For this app and the service to download the weather report via IridiumGO I have a paid and not cheap subscription with PredictWind.

After I ordered the subscription and hardware I got my first negative shock. All protection against malware etc must be switched off. Thus, since 2021, my phone is maximal vulnerable against any things I don’t want to happen on my phone.

Sometimes the app works and sometimes not. During the last year, I made a lot of notes on problems I saw and still see. Some I sent to Keryn, who is great support worker at PredictWind, most of them I kept on my phone to exchange them with Keryn when I am in NZ, by the end of next year.

As Keryn sometimes has also other tasks, my mails to her get answered by other support staff. From them I get replies indicating – a bit exaggerated – I’m the only customer who reports problems. Who knows me, knows that I’m a sharp analyst.

As I have on each of my mobile devices, the Offshore App and the Iridium mail app installed I can even find out quickly if my IridiumGO works fine with a connection to the Iridium mail server. Thus, when I cannot connect to the PredictWind server, I close the PredictWind Offshore App and open the Iridium mail app and there I get quickly a connection to the mail server. This shows that my IridiumGO works fine and it’s only the PredictWind server which I can’t reach via IridiumGO. I also should be able to reach the PredictWind server via normal web connection – currently I have normal internet connection – but even this doesn’t work consistently.

But maybe I’m really to stupid to use the PredictWind Offshore App.

As for weather reports, I found already an alternative where I can download GRIP files even faster then from PredictWind and this services works flawless.

The only problem left is that I can upload these narration only with a connection to the PredictWind server.
So I try my best to get things uploaded here.

Yesterday, after practicing French for 2 h, starting at 0500, I got up and did my fitness training. I always feel good thereafter. Quick shower, prepared my breakfast muesli, and opened my PC, While eating my muesli, i started reading emails.

I was locked with PC work all day long. PC work was progressing, but it was tiring working all day long in front of a notebook. At home in my office I used 2 large monitors, an external keyboard, and trackball, making PC work easy. But on a notebook all is small. I only can, with 2 shortcut keys, get 2 application windows side by side. A nice Linux functionality. I say Linux because that’s what I know, because I haven’t really touched a Windows or Apple PC since more than 10 Linux years.

Back to the PC work day.

Around 1700 I stopped because my eyes hurted. I didn’t want to work with my PC at all anymore for that day.

For dinner I had the 2nd portion of a lentil stew and prepared the rest of a the lettuce as a salad, enriched with a tomato, and small cubes of Emmentaler cheese. With board baked bread it was a delicious meal I had in the cool atmosphere of the cockpit. I sat s bit more in the cockpit before I did the dishes, took my shower and she l went to bed.

Today, I decided I not work beyond 1100 at my PC. This was good. I could get almost all done until then. A few mails are left. Tomorrow, I thought, is another day. I got a bunch of things done on the boat including getting 80 l of diesel in 4 jerry cans on board. This work is not that easy. The 4 jerry cans need to be hand carried for about 200 m from the fuel station to the tender. When loading the jerry cans into the tender, another sailor, who was just around, gave me a hand.
At MaRe I know already the best way to get the jerry cans, weighing almost 20 kg each, safely on the lower part of the stern while the tender and MaRe move in a swell of half a meter.

For dinner I made fried potatoes with a bit of chorizo and fried eggs. A tzatziki with board made yoghurt was a great meal. I watched another part of “Scenes of a Marriage” am incredibly movie by Ingmar Bergman an director.

When I went to bed I felt tired but it was a better better tiredness then the one on the day before.

Yesterday, I started with the big cleaning action of all cabins. Even if cabines are not used, they need to be cleaned. It will take me 4 days until all is done.

In such a situation I want to have a 30 ft monohull with only one cabin.

In chat with my daughter and daughter in law, I recognized, that the bay, where I am right now, became so normal to me that I didn’t send any pictures anymore to them whereas for them all what I’m seeing is unknown.

Perception has changed.

Recently, when I hitched to village and back, I saw a stand which looked like selling papayas.

It’s about a kilometer from the dinghy dock.

Yesterday, I needed to ask Vincent of Marquises Maintenance Service something and found in the shop a metal made shower head for the shower at the STB stern. Ob like them than the plastic ones which break easily.

While I was at land, I decided to have a look at possibly papaya selling stand.

It turned out that it really was such a one. Selling is based on trust. Each papaya has its price when on it. So I took a papaya, put the money there and went back.

I like this way and hope they also sell other fruits that way. Let’s see.

As sailing through the Tuamotus needs good preparations, I started with this work and got already the basic ideas and selected a few islands I consider to visit.

The Tuamotus are volcanic origin as well, but they developed coral reefs outside the former calderas as well as they have lots of coral colonies inside. Navigation there had to done very carefully.

To enter inside the lagoon the outer reef must have pass suitable for boats like MaRe to enter. The Soggy Paws compendium for the Tuamotus is off great help for identifying atolls, which have pass and explanations about the currents in the pass.

Going through the current require knowledge of the tide because one can only get in and out with the currents because they are quite strong.

And inside the outer reef navigation must be done very carefully. The Navionics charts are not reliable. Therefore, I’m setting up OpenCPN. To have satellite images as well. The first time setup looks quite challenging and I wonder how long it takes me.

Fortunately my X240 works normally again, thus I don’t have to wait for my new PC my OBM hand carries at the end of March when she comes the next time.

Further readings
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuamotus
https://www.britannica.com/place/Makatea-island-French-Polynesia
https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/2001GL013913

After the holidays at the beginning of Nov, the shops opened again.

This was good because last week the 2 regular supply boats were in. This means, a few days later the supermarket has many things again the shelfs.

It was pretty warm yesterday, so I waited in the shadow of the roofed area, where goods, delivered by the supply boats, where loaded into cars, pickups, and trucks to be delivered to their destinations, The driver of the car, which gave me a lift into the village is a sculpturer, who makes tikis. Here is a pretty good description of what tikis are: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiki

It was nice to talk to him on French. The award of all my French exercises I’m doing these days. It’s worth to learn French because there are also a lot of French sailors around here.

In the shop I was lucky. Got some fresh vegetables and fruits. Also some other things like powered milk were in the shelfs again. I also got again 7 pieces of 5 l water bottles. Because of these 7 bottles the shop brought me back to the dinghy dock at the little harbor by their car.

The water bottles means 7 more great containers for various foodstuff, like rice, lentils, etc.

I also will try to fill spaghettis in such a container. Pastas, are beside wheat grains, favorites of weevils. I recently found that there were some in a pack of spaghettis packed in cardboard.

In one container I can store approximately 4 kg of rice, 3.5 kg of lentils. Thus, each of my wheat grains containers contains about the same.

Back to shopping. I thought yesterday that shopping here is like shopping in former so called communist countries. If there is something in shop shelfs one needed to buy.

On the way back, I saw place which looks like selling papayas from their own trees. I will have a look today.

Because the lettuce cannot be kept for long, I will now have lettuce based salads every day. Breakfast will muesli with fresh food or sandwiches with lettuce leafs in between. Such is life on boat with limited supplies.

Today, my PC booted again perfectly fine and also runs fine with it’s normal high speed of the Linux Mint OS.

After writing a bunch of emails I started cleaning the cockpit. The area to be cleaning is 3 – 4 times the one of a monohull. Thus in this, but only in this moment and limited to the cleaning work, I want to have a “mono”.

After all was cleaned I didn’t want to have a “mono” any longer. I love our MaRe.

Yesterday morning, during my breakfast my PC suddenly showed a black screen and did not start up anymore although it was connected to the 230 V board net and the inverter was on.

This morning, I don’t know really why, i pushed the start button once again and the PC started. I was baffled. I have no explanation for this. Several shut down and rebooting tests were fully normal.

I don’t have a real explanation for this phenomena.

So I changed again my day plan and wrote all important emails I wanted to write yesterday.

The selection of a new PC was not a waste of time because I needed to do it anyway.

My brother’ help with accessing my mails through my mobile phone was s good preparation for the future. “Fail to prepare is prepare to fail”. Now I’m prepared.

Lucky!

Question in my mind: will my PC start tomorrow morning again or was today an exception?

The day started excellent!

Early in the morning I did my French exercises and answer some messages while still lying in my bed. Then got up and did my fitness training and felt good. Prepared my breakfast and while having my breakfast I wanted to check my emails. My PC started normal but suddenly the screen turned black. The worst PC scenario happened. Sudden death of my PC.

Gosh I was so frustrated!!!

I finished my breakfast and went on the homepage of Lenovo Japan to buy me another ThinkPad X series model. I like the 13 ” size machines; never had privately a bigger one for about 20 years. I found an X13 with a fast Intel processor and customized it to my meds. All the needed information I sent to my OBM in Tokyo where she will order my new PC.

The unknown part is the shipment to me. I can have it sent to me c/o Marquesas Maintenance Service. Tomorrow I’ll check out what I need to have to get it tax free. But what will be the shipping time? One month or two? Hopefully not more. Please keep fingers crossed.

I was not in the mood to cook today, thus just prepared a muesli with the last fruit, an orange, I had on board.

My brother helped me to access my mails via a browser on my mobile phone. I’m curious how this works. Test tomorrow.

Recently my washing machine, for the second time behave completely strange.

Based on the information I got from the manufacturer already last time and observation I made, I opened the machine to check these things.

However this requires quite some work. First I need to remove the cabinet left to the washing machine. Then I have to remove the holder specifically made for my washing machine. (This stainless steel rubber padded construction fixed the machine at 4 points.) Next the removal of water supply and waste water hose is needed to turn the machine 180 deg.

It turned out that again the R19 resistor burned. I don’t know why this happens but assume that a voltage spike from the generator causes this problem.

Last time, the helpful manufacturer’s Managing Director and Sales Manager send me at manufacturing cost a new PCB and additionally oneresistor R19 and one capacitor next to the R19. I got this 2 simple things replaced at the Maintenance Marquises Services because my gas driven soldering iron did not get hot enough. Result the PCB, thus my washing machine work again. Gosh, I’m happy!

Now, I asked R-FIN, the Czech Republic manufacture to specify me a voltage spike filter to be added to prevent the damage of the R19 resistor.

I really enjoyed the test run yesterday. Hanging the clean laundry at the reeling to dry was a pleasure.