Our batteries are full!!! Our gennaker is empty!!!

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Who delivers is wind?

This morning, the glance out of the cabinet side window made my heart crying. Glassy sea. The nightmare of each, and we are sailors but now are “motor-boaters”.

I’m watching the fuel tank and hope we get at least a little bit of wind from 90 – 100deg P.

Beside the shock of the glassy sea, N and I enjoyed a nice talk while watching another sunrise at sea.

G puts his surface lure out hoping for a curious fish taking the bait and he bakes his first bread with wholegrain flour and baking powder. We are all curious how it will turn out.

G and B bought plenty of “levandura”, which in Spanish can mean “baking powder” or ” yeast”. As I made the same before, we have plenty of baking powder on board but no yeast. Sourdough alone might result in a very heavy bread. So there are interesting experimental breads in the pipeline. Stay tuned!

If nothing happens, I wake up around 0200, get up have a look at the systems and talk for a while with B, who loves the “Hundewache”. (The literal translation is “dog watch” but I don’t know the English equivalent. Sorry. Its the watch, which starts at midnight and is considered to be toughest watch.)

Today I was a bit earlier and felt already in my bed that there is no wind outside. Still in cockpit a glance at the wind indicator shocked me. Wind from about 20 deg STB. This means the wind from the movement of MaRe through the nightly sea was the dominant movement of air. In the moonlight the surface appeared to be glassy.

Beside the lack of wind it’s beautiful in the cockpit. Looking at the moon illuminated sea and the sky with its endless band of white clouds, it is a wonderful peaceful atmosphere giving the feeling of an endless freedom.

With the daylight, I hope, we will be able to set the gennaker and make it slowly out of the calm towards SW.

Today G saw an orange life vest drifting by. As we were running with our vibrators, we immediately turn around to get the life vest. We wondered if there is a name of vessel written on it. Additionally it’s a piece of plastic floating in the ocean and we wanted to take this out. No vessel name on the life vest. Still we became thoughtful. Was the life vest just blown off board, of drowned someone. We will never know.

As A, G, and R recognized that our head give to much resistance to the wind, thus slowing MaRe down, we decided to have a boat cut. A secured a chair at the starboard engine room entrance hatch and started, brave as he is, to be the guinea pig. As he looked good after the treatment by B, R took place on the chair. Finally G followed. N had already a streamlining haircut.

As there is also attached to MaRe the stories of “harbor cuts” they should be mentioned here. The very first one took place in September 1982 in Port Grimaud, the last harbor of the Rhone river. The second followed many years later in Biograd when the final decision to buy MaRe’s was made. Some others followed in various Croatian harbors. All made by The Admiral who happens to be a professional hair cutter. In 2019, the last harbor cut took place in Olbia, Sardagena, this time by a charming female professional. And today there was a boat cut in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. Not to many people get such treatment.

Enough written for today. Tomorrow other stori will followhhh—

The deep blue until the white clouds at the far horizon was the scenery we enjoyed all day long.

Temperature was warm but not hot.

Then there was the request for a stop over to swim.

Engines stopped. Safety line with a fender at the stern, swimming ladder out, and a dive into the Atlantic Ocean. 5000 m of water beneath.

It was fun!

Location:19deg 51.726min N 038deg 10.832min W.

Thanks to all of you for keeping fingers crossed.

However, since an hour we are using vibrators to push MaRe out of the calm. These Volvo Penta vibrators doing a good job.

Positve side effect is the charging of the batteries.

Beside the motor vibrations, it is also calm inside the boat. Reading, “napping”, and sliding fingers across the tablet/mobile phone are, beside breathing, the only activities in the moment on board.

Cross fingers for constant 10 + kn TWS PLEASE!!!

From PredictWind’s weather forecast we saw last night that we need to S to SW to escape the calm coming from E. Thus, safe sailing, we used only the genoa and sailed roughly SW. The wind was for most of the night not to weak and we had good progress.

With the early sunlight we set the gennaker again and head further in the same direction.

However, the wind is not as good as yesterday. It’s only weak 3 Bft wind and we are moving with about 2.5 kn ahead.

Please, please, please keep fingers crossed for more wind.

Although we still have good dolphinfish meal for today, G challenges the catch of the day with different lures. Let’s see if we’re catch also another kind of fish.

For quite a time we had only 3 Bft wind and expected that the wind goes down to 2, 1, 0…

However, the wind increased and now we have again for quite a while a 4 Bft wind. MaRe runs with her genoa empowered with up to almost 7 kn. A pretty nicely surprising STW.

It almost seems that at least today, we had more wind than indicated. And e made quite some miles good towards W.

A and N cleaned the cockpit very good. Reason was the ” Bergfest”, which we wanted to celebrate. “Bergfest” translates to English as “mountain party”. It means, we sailed until that point in time the same distance as the one ahead of us, using the DTW, the distance to waypoint, whereas the waypoint is the first waypoint for the final approach to Simpson Bay, Sint Maarten.

Which sails we use tonight, we will decide after the next weather forecast we will download in a few minutes.

Last night we sailed with almost no wind towards W.

The weather forecast this morning (about 0430) indicated we need to go SW to escape the low to no wind area coming closer to us from ENE to E.

So, with the early sunlight we set the gennaker and headed SW.

After breakfast we looked at the forecast of 0830 and got a big shock! The two weather models we use, showed that going SW is not good anymore. So we decided to run a 260 deg COG.

And now, there is a strong heart full request to all of you who reading our postings. Please keep fingers crossed that we make it through the small about 10 kn TWS corridor further W.

Currently we have:

AWS: 7.3 kn
STW: 4.5 kn
COG: 260 deg
SOG: 4 – 4.5 kn

Although G was very kindly requested to catch a tuna or something else, at the end he caught his biggest dolphinfish. Big enough for 2 – 3 meals was G’s first estimation.

After a lazy sunny afternoon G had prepared a dolphinfish risotto and we were about to set the table, when the fishing rod sounded alarm, a metallic clack clack clack sound caused by the fishing line running out from the drum. We were sailing with about 6 kn with the gennaker and needed to suddenly slow down MaRe not to lose our catch.

A gennaker is a binary sail, up or down like the digital 0 and 1. Nothing in between is possible.

Thus, the gennaker was put down in the shortest time possible. Possible, because the crew knows exactly what to do on which position.

Once the fish was secured on deck we set the sails for the night. Main sail at reef 3 and the genoa full. Genoa full it’s possible and necessary because the wind is weak. The reef 3 is for safety reasons the smallest size possible. Should we get a strong wind or a squall, we only need to reef the genoa, which can be done from the cockpit.

After the sails were set, we enjoyed G’s delicious dolphinfish risotto. How will he prepare tomorrow catch of the he day before?

Thereafter the remaining preparations for the night.

Now this in this very writing moment, four are still awake and one is asleep already. Good night from MaRe.

As expected, we had a nice gennaker wind this morning. Thus, already at 0750 we changed the genoa for the gennaker resulting in more speed.

Course was only changed a little bit to S. We first wanted to see the new weather forecast for final course decision.

After breakfast, with the last preservative filled bread from the supermarket, the challenge is with G. Baking bread with only sourdough and baking powder. I am sure he masters this challenge excellently. While I’m writing these lines, G prepares his first wholegrain dough with only baking powder. Result report follows.

Then we had our weather forecast and route decision meeting. SPIRE and ECMWF showed almost identical forecast and COG proposal. We follow this proposals with a few degrees less S. We also decided to download from now on only these 2 weather models. SPIRE is indicated as the best offshore model and ECMWF is number 2 for offshore. (ECMWF is indicated with the best accuracy for inshore forecast. So we are sailing with a COG 240 – 250 deg and an AWA of 165 deg STB.

To the N of us is low to zero wind area moving south and this is what we’re want to avoid.

Board routine included today cutting (thanks N) of plastic garbage to fill it into big plastic bottles. This is an incredible idea because the volume of plastic shrinks a lot. And G (thanks!) squeezed the empty beer cans volume by about a third.

Today we all got the feeling that we are now on the barefoot route. Its sunny, temperature in the log book is recorded with 26 degC. Wind is constant and the gennaker pulls us nicely forward. N and A enjoyed already the barefoot route feeling at the pulpit and the bow mat.

Coffee and cake will be taken, according to A, the cake baker, in half an hour.