridge where it is safe and should there a few weevils inside, they die. Getting rid of the wevils was a several hour work, spread over 4 days.

Fortunately we had them only in one bilge in the PRT hull. No weevils on STB where we store rice and pasta.

I also studied the internet and found that weevils like all kind of grains, and pasta, which are made of grains. But I also observe that when wheat grains are available, they ignore rye and spelt. This gave me the possibility to built a weevil trap and early indicator. A marmelade glass with about 1 cm of wheat inside, closed lid with a small hole. They easily can go in, and I easily see them. Let’s keep fingers crossed it works or better we don’t have them on board anymore.

I also learned that they don’t like laurel leafs. I will put laurel leafs in small fabric bags and place them in all places where we store did they like. As it is also said that they don’t like white vinegar, I clean all areas vinegar.

But, the best countermeasure I learned from Nora & Hacko. They use 5 l plastics containers from bottled water and store almost all inside these container. It is a great idea because the walls are so thick that insects can bite their way through.

The bottles are 34 cm high with a cross section of 15 cm x 15 cm. Such container fit in our bilges and at the place where we store pasta, rice, lentils etc. So we will get such containers for our grains and other stuff.

Back to life sailing in MaRe. Getting away from land was good. We got more wind. Currently we sail with STW of 3.5 – 5.7 KN at about 120 deg AWA PRT. Swell of mostly only 1.5 m rolls on from astern. Extremely comfortable sailing We had breakfast in the cockpit sitting in the sun and enjoying the nice breeze.

At the next WPT we have to get the main sail up because our course will change to SSW and then to E. How will the course to E will be?