Since yesterday the crew to sail to the Gambier Islands is fixed.

We are sailing at MaRe with Günther, our sailing cook from the Atlantic crossing, Doris, his partner, and Mia who joined yesterday.

To use Guenther’s motto for the Atlantic crossing ” Always say yes to new adventures”; all of us said yes to the sail and the crew.

Katinka will sail with Ralf and Gaby who are since 3 years in the way with her.

What is not yet fully decided upon is the route. In the meantime we learned that is costs 600 USD to enter Ecuador mainland and get out again. We are still looking to see if there are lower cost alternatives for Ecuador. Colombia and Peru, the neighboring islands are out of discussions.

The alternative is a direct sail from Panama to the Gambier Islands. A long sail. But this sail is a once in a lifetime experience for the crews of Katinka and MaRe. Both boats are very well designed and built for such a sail.

As mentioned already in an earlier narration, Katinka and MaRe sail as buddy boats.

We see each other on the AIS screen, there marked as buddy boats. During daylight we might very often see each other just with the eyes during nights there is a radar blip overlaid with the AIS signal. We will have voice contact via VHF and if needed via satellite phone.

Concerning weather, we are watching already daily how the doldrum belt develops and moves. On board of both boats we have 7 weather models. So we have a good chance to find the most fitting one. Additionally we have a landbase in Switzerland. Vili, a sailing friend from Croatia, follows our sail and gives additional ideas on how to get the best winds.

In the link to this page, you can switch on the top left from map to wind. What to see is the forecast of the ECMWF. This is in general regarded as the best. This it should give you a good indication what the weather around us will be.

As this is not a public site – the link is only given to people I know – I will, from now on write the first names in full length.

Should someone would prefer to have the first name only abbreviated, please sent a message to skipper-cat-mare@myiridium.net

When another skipper says the docking manoeuver was excellent, it was an excellent one with a good 5 Bft wind from abeam. Ral did a great job!

SV Katinka it’s perfectly docked for the strong north-easterly winds blowing here.

Final preparations for the long sail to French Polynesia via Ecuador start now also on SV Katinka. At MaRe they are already on full swing.

Once we changed course to roughly SW the wind comes nicely from beam reaching to broad reaching directions.

Katinka runs currently with 5 6 KN.

Yes, we are sailing but the wind is weak and Boris Hermann’s race yacht is s bit faster than Katinka.

Just needed to change course because of a container ship which wanted to cross our course.

It’s 0230. At 0300 we will get up and try to sail – not motoring – to Vista Mar Marina.

Looking at the PredictWind forecast we will not have much wind.

How good is the forecast in the various weather models?

It’s past noon and we are still in La Playitas at anchor because there is no wind to sail. It’s a bit hot but still not too hot.

2 friends will disembarks in next hour.

We, the remaining 3 on SV Katinka will sail tomorrow – wind is forecasted – leave very early and sail to Vista Mar. There, we both (Ral and me) prepare our boats for the sail to French Polynesia via Ecuador.

I also learned a bit about SV Katinka. She is the sister ship to the Shangril La, the famous boat of Burkhard Pieskev, who sailed with her the Seven Seas intensively.
It also needs to be noted that there were only 2 sailboats of this robust design built.

At 1950 we dropped the hook at La Playitas. It was a long day! We got you up at 0500, thus had a 15 h day.

So we have now the experience of going through the Panama Canal in a 1 day trip and in a 2 day trip. The 2 day trip is really much more comfortable than the 1 day trip.

Tomorrow we will sail to Vista Mar Marina where MaRe is docked as well.

About 0500 the advisor was on board and we lifted the hook and moves towards Gatun lock.

When the advisor came on board, we had winds of 5 – 6 Bft and waves of about 0.5 m. Under these conditions the pilot boat had to come so close that the advisor could step over to our boat with the pilot boat not even touching out boat. I really admire the guys at the steering wheel of the pilots boats for there skills to manoeuver in such difficult wind and wave conditions that close to a yacht without touching her.

Just before the Gatun Lock we had to make a nest (pack) with a monohull. As we had all our lines and fenders well prepared, both boats became a nest in a few minutes. It should be noted that masts may not touch each other when waves roll on.

For the next hours we follow the”Gatun Lake Highway” and the other narrower canal like waters towards the Miraflores Lock.

There, we start the decent towards the Pacific. In the Gatun Lock we climbed in 3 chambers up from the Atlantic sea level by about 27 m.

Today there is the focus on sailing, or in other words, sailing required my focus.

During the last hours of my watch, the wind went down and I needed to get the main from reef 2, the night gown, to reef 1. When Tjasa came out we changed to reef 1 and gained speed.

As it is the rule , the wind increased the moment one increases the sail size. Ok. Not big issue, we put a reef into the genoa. A couple of times during the day we had to change the size of the genoa (reeffing more or reeffing less).

At around 1300 a little bit bigger cloud came and we reefed the genoa to 1 bar which is only 45 % of the full genoa size. We got some nice winds until the limit of the sail size, which meant before being forced to reef the mainsail. Nice speed but followed by rain and very low wind speed and varying wind directions. I rather have not the speed increase by a cloud.

With hand steering I kept MaRe on course. After maybe 30 min all went slowly back to normal. Then the autopilot could take over again to steer MaRe in “track mode” directly to the next WPT some 650 NM or 4 days ahead.

BTW, today’s noon time day distance was 154 NM.

When do you guess will we arrive at Gambier Island?