Today is another special treat by Tjasa. She again bakes a mountain of palatschinke, the Austrian, Slovenian and Croatia name for their 230428_02 Palatschinke for breakfast. There are quite a variety pancakes in Europe, but they are more like brothers, sisters, or cousins. Please note that they are COMPLETELY DIFFERENT from the American pancakes.

According to an Austrian friend and skipper of SY Katinka. One is only allowed to eat Palatschinke with apricot marmalade; only, and only then, in an emergency situation, strawberry marmalade can substitute the apricot marmalade.

However, the crew of MaRe continues with acts of sacrilege. On board of MaRe we had so far the following fillings:
A variety of marmalades
Sliced banana & honey
Peanut butter
Peanut butter & marmalade (on one pancake!)
Hazelnut-chocolate cream
Honey & cinnamon
With “nothing filling” (sounds better than “without any filling”)
Next time, someone can come up with another variation. Maybe Tjasa proposes even her famous tiramisu.

So far about the palatschinke breakfast we had this morning.

Yesterday evening, when we changed MaRe’s colorful going out dress, the gennaker, to her pajama, main with reef 2 and the genoa, we saw again we can’t have both sails, the genoa and the main on STB with an AWA of 150 deg PRT; the main covers the genoa and make it useless.

I decided to try a wing-wing configuration. Kept the main on STB and shifted the genoa to PRT. Using a barber hauler to open the genoa as much as possible, we got an excellent configuration for the current wind and wave conditions.

With the boom of main secured on STB with a preventer to avoid an accidental gybe it was perfectly save.

It even showed the wind angle in the wind vane mode can be varied from 150 – 165 deg PRT. Maybe even 170 deg would be possible.

This pajamas we most likely put on MaRe on the next night again – of the wind performs according to the forecast.

During the day, she will get again her colorful going out dress the gennaker.

Only 1244 NM to go!

A gentle jogging at my leg interrupted my sweet dreams. A bit of adrenalin immediately let me forget what I dreamed about. Either I’m needed as the skipper or it’s my turn with the watch duty. I immediately sit up. As soon as my eyes can see something I recognized the 2 big figures at the chart plotter screen. TWS and STW is normal. This means “watch duty”. Confirming question to Dennis and the adrenalin level dropped. I get up and listen to Dennis report. There were some stronger wind shifts a while ago but now all is normal.

The weak wind is always accompanied with wind shifts, which are so fast that the autopilot cannot react fast enough and the sails flap a bit.

I take my mobile phone to write this narration and go to the helm station in the cockpit. A quick look at the sky. Almost no clouds, especially no low hanging dark ones. At PRT, at about 45 deg above the horizon with the milky way in the background, the Southern Cross. Therefore, there are no unusual, dramatic change in our solar system; good!

In front of me 5 instruments gazing at me. I have friendly look at them. They are kind and do their duty 24 / 7. Thanks guys for your support.

Occasionally I hear the genoa flapping a bit. No wonder, TWS it’s only 6 KN.

An alarm in my phone gets off; “2400 position” it says. Ok.

I go inside to the desk. Enter numbers in a line of the log book. Take the other mobile phone with the Iridium app running and send my position, COG, SOG, and the newly added item “number of miles to go”. No witty comment possible because brain is too sleepy, just the essence. Recipients : SY Katinka, Vili, our weather consultant in Switzerland, and the MaRe OBM in Tokyo. Satellite communication around the globe.

Where are the days when sailboats were isolated from the rest of the world, small, floating islands heading with the wind to their destination, and having already a bunch of paper mails written to be sent from a post office at the next port of call? If the crew was lucky then they got weeks old letters to be called for from family and friends.

I take a handful trail mix and a cup of tea and go out into the helmsstation again. It felt a bit chilly, thus I put the “jacket” of my “samue” a traditional Japanese “suit” on. Nights are getting cooler because we are already more than 14 deg south of the equator; more than 840 NM, or for more land based inhabitants of this globe, 1500 km.

“Trail mix” in quite some European languages trail mix is called “student fodder”. It reminds me always to my times as a student when I had to work the last days and nights to complete yet another thesis. Coffee, chocolate and most important “student fodder” was what I lived on.

Back from University days in Würzburg and Osaka to MaRe on her way to the Gambier Islands, only a bit more than 1200 NM ahead of us. The hot tea feels good. It helps to fight the sleep in a routine night.

The fight with the sleep gets harder towards the end of the watch duty.

Just midnight watch duty!

Although I was off watch I got up very early. That early that I still saw the red and orange-red sky off the sun’s early indication that he will come up at the horizon soon.

We needed to charge the batteries, thus also made fresh water, and did a laundry to use the excess every of the generator. Sometimes we also make 3 thermos jugs of tea and coffee, which then saves as gas.

When charging and the connected work was done, I just sat in the cockpit and watched the clouds. The clouds far away at the horizon, the clouds more above me, and the clouds in between. There were smaller and higher up hanging clouds, and there were the lower hanging ones. They were cumuli or strato cumuli. The formation of both types of clouds are fascinating. The explosion like outbursts growing high up into the sky, while the “bottom” of the clouds staying still down. Then there are some with grey bottoms, the strato cumuli, which area getting ready to dump all the water they carry along.

And their drifting over the wide Pacific Ocean is hitch hiking just the wind. What a great way to travel.

The mood on board is great. Lots of jokes and serious conversations. Teamwork. Individual work.

Today the wish für music came up. Dennis until now listened to his Spotify download but can’t update his payments and he can’t hear this music anymore. Currently we are listening to music from The Doors.

I’m a bit more conservative, have simply a USB stick full of music for a week non-stop listening. (Thanks dear A2!!!). I also have a stable of CDs (Thanks OBM!!!). Thus, I can listen to music any time without being somewhere online and wasting a lot of energy for streaming music.

I started to write in the morning thus the title. But I’ll keep the title. All started with a wonderful morning.

From the pantry comes the smell of our lunch. What will it be today?

At about 22:30 Dennis woke me up because we got wind. He observed 6 KN of wind being stable.

We put MaRe in her pajama and are now slow sailing. This is better than drifting in the wrong direction, what is what MaRe did for the last hours before we started sailing.

Let’s see how long and how much wind can hide in our sails from the monkey with the tin tool.

Today it got his greatest success since he stole all the wind while we were still further north in the doldrums.

No wind at all! Fully glassy sea!
And this can continue until the 28th!

On the 28th, the forecast indicates that the SE trade wind catches up with us from SE direction.

Then maybe on the 29th, we can even get 20 KN winds. Unfortunately the forecast also says that this good sailing wind is accompanied with gusts of 30 KN. So we will use main sail with reef 2 and a big reef in the genoa.

But first let’s see if the wind does what the forecast says.

Yesterday I made the dough with flour I ground freshly in my Salzburger Getreidemuehle (a grain mill made by a company with the German name before the brackets.)
It’s a fully normal mill normally used at home. Only I bought mine for usage on board and built it even in. With this mill I’m grinding my grains to get fresh flour for baking bread.

The final cold proof of yesterday’s dough was done overnight.

This morning after forming 8 breads, I started heating up the oven, but had to recognized that the temperature does not go up as normally. I assumed the gas injector got some precipitation inside its tiny, sub-millimeter hole.

I stopped the preheating immediately and took out all, what could be taken out of the oven with kitchen gloves to speed up the cooling process. Still a bit warm I could remove the gas injector. To clean it, I boiled it in a vinegar-water mixture (approx.half-half) for 20 min.

Next all assembled back again.

The next preheating showed immediately a normal temperature rise. Lucky! I could fix the oven.

As a result, we had by 1200 freshly baked bread for a brunch.

Baking bread with obstacles!

Looking over into 0200 direction the crescent moon looks like falling into the sea. Down south where we are already the crescent of the moon is fully horizontally. For people from the northern hemisphere a rather unusual sight of the moon.

Just at the change of the watch from Dennis to me he observed for a longer period winds above 6 KN TWS, our trigger point for setting main and genoa. But as the rule goes “wind up, sail up, wind down…” It went down to 4.5 KN once the sail were up. Fortunately it recovered a bit and currently we have 5.5 – 5.7 KN. Maybe some more wind can escape from the monkey with the tin tool.

Let’s keep fingers crossed that the wind goes up to 6 + KN and stays there for the rest of the night.

Only 1373 NM to go.

In the early morning light we hoisted the gennaker. Wind was enough to keep the gennaker up and move MaRe meter by meter then mile by mile forward towards the destination.

This kind of sailing is still better than drifting all day long without any sail.

It was nice, and completely different to what we have seen when the wind really blowed and MaRe ploughed through the waves. The sea appeared dark blue with only little wavelets. The swell, also pretty down to about a meter of height, was very good to be seen when it came rolling out of a distance of several NM towards MaRe.

Because the wind was weak, and there were only alto cumuli clouds at the sky, we kept the gennaker up until after our dinner. It was easy to get it down, pack, and store it.

Since then we are drifting without a sail up.

MaRe, happy drifting until wind comes again.

This narration is not a normal one.

I’m using in my narrations a lot of abbreviations and special terms, which are understood by sailors. As I know that there are many people without sailing knowledge are reading these narrations, I decided to add a glossary of terms. Here you can find always explanations on the terms and especially the abbreviations I’m using.

TWS True Wind Speed – the speed measured any position at land or sea where the position may not move. On board of a boat this wind speed is calculated using satellite data.

TWA True Wind Angle – the angle equivalent to TWS.

AWS Apparent Wind Speed – the wind someone stands on boat feels. The wind the sails feel. This wind is measured on the top of the mast.

AWA Apparent Wind Angle – the angle equivalent to AWS.

STW Speed Through Water – the speed a boat makes through the water. It is measured just outside of the hull.

SOG Speed Over Ground – the speed with which the boat moves over the ground of the globe. It is calculated from satellite data.

COG Course Over Ground – the course (direction) in which the boat moves over the ground of the globe. It is calculated from satellite data.

WPT Waypoint – point along the route a boat sails. Each WPT had a pair of coordinates that determines its position on the globe or on the sea chart (digital or paper)

BTW Bearing To Waypoint – the direction under which the WPT is located; being seen from the boat.

DTW Distance Too Waypoint – the distance of the waypoint from the boat.

PRT – Port or Port side – the left side of a boat when looking from stern to bow.. Color is red.(The red heart is at the left side of a human body.)

STB – Starboard or Starboard side – the right side of a boat when looking from stern to bow. Color is green.

NM Nautical Miles – distance unit for navigation. 1 NM is the equivalent distance of 1 angular minute of a longitudinal circle around the globe (these circles go through the North and South pole).

KN Knot – a speed unit for which means the NM per hour.

As Nautical Mile and Knot are not an ISO units, they don’t have an internationally fixed abbreviation. Thus one can find other abbreviations as well. I’m using the ones here in capital characters because they are not in conflict with any ISO units.

Sails
Every sailboat can have different sails but almost always have a main sail and one head sail.

The main sail – or short the”main” is the big 3-angular sail behind the mast.

The head sails – are always before the mast. Head sails can have different sizes and thus have different names. MaRe has 3 different head sails.

The genoa – biggest and most often used has 49 m2.

The jib sails – Only a few catamarans can fly jib sails. MaRe has two. A jib with 20 m2 and a storm jib with only 8 m. Depending on wind and direction conditions one jib can be used in combination or instead of the genoa.

Gennaker – this is huge, approx. 120 m2, very colorful sail made out of material also used for parachutes. It is a light wind sail, which I can use for AWA from 70 – 180 deg. (For sailors: I can even fly to 150 deg on the other side with a tack height of 2 m). It is flown in the very front of the boat but can be pulled to the side as well; this depends on the AWA.

Halyards – each sail has its halyard , which is a line to pull the sail up.

Sheets – Each head sail has 2 sheets. Sheets are lines with which a head sail must be adjusted to the AWA.

The main sail has only 1 sheet to adjust the sail to AWA.

Barber Hauler – a special line, which allows to open a head sail more than what is possible using a normal sheet. I use this typically when I only the genoa and have winds between about 150 – 180 deg AWA.

Autopilot – it is a computer, which can steer the boat depending an information it is given and the steering mode being selected

Steering modes are:
STBY – stand-by – the autopilot returns the steering to the person at the helm and does nothing else.
AUTO – the autopilot steers the boat into a direction entered, ignoring wind and current drifts.
WIND VANE – the autopilot steers the boat in a way that the entered AWA determines the direction the boat is going. Thus, when the wind changes direction, the boat follows the new direction.
TRACK – the autopilot steers the boat to a given WPT correcting drifts by currents and wind. This mode can only be used with very stable wind directions or when the boat is running by its engines.

Directions in hours
If one stands somewhere at the boat and wants to tell another person where there is something to be seen, the hours of clock are used. 12:00 is fixed to the bow and 0600 is fixed to the stern. The other hours are distributed around the clock.
E.g. 0300 is on STB at a 90 deg angle from the boat. 0900 is the equivalent on PRT. The others are in between on a logical order.

Compass directions
N north (0 or 360 deg)
NNE north-north-east (22.5 deg)
NE north-east (45 deg)
ENE east-north-east (67.5 deg)
E east (90 deg)
S south (180 deg)
W west (270 deg)
Between each main direction the sub directions equivalent to the ones between N and E exist.

Waves
There are wind induced waves and the swell. Wind induced waves are on top of a swell and are cause by wind closer to the boat. Whereas swell is created in constant winds far away and these waves roll long distances.
(If I’m not wrong there is a good article in Wikipedia: “Douglas Scale” is a pretty good search term. )

I hope that the terms are understood even by non-sailor. At least this was the objective for writing this glossary of terms. Feel free to ask for additional information to skipper-cat-mare@myiridium.net