The night was not too fast in average but sometimes, when a cloud passed by closely, MaRe moved faster through the sea. We also got a short, free sky-water shower before midnight.

Beside this MaRe moved with only the genoa and wind from 90 – 150 deg safely through the night. B reported an interesting weather phenomenon, a rainbow with light from the bright half-moon.

As sunrise was today at 0718, we replaced the genoa by the gennaker at about 0800, and went for breakfast. After breakfast the morning look at the weather forecast for the next 36 h and decided to sail a bit S of W.

On this course is MaRe running with around 6 kn. The flow generator produces a nice current. This, with a little bit of converted wind and sunlight we are charging batteries with around 2 – 6 A.

G, who had yesterday a smaller dolphinfish on the hook, released it because it was a smaller one and we still had a big portion from the day before. It was interesting to see that 4 of his brothers and sisters accompanied it until MaRe’s stern. But when it was released, they all disappeared at once from this horrible, first catching sailboat.

Just some minutes before, G passed and showed me the lure of the day. The special pink one for tuna, which brought us 4 dolphinfish. Let’s see what the catch of the day will be.

A tickles the gennaker for a bit more speed so that a bigger clouds from NNE will pass behind MaRe’s sterns.

Board routine.

The problem of the day was the missing wind and the fact that there is no fuel station in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. The fuel consumption was nagging on my nerves. On one side there was the need to get out of the calm ASAP, and on the other side there was the consumption of fuel. Brutally constant, although on very slow speed, the fuel indicator move towards 1/2. We watched the wind meter and it did not go up to constant 5 kn. The very nasty thing it did, was showing sometimes even 6+ kn. But, whenever we thought that God of the Winds finally had mercy with us, the wind went back below 4 kn.

We prepared the gennaker well in advance to set it was fast as possible once the wind is enough.

At the end we forgot all pre-conditions and pulled it up. We made 2 kn with the gennaker. Engine stopped thus fuel consumption stopped. My nerves felt better.

Slowly the average wind speed increased an we made good miles over ground.

But what to do with during the night???

As the moon is a bit above half the night could be pretty well illuminated, I thought about using the gennaker during the night. I kept this idea circling in my mind. Can we risk to have the gennaker flying during a bright night???

Then A released me from the pressure by asking about using the gennaker beyond sunset. I felt relieved and we discussed it. Result: we will do it. Limitation triggering “all on deck” was set to 12 kn winds for about 2 min or a squall which might hit MaRe. Everyone has a position, thus task defined.

We checked the 1800 weather forecast, which confirmed that our plan and preparations were matching the possible winds during the night.

In the meantime G cooked again an excellent meal: dolphinfish in lemon-capers sauce with pasta penne. We finished almost our meal, when a dark cloud was close to MaRe at about 45 deg on starboard. Everyone went on the assigned position and in 2 min the gennaker was down. While the gennaker was secured in the port side bow net, the genoa was set already.

With a bit less speed we continued our sail into the night with only the genoa for safety reasons.

At the end, all was good! Let’s hope it stays like this in untill the morning light!

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

We offer high quality 12 V electricity!

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