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 159 NM.

When do you guess will we arrive at Gambier Island?

I’m just sitting in the cockpit and my eyes caught my little friend and companion on all seas für many miles.

He is very quietly performing. Because normal wind noise is louder than he is.

This little and reliable friend is my wind converter, a SuperWind 350. In these days without much sunlight this is the main charger of the batteries. During the night it’s the only charger.

The charging curve is pretty impressive. At 15 KN of wind it produces 4 A, this is the beginning of the 5 Bft wind range. At the end of this range, at 20 KN of wind, it produces already 17 A.

What I like most is the performance starting with 24 KN of wind. From there on it produces constant 29 A, without switching off. The rotor blades adjust automatically their pitch. Thus, as a sailor, who can come into a storm at night, my friend SuperWind 350 will be my companion and provide me with electrical power for as long as the storm takes.

Thanks superwind GmbH for developing such a great wind converter.

There was this morning a real special show at MaRe. The baker, who is also the skipper performed as crew entertainment table & pole dance.

The purpose behind the artistic show was the avoidance of a mutiny. It is well known that in the days of the old sailships crews mutinied just to remain with the charming ladies of the southern islands. Consider seriously that danger!

The first part of the pole & table dance was and “PRT to STB dance” whereas e second part was in the opposite direction with and additional difficulty.

The challenge was to have a freshly formed bread in the right hand, hold with the left hand at the pole at the kitchen exit, and swing eleganty to the left towards the salon table. This required a moment of free – without safety net beneath – fly towards the edge of the table. There the carefully balanced bread was to be placed in the canvas for a last resting time. Once the bread was there, it was needed to eleganty score the bread with a razor blade while swinging the hip in the right counteraction to MaRe lustfully dancing in the waves. As the way back was with empty hands the pole swing was varied a bit to make it more attractive.

888 is lucky number in the Chinese mythology, the PRT to STB dance was 8 times.

Then, after the oven has reached the needed temperature the more difficult, thus more attractive “STB to PRT dance” was performed. One bread needed to be carefully placed an a wooden board to place the bread on the chamotte plate inside the pre-heated oven. Four “STB to PRT dances” for the first 4 breads.

The baking time as such is boring. The baker just sits in front of the oven, stares inside to see when the bread has the right color to be taken out. Then he performs the last half of the 8 “STB to PRT dance”. And at the end, there 8 freshly baked breads in the kitchen. The 888 lucky number is accomplished.

Now the crews reaction: “Your pole & table dance was boring but, because you bake good bread, we will not mutiny and not maroon you, but take you along with us for baking fresh bread.

Hey, what a great crew I have on board.

Again another wonderful sunrise, with the red light beaming through the oval shaped holes in the clouds.

It is the time of bakers when there baking is already in full swing for the first customers coming for bread.

At MaRe baking starts in about 1 1/2 h. Dough was made yesterday,q with a final cold proof in the fridge from last night until morning.

While writing these lines the portioned dough gets a short rest of 30 min before being formed into the MaRe standard form for eight breads. The standard form evolved from the need of baking as much bread as possible with least gas usage. Thus, 4 breads are the same time on the chamotte plate I got made to for the oven.

The sea outside is still choppy. Wind wave are about 0.5 m – 1 m and the 2 swell systems are rolling onto MaRe from about 150 deg and 90 deg, but their height is down to 2 m.

Just now the sun smiles for the 1stv time today fully around the corner of the clouds hanging did and dark at the horizon.

“Back to work, dear skipper-baker” or baking skipper?

The night and the morning was indeed quiet. However, after breakfast I got pretty busy. Multitasking. Among other tasks, I needed to make dough for bread I want to bake tomorrow morning during my watch. This is always a but crucial when the boat moves so fast. All incrediences need to be measured by volume because a normal scale cannot be used.
Dough looks good, thus I should get a good result.

Dinner is finished. Experimental pasta sauce: Humus with tuna flakes, onion and garlic and sliced canned carrots. Pretty good.

During dinner, the wind in the cockpit was so strong that we decided to have our next meal inside if the wind is as strong as tonight. The cheese on the pasta was just blown away.

Night routine has started.

As the wind speed went down to 10 – 13 KN TWS and the wave were rather flat, sailing was not rough as during earlier nights in the more northern edge of the SE trade winds. Sailing speed is low as well.

Non of the crew members on watch duty before me, needed to wake me up. However, earlier in the night, I got up from my sofa, went into the cockpit to learn that I only dreamed I was called.

As I was awake, I took the chance to take a sea water shower, which I intended to take during my watch, and went back to sleep.

The sea it’s dark but had a lot of phosphorescence activities. Thus the wake of MaRe’s two hulls is full of millions of light emitting algae. Some are very bright. An interestingly looking phenomenon dragging about 5 m street the edge of the sternsm

A while ago a quarter of the sky was covered cirro-cumulus clouds. Now, an hour later, there are quite some cirro-stratus to be seen below. I hope the later one don’t become more because it would mean rain.

About 2 h ago a cargo ship passed us astern. A Hong Kong registered vessel was heading to China through the nightly sea. A rare event.

All in all, a very quiet night, at least until 0459.

As the wind stayed mainly in 12 – 15 KN for a longer time, we exoected that it will be like this for a while more and decided to give MaRe a more suitable dress. Main reef 2 was replaced by main reef 1 with the genoa standing fully. She looks pretty and pretty fast. In 2021 using this dress she made her speed record on the way between Fuerte Ventura and Gran Canaria; 11.4 KN!

So let’s see what she will do all day long with her stylish fast dress. Latest at sunset we will put the night gown on her again.

Squalls are cancelled for today as they require that we put MaRe in her squall resistant night gown before the squall hits us.

And how did she perform from yesterday noon to today noon?
What do you guess?
123154187164132169147
The number is displayed already but to increase the tension you have to read a few lines more. Simply writing down the figure would be too easy. It’s boring stuff you don’t like, don’t you? Thus, now I will tell you in polite words, which I’m always using, that in above string of figures you simple read from left to right the last three figures and you get her today’s day distance at noon.

In the morning at 0400 it was 157 NM, at 0800 still 152 NM. Thereafter we were too busy with many other things to see that she wanted to change her dress. On the other side, we are not racing but cruising.

Nevertheless in her new dress she runs in the high 6 KN and lower 7 KN range.

A compliment to my novice crew. With only a few explanations Tjasa starts engines and steers MaRe into the wind while I’m with Dennis at the mast and he does all to change from reef 2 to 1.

At the end we trim genoa and main together.

Now, I’ll ask Poseidon for fair winds in return for the rum he got at the equator. Hey Poseidon…

During my watch I was reading my book “Landfalls of Paradies” when my eyes caught the still very red light of the rising sun.

The sky at the horizon is covered to a large extend with stripes of clouds leaving stripes of uncovered sky in between. And this uncovered sky is beautifully red, making it a nice contrast to the clouds being very dark grey at the horizon and turning into light grey with increasing height above the horizon.

The sea is dark grey, but its surface looks like reflecting floating metal. This reflecting part of the sea surface shows a huge range of colors. The same colors as they are at the sky. From deep red at the far away horizon via orange tinted red to light grey and light blue colors of the sky.

A very short time event as the earth continues to rotate. No chance for a short stop. Seeing, closing the eyes for a moment, and when open them up again, the difference is visible. Snap shots in time. Snap shots in colors.

We are now fully in the SE trade winds. This means wind is pretty stable in direction and speed. Therefore frequent sail changes are not needed anymore.

During the day we could increase the sail size to reef 1 but then we have 2 draw backs. We are too fast for the hydrogenerator, which I use until 6 – 6.5 KN and we have to look out carefully for squalls during the day. With the clouded skies of the last days, squalls can pop up any time.

Also stable wind speeds have their fluctuations. Thus MaRe can increase her STW in no time up to peaks above 8 KN.

Dennis reads a lot and listens to podcasts he downloaded before departure. He does this where ever there is shade ion the boat. Thus he wanders around the but with shade created by the sails, or cockpit enclosure.

Tjasa writes a lot. Mostly at the cockpit table but sometimes also at the bow area in the shade of the sails. Sometimes she also sits in the pulpit at the bow watches the sea, the day streaming water, and … She also might dream a bit.

I try to do one or the other little boat job every day. Among them the administrative work like sorting out of receipts. A bigger part of the day is consumed by checking and correcting the always actual sailing and boat condition, writing log book, preparing, downloading, and analyzing weather forecasts, communicating with SY Katinka’s crew Ralf & Gaby and our weather consultant and friend of mine, Vili in Switzerland. Also once a day I exchange position and some additional information on the daily situation with SV Almazul, with Magnus & Rebecca on board.

Then there are the narrations I’m writing here.

Yesterday I had an additional writing job. People from PredictWind support are interested in my ideas about a re-work of the GPS Tracking part of the Offshore app, I’m using daily several times. This could possibly also have an influence on the way the tracking site where you read just these lines.

Communication includes also emails with family and friends who have questions triggered by my narrations.

Then I have to prepare myself for French Polynesia and the other islands between French Polynesia and New Zealand. This means re-freshing my rusty French, reading information about the islands I got in the internet before departure from Vista Mar Marina. There is also a book I want to read. “Landfall of Paradise”. It’s the 5th edition of the cruising guide to the Pacific Islands, by E. R. Hinz & J. Howard. I found this book accidentally in a fascinating shop in Panama City, Islamorada International S. A. (I should write a short narration about this shop.)

Therefore days are filled with many activities and on top of that the surprises are coming. Life on board a sailing vessel even in the trade winds it’s not boring at all. There is no time to get old! – am I right, my dear friend Ro from WUE?!

MaRe ran nicely!

At 0800 I checked the day distance she made: 150 NM
A great position to make it for the same value at noon. And MaRe made a noon day distance of exactly 150 NM.

But at around 1500 the monkey with the tin tool came back and stole piece by piece a part of the wind. Currently, 1630, the TWS it’s down to around 10 KN and MaRe only make a STW of around 3.5 KN.

Days ago we were happy with that speed but today we are not. She spoiled us with her performance in the last days.

As I’m writing these lines, as if she heard my complaints, she started to pick up wind again.

The wind, I assume, comes from a bunch of dark clouds hanging in front of MaRe at in 1100 direction. I really hope we get some wind from there.

Beside this it needs to noted that today we did not have our soup variation as (almost) every day. Tjasa made mashed potatoes with mushrooms in a creamy sauce. Very good.

But the very best is her tiramisu. We get her tiramisu always as a dessert. Even with a cup of coffee in the afternoon, she serves tiramisu. The fascinating thing is, that she serves it without having the necessary incrediences on board. That’s Tjasa’s secret and I will not reveal it here.

MaRe’s speed had increased in the meantime to 5.8 KN. What is she going to do in the next hours?