I feel there is need to update and republish this glossary again.

The lasted posting in this “Glossary” series is always an updated version of the previous “Glossary of terms”.

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 reading these narrations, I decided to add again this glossary of terms. Here you 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 does 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 standing on a boat feels. This is the wind the sails feel, thus the wind, which drives the boat forward. It is measured on the top of the mast.

AWA Apparent Wind Angle – the angle equivalent to AWS. It is also measured on the top of the mast

STW Speed Through Water – the speed a boat makes through the water. It is measured just outside of the hull. There is through hull in which the sensor is located. This is used to calculate the TWS from the measured AWS.

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 has 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 To 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, 123 m2, 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.
MaRe got last year a new gennaker. It’s colors are only dark blue and light blue. The dark blue color is at the edges of the sail, to get a good contrast against the sky. In the inner, light blue area it carries the name “MaRe”.
It got the nick name “The Big Blue”.

Reefing a sail – or – put a reef in sail – making a sail smaller because their it’s too much wind or there is more wind to expected.
The main sail has 3 reefs plus what I call reef 0. Reef 0 is the unreefed sail. When the reef number increases, the sail is getting smaller.

For the genoa there are bar marks at the foot (lower edge) of the sail. The more number of bars are to be seen, the bigger the sail is. 3.5 bars means the full sized genoa. 0.5 bars means the genoa is reduced to the size of a “handkerchief”. The finally stage is furling (rolling up) the genoa fully. The number of bars is also in the reefing table of the boat designer.
Now, you might read “we furled the genoa” – furling a genoa is a work done very often on a boat and has not necessarily something to do with strong winds. Most often it just means getting the genoa out of the way because we need to work at mast on the main sail.

The gennaker can not be reefed. For that reason I can be called a “binary” sail; it’s up or down. Like “1” or “0” in a computer.

Jib sails will not be reefed but exchanged.

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 sail with 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 by 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

Until late afternoon we had pretty good sailing conditions. Wind was not strong but stable in it’s direction. Thus, we made good progress with an averaged speed of 4 KN.

Then we had a kind of strange wind behavior. The wind turned from E via N to W even WSW. We had to tack and were again on a good course.

However, at about 1700 the wind got tired. It blew already for 15 h. Thus it fell asleep. It indicated its intension by getting less and less and then started to turn 360 deg. Therefore sail down. We were adrift again.

At about 1930, Shigeo’s watch started only 30 min before, he saw that the wind came back and was pretty stable in its direction. For a test of the wind’s behavior, we set the genoa.

We had a wonderful full moon sighting. A real orange colored full moon climbed over the horizon. Pretty different to what we saw yesterday when the moon was above.

For dinner Shigeo made another delicious lentil soup. Additionally we had a left over of potato salad and he sliced a tomato and a piece of a cucumber with olive oil and balsamico.

I could not eat much because the bug in the Offshore App of PredictWind bothered me a lot. Unfortunately I tap accidentally the update button and the lasted version has another bug.

I would like to see once the test protocol for that app. I seriously wonder if there exist one. It’s time to think about an alternative.

When I started my watch, Shigeo reported that the wind is very stable. Thus decision was made to use reef 1 in the main and the genoa fully. We don’t need to considered strong squalls and reef 1 can be used 27 KN TWS which is about 4 – 5 x the wind we had when we set the sail, this enough to get the sail down should the wind increased towards 20 KN.

With this sail configuration we are making good progress in terms of speed and direction.

All this nice wind we had and still have is not forecasted at all.

While still waiting for the genset spare parts, we decided to make a hike to Mt Temehani, the highest peak of Raiatea. The background was that we wanted to see the aphetaki flower, which is the symbol of Raiatea. It’s a pretty interestingly shaped flower. People told us that it is to be seen at Mt Temehani’s two plateaus.

The plant is an endangered species. Endangered by humans who need to take their own flower home like trophy, instead of just looking at them and enjoy their beauty. It’s also endangered by a type of rat, which came to the island by foreign ships. These rats don’t have natural enemies and are a plague in many islands of French Polynesia.

A while ago, I attempted already alone Mt Temehani but at the end took at one Y-junction the wrong direction. Therefore, I decided we go by the more southern entry, which a local lady knew and showed us.

The way up was pretty easy. The trail was easily to be seen and easy to be walked.

Once we were high enough up, we had a great view down to the outer reef and the mainly sandy shelf at its inside, displaying an emerald green water in which MaRe was swinging at her anchor.

When we already were in the shrubs of the first plateau we looked out for the apetahi flower but first didn’t see any.

The explanation came in form of a young lady, a hiker who walked the opposite direction with friends. She told us that their are almost non of these flower existing, and they are in a small area with a fence around and further up deep in the shrubs.

Now we understood why we didn’t see any. Searching in the higher up shrubs was not an option for us as the lady told us that the fenced area is small and difficult to find.

So we continued through the second plateau as well until we found a trail leading downhill.

Early on the way down we crossed two streams with very fresh water. In one stream there was even a natural bath tub looking so invitingly to sit in an cool down for a while. But we continued.

Then the trail became pretty narrow and was partially pretty difficult to seen. At two steep parts of the trail, there were even ropes prepared for an easier descent.

It was long way down and whenever we thought that it will be easier from now on, it became again difficult.

Finally we reached the first houses of a place just about 3 km south of the center of Uturoa.

It was a nice challenge having crossed the island via its highest mountain trail from very easy to walk to parts where it was difficult to identify the trail.

The end was, like the beginning: hitch hiking. A way to travel I discovered again in French Polynesia.

According to weather forecast by the most reliable weather models, ECMWF and SPIRE, we should have no wind or about 5 KN with instable directions.

Since last night the wind came it is pretty stable in direction. Wind speed varies from 2 – 4 Bft, giving us a nice STW and a current helps with the additional about half a KN in our direction.

Weather is nice, sunny not hot.

A longer about 1 m high swell with a wind wave of around half a meter lets MaRe run smoothly on course.

From the pantry a nice smell of fried garlic makes suddenly hungry…

It’s almost 0500 and the first hour of my second watch is almost gone. Wind is down again but keeps the direction, thus we made a few NM. We are between Maupity at party side and Tupai at STB. Maupity has some high caldera left over, thus its silhouette is pretty well to be seen at full moon illumination. Tupai is more like a flat atoll because it can’t be seen during the full moon night.

The night sky looks beautiful with all the different shades of grey of the clouds and the moon peeking through thinner layers of clouds. To work on the bow or in the cockpit, no light is needed.

Full moon sailing!

Completely against the wind forecast, we got suddenly a nice wind of 3 Bft from 70 – 80 deg AWA STB.

I pulled out the genoa and we are sailing with 4 KN pretty much on course towards Penrhyn.

I’m getting tired and it’s also time to change watch.

The Offshore App, which I use to download the latest wind and weather forecast, makes now also troubles while writing and uploading my narrations.

Please don’t worry when you don’t see anymore new messages. It’s only my “most favorite app” with another bug.

Please contact me via skipper-cat-mare@myiridium.net

I forgot what time it was when Shigeo woke me up saying we have some wind.

We got indeed some wind. However the wind came from a big cloud which moved over us when the expected drought moved over us.

At the end we used only the Genoa and I tried to steer MaRe as much as possible in the right direction. Not easy because the wind shifted permanently with 20 – 60 deg. I had to hand steer MaRe. However, we made good what we lost when we were adrift for the first time today.

At 2340 the wind was down to 1 – 2 KN and turned in circles, and I furled the genoa. now we are adrift again.

For how long?

We left Bora-Bora’s public pier (docking time max 2hr) after having gotten our outbounce clearance document and the needed stamps in our passports at a quarter past 1500.

We got a delay with all the preparations needed to be done. Among them, I clean the rest of the hulls to be faster. This took me from 0700 in the morning until 0900.

Finally we took off for the fuel station in Vaitape. Refueling took about an hour. When we were docked at the public pier, the Gendarmerie was in the middle of their 2 h lunch break. So we had to wait for an hour more.

When we arrive at the Gendarmerie, they just opened the gate an we got within an quarter of an hour our document and stamps. I said thanks to the policeman for being allowed to spent almost 1 1/2 years in French Polynesia; it was a good time.

When leaving the pier, the wind was in our favor and blew MaRe off of the wall of the pier. At the fuel station if was the other way round.

Course was prepared for going through the pass and then on a direct line to Penrhyn Island.

After thinking to use the gennaker and sailing at higher speed more towards W, I decided to use the main and genoa and sail about 40 – 50 deg on STB tack; a close hauled course.

At the beginning we made a bit more the 3 KN SOG. Now only 1.8 KN. Did not want to look at the SOG display to not get shocked; but it’s a bit more than I expected. The current is a bit in our favor.

Shigeo is preparing “Bratwurst und Kartoffelsalat” (fried sausage with potato salad).

I’m writing, watching course and sails and contemplating about what night gown MaRe gets tonight.

I’ll let you know later about the results coming out of my smoking brain.

Since this morning, Vini, my normal internet provider has a technical problem with recharging a data account.
Therefore I can’t be reached via Signal or Threema.

Please use skipper-cat-mare@myiridium.net for communication.

As we leave Bora-Bora on the 17th, you can get used to reach me via skipper-cat-mare@myiridium.net.

We will be sailing off-shore for about 700 NM. Depending on the wind it will take 4 – 7 days. I don’t know yet if I can get normal internet at Penrhyn Island. We shall see after we dropped the hook inside the atoll.