S 10° 06.285
E 169° 43.512

At 0400 I gave up hand steering MaRe through the extremely low wind area wachting the wind turning E and further N. The entry in the log book for 0400 contains the term “circle” for TWD (true wind direction). At 0520 the same, And I expect that the 1200 entry will get the same term “circle”.

It got hot already. The sea has the code “zero”, standing for glassy sea. Not even ripples are to be seen. So a cooling weak stream of air is missing.

I’m sipping on my morning pot of tea, writing emails and this and maybe another narration for my blog.

As bad as this being adrift in the calm is, it also had a good thing; I could jump into the water and check the PRT propeller. Two days ago, we started in the evening the PRT engine, but did not get a thrust. I really was concerned. The only good thing was, that the engine without engaging the sail drive ran completely normal. I checked all manuals and spare parts list for a part which could cause such a phenomena, but found nothing. I wrote an email to a German Volvo dealer (Yachttechnik auf Fehmarn GmbH & Co KG). Since I left Europe, I am in touch with one of the managing directors. He helped me with advises and shipping spare parts when there was need. In this case he even replied on his Sunday and I got his mail very early my Monday morning while still being on my watch. He pointed directly to something, which should be sticking on the propeller and did not even mention anything about something in the power drive from the engine to the propeller. Just reading this made me feeling already much better.

Being well secured I jumped into the absolutely crystal clear water and saw already out of the distance that there is nothing sticking at the propeller. I could rotate easily just with one finger the propeller in forward and backward direction. “Now I need to runt he engine again” was the thought, which went through my mind.

Engine check showed a normal behavior with normal thrust!

There must have been something sticking at the prop 2 days ago. The problem was the last two days I could not dive into the water, and look at the prop. The weak wind was still too strong and the small waves too high.

After the last line I took a nap and woke up because my right foot was grilled by the sun.

Tobi, just jumped into the water for a short swim to cool down a bit, but came out of the water quickly again and shout at me “A shark”. I asked him to “Please only take only the small ones, the bigger ones are a bit tough to chew”. Then a saw the shark myself swimming around MaRe…

Don’t worry, Tobi is sound and save on board.

Around us is the big blue ocean from MaRe up to the horizon, the end of the disk on which we are floating. What is behind the edge of this giant incredible blue disk?

Final note: My brain still works despite the heat of the day.