The day before yesterday when my bread was ready for the last 2 h rest. I jumped the tender an meet OBM and Nik at the pier where I dropped them. Seeing their faces I saw they love the tiny island of Nicaragua.

They welcome me with an ice cream; my the second one since Gibraltar. (Cuba has good icecream!) And the lady who sells icecream gave OBM and Nik a bag full of mangos. Just like that. A kind of welcome present from the island.

They bought ready most important food and understood where are shops along the concrete main street of about 1.2 – 1.5 m width. Most important, they described the people here as very friendly. The later I experienced myself when I wanted to tie up the tender with my steel wire to lock it and an elderly man told me I don’t need to lock up but give him the normal line and he will take care of our boat. I trusted him right from the very first moment; I knew he wants to earn some money, which I was willing to give him.

We walked the already pretty dark street. The darkness was caused by the disappearing daylight and the huge trees covering the street and being a natural “air-condition system” when the sun shines. Street lights are not needed; lights from the houses are enough and where there is not light there simply is darkness. Where’s the problem?

OBM and Nik showed me what they found on shops, restaurants with WLAN and I felt the friendliness of the locals. Several dive shops and the restaurants indicated that there are tourists as well.

We decided to stay for dinner at land and went into a restaurant with enough space between the tables. We still have COVID-19 around thus have to be careful. On the island nobody uses masks. Maybe good for environment – no mask just thrown away – or most likely and most important, life is outside and there is always wind, which dilutes viruses, should they be around, thus no need for masks.

Just when we sat down, Nik heard German from the neighbor table. A young couple from Bremen, back-packing Central American countries. They rented a house or room on the windward side of the island. And Nik meet also a young local lady who spoke fluent German.

As for languages, people here speak Creole, Spanish, and English.

After dinner, we went back on the boat, which was well known by all the people of the island. OBM and Nik went to bed and I baked my more than well rested formed breads. Fortunately I use a canvas sheet, which keeps bread in shape during the last resting.

Then we also discovered what technologies mean on islands like this. Disco music for all the leeward part of the island including the bay where we at anchor. Until 0330 in the morning. I wonder how many people went into the disco and how many people felt disturbed by the music?

Yesterday’s sunset was incredible. A full power concert of all colors, which can appear in a sunset. And the clouds with huge formation and filigrane elements were drums and percussion instruments.

This was followed by full moon night with lots of clouds only loosely connected to each other allowing the moon to shine down on the water and creating always a new moonriver when breaking through the drifting clouds.

At 21:36 log book says we started motoring. There was simply no wind.

At 00:07 I pulled the genoa out to gain a bit more speed; maybe half a knot.

At 04:20 wind can me almost exactly from behind. As the full moon illuminated all so nicely, OBM and I set up a butterfly by adding the 20 m2 jib. It brought another half a knot.

At 07:20 after OBM’s watch we set the gennaker and got a nice speed for about 10 minutes, then wind died again. Exercising patience, I waited for maybe a quarter of an hour and the wind came back and stayed for a bit more than 2 h. Gosh, this was nice sailing. Nik came out of her cabin and we had nice conversation. OBM slept after extending her watch by almost an hour.

And then, a busy day started. “No time to get old” was a thought which went through my mind.

It seems that my sailing direction approach could work, BUT, where is the wind speed I need? Who stole the wind?

First we needed to get the gennaker down because the wind not want to come back again. Ok. Fine. We use the engines. Sailing conditions set to >7 kn of wind for > 10 min.

In the meantime OBM and I worked on some business and IT matters. Hardly finish when the wind came back. Gennaker up again and nice speed. BUT, there’s always. BUT! A dark grey stratos or stratocumulus started to develop behind us. This cloud looked a bit to heavy for having the gennaker up. I set a trigger point for getting the gennaker down. Thus point was unfortunately reached pretty fast. Thus, in the shortest time possible OBM and I got it down.
And the big cloud passed behind our sterns. Better to be on the safe side!

Then we set sails already for the night. Main with reef 2 and the genoa full. And the wind got tired again. 2 – 3.5 kn. Not a speed record!

Let’s set when winds comes back again. All is prepared!

In the morning light the anchorage begin the reef looked completely different. The grey of the water under a sky with dark clouds and no sun hole in between was replaced by a color with lots of blue mixed into it. The emerald water just behind the reef was brighter. It called OBM and me too swim over with fins, snorkels, and masks. OBM took a short swim with only swimming goggles and was surprised about the many fishes she saw.

I admit, I would have searched the rocks for lobsters. Should get a spear on board to get lobsters when they go deep inside their caves. I also need to learn to use my spin fishing rod to get dinners while we are at anchor in a bay.

What I would like to do most, is swimming with Se and Ba between the corals and look at all the colorful living creatures, being the inhabitant of a coral world. I bet they would love to look and dive for all kind of shells. With Je I could do even more. Swimming further and driving down deeper.

However we needed to depart for Little Corn Island, 120 NM to the SW of our anchorage.

So we departed without breakfast and bet on a stable sailing wind with the gennaker. We won. We had a leisurely

The wind forecast was “maamaa” as the Japanese would say. “Not good, not bad”. But I considered the glass as half full and wanted to leave by 0900. Shortly after the hook was up, log book says 0905, and MaRe was on course under engines, we prepared the gennaker. Gennaker sheets from bow to stern, blocks attached in the right way to the stern cleats, tack line prepared, halyard prepared. Then, hatch open, gennaker top out and immediate hooked onto to snap-shackle of the halyard, and Nik pulled it up directly from the sail bag in the storage compartment at the PRT sail storage. As the wind came from PRT we needed to shift the gennaker in it’s sock over the furled genoa to STB. Tack line attached to the tack of the sail and the gennaker sheets tied to the clew. OBM went to the STB winch, took out the slack in the sheet, and was ready for launch. However, the wind shifted and I asked Nik to start 20 deg to STB. And then I pulled the sock upb to launch the gennaker. OBM pulled the STB sheet in until she had it stably flying. The rest was fine tuning.

For running in track mode, the wind directions were to unstable, thus I changed to wind vane mode. I had to change the AWA from 100 PRT to 80 deg PRT to not sail too much W. At 80 deg AWA MaRe eine good with the gennaker and the gennaker tack just about 30 – 40 cm above the gennaker bow sprit. As I’m writing these lines, MaRe eine with 6.5 kn STW at 80 deg AWA and a TWS of about 11 kn.

For the night I want to set the main at reef 2 and use, as long as the wind permits it, the genoa fully. Then we can sail higher into the wind and balance the W component by sailing with a more southern component. Let’s see if the wind permits and enables my routing approach.

On the 13th, we reached our WPT “Honduras E” and turned to the next WPT “Nicaragua E” with a nice sailing speed.

The time on board was very relaxed. I sat with OBM at the bow and talked. I also had my conversations with Nik. Our conversations very often are about people from F-bach. Due to our difference in age, I sometimes feel like a history book she reads with a lot of interest. But her stories are also very interesting for me as I left F-bach long before she was born.

After turning S at the WPT “Nicaragua E” the wind felt asleep. We got one nice squall resulting in a freshwater shower for MaRe and short time speed of 9.x kn. Thereafter the wind got tired again. I gave the wind our dinner time to increase or change to engines. Poseidon had his choice and preferred to let the wind be very weak. Thus, we took all sails down and ran with engines through the nightly waters west of Nicaragua heading for a reef north of the island Providencia. This island is much closer to Nicaragua than to Colombia but belongs to Colombia.

After a night of motoring, we set the gennaker for a while but then went back to engines to make a constant speed of 5 kn. As we need to reach our final destination Panama, I was even thinking about skipping the reef north of Providencia and sail with more favorite winds directly Isla de Maiz Pequenea, Little Corn Island as it is called in English.

However, anchoring behind a reef sounded so interesting for us that we continued to the reef at 13°31.052’N • 81°20.283’W.

Finally we reached around 1700 the reef. The sky was filled with deep hanging dark grey stratos clouds and the water begging the reef appeared also grey in the area were we needed to anchor. Only very close to the reef it was emerald green.

OBM and I took stern showers with bailers of seawater of pleasant temperature and a quick splash of fresh water at the end. Nik, took a very quick in-boat shower.

Then OBM prepared another good board dinner. But after dinner my batteries suddenly got empty and I felt asleep within seconds. 10 always on alert drained batteries.

Now a new day started and I’m curious what I will see outside on a sunny day.

After partially very fast sailing last night, Poseidon the God of the Seas slows us down far away from his Greek waters in the middle of the Caribbean.

On the last few miles to our WPT “Honduras E” we have a current of more than 2 kn against us. Frustrating!. The current is a part of the Mexican Gulf Stream, which flows around the Capo Gracias Adios, the most western point of Nicaragua or does this Capo belongs to Honduras? The Navionic maps are not very precise about this. Once we are further south towards Panama, we should have good current pushing us towards our destination. Let’s see, it is as it is.

Here on board OBM and Nik are still sleeping and my stomach makes “bekko, bekko”. A Japanese colloquial term for “I’m hungry”.

Once in while a higher wave from E makes MaRe rocking for a moment from PRT to STB. Besides these waves, their is no rocking now. A mixture of swells from different directions meet, but the height is very low. A meter or a bit more, maybe.

The wind, since hours only 4 Bft, just now, while I’m writing these lines, increased suddenly to 5 Bft and MaRe accelerates to 9 kt in peaks. Does Poseidon have mercy with us and wants us to reach our “Honduras E” WPT earlier?

Yesterday, shortly before 2200, we reached the trigger points at which I wanted to be woke up. Nik woke me up to tell me that we have more then 20 kn TWS, and the STW is 11.5 kn. I was up in a fraction of a second. OBM, who was ready to start the 2200 – 2400 watch, was already up. I asked her to go on the STB genoa winch to ease the sheet. I went on the furler winch. Together we reefed the genoa by 2 points. In a great teamwork we had, in the shortest time possible, the speed, thus the energy out of the boat. Nik read aloud the boat- and windspeed so I could judge the situation without looking at the instruments.

In about 10 min the spook was over and I was wet. While furling the genoa which was raised by OBM, I got a full body shower from a wave on PRT. It felt good, but it was salt water.

Nik went to bed, OBM started her watch with the normal routine tasks, I got rid of my sea water soaked clothes and the salt on my skin and went to me my rest place at the salon sofa.

We all experienced a 28 kn wind squall and how fast we could reef the genoa. Thanks to my crew.

I did not believe it but in the Caribbean I caught already daily at least one vegan fish!

It is so easy that it is no fun anymore to catch a non-vegan fish.

The vegan fishes are the saragossum grass. It is unbelievable how much of this grass is drifting in this area of of the Caribbean. Normal trolling is close to impossible. Today I tried it again, but within about 30 min I had 2 vegan fishes and the third and last vegan catch of the day I got again in about 15 min.

Saragossum is not only hampering trolling but also pollutes beaches. There it slowly rots if not clean up. And who cleans up beaches from saragossum grass?

Global warming is also considered to cause the increased growth of this floating plant. However I’m not an expert on this topic, thus please check what is available in the internet.

Yes, the right wind is back!

Yes, we are sailing again!

Yes, Nik lost her seasickness!

After motoring for a day and night and winds of 3 – 4 Bft only, I looked this morning for quite a while into alternative routes allowing us to speed up using the gennaker. The routing is a bit tricky because there are plenty of shallow areas west of Honduras and Nicaragua. I found an alternative route. But for sailing with the gennaker, the AWA changed too often to 60 deg PRT. For the gennaker we would need at least 80 deg to cope with windshifts leading to an AWA of 70 deg. And we did not get that wind.

Watching the sea during our late lunch, let me put my thought about the gennaker aside and try main & genoa and get at least the same speed as with the genoa and the engines. And it worked out well. We are running in average half an hour 7.1 kn STW and 6.9 kn SOG. Wind fluctuating between ENE and NE and 4 – 5 Bft.

The swell running from easterly direction, slams time after time against the STB hull from under the tunnel. A bit nerv racking, but such is sailing. It’s MaRe’s way to sway through the swell from east most of the time very smooth.

We should reach our WPT “Honduras E” at around 0200 – 0400 tomorrow morning. Much earlier then before.

Lunch was “Fried rice Italian style”! A great variation to the Japanese “yaki meshi”, the Japanese fried rice. OBM is also a great ship’s cook.

How will it continue?

Just had 3 big squall ahead of MaRe.

Squalls have their own wind system and can sometimes have winds with up to 30 kn. Winds like these are in the range of a strong breeze to a gale. On top of this they can dump lots of rain.

Today, I was lucky! One squall just disappeared from the radar screen, which meant its cloud was emptied; one see only falling rain on the radar screen. The other two moved fast enough to STB and I did not get their water.

I’m getting a bit tired, the end of my watch is approaching. It’s 0145 and my watch guess until 0200.