Since 25 min the Big Blue pulls us with around 5.5 KN through the water. Wonderfully smooth as the AWA varies between 150 deg PRT and 170 deg STB.

This morning at 0830, after breakfast, we pulled up the hook. I took a bit longer because we needed to remove two chain floats. (They keep the chain off of the ground to protect corals.)

Then we made again our way through the coral banks of the atoll to the exit. We did it in the same way as we came in. OBM and Ruslana were at the pulpits to look out for the coral banks and I steered MaRe in between them.

At the exit it was clearly to be seen that low tide was not close to be reached, thus no slack-tide. Outside there were very choppy standing waves of around one meter height. I decided to go out and turn just in front the standing waves to N to get quickly out of very choppy area.

With the engines a bit above cruising RPM, to have a good effect on the rudders, I went into the exit channel. All worked out well. With the outflowing water, we went through the pass in only a few minutes. Turning N proofed also to be the right approach.

When we were clear of the eddies, I went on course and we set Big Blue, the 123 m2 gennaker. We did it as training for Ruslana and OBM. OBM got the final tasks to pull up the sock, whereas Ruslana was in charge of the STB sheet. It became a perfect launch.

The new gennaker sock can be pulled up with not much strength, thus OBM did it perfectly fine. Ruslana made the first rough trim of the STB sheet.

Thereafter, we trimmed the Big Blue a bit more and we are sailing very smooth downwind towards the northern tip of Taenga Island, where we will turn into a SSW course to the E pass of Makemo Island.

We decided to move on to another island, Makemo. It’s about 70 NM from Raroia.

Makemo has a pass at the NE corner and another one at the W side. We will enter through the NE pass and try to anchor close to the village. Then take off to go inside of the atoll to the W pass.

We will go out through the pass of Raroia at the guesstimated time of slack water tide at 1000. Based on the experience of the entry into Raroia, I consider that we have at least a one hour delay compared to the guesstimated time.

Anchor up is planned for 0830. Thus, another quick sleep.

This morning, I wanted to row with the dinghy over to look at the island and corals there, when OBM made the proposal to snorkel over to the island. So we snorkeled over.

The water was incredibly clear. When we reached the area, where coral grow more frequently, they appeared to me as the most beautiful ones I ever saw in my life. Intensive blue ones and white ones being a bit translucent and a kind of pinkish appearance. All grown over many years in crystal clear water being washed over the outer and eastern reef of Raroia into it lagoon.

All is only a few 100 m south of Thor Heyerdahl crash-landing site. Suddenly the book I read as a young guy and the movie I saw later became very vivid.

I also respect the crew for observing that, after a certain number of normal waves, there was a always a bigger one. They saw the only chance they have to make it somehow over the outer reef was riding this wave to go over the reef. (For more please look into Wikipedia for “Kon-Tiki, Thor Heyerdahl”. There is supposed to be a good article.)

We did not only see pretty tiny colorful fishes, we also saw a shark. It looked to me like a reef shark. Two others followed us back to MaRe, but we saw them only when we were out of water already and they passed MaRe’s sterns.

Let’s see what we do later today or tomorrow.

… a few hundred meters away from where Thor Heyerdahl landed with his raft Kon-Tiki after his epic voyage from the South America continent to French Polynesia. With this voyage on a balsa wood raft he wanted to prove that it is possible that the Polynesien Islands were populated from South America.

It was a challenge steering MaRe through the pass while still the water was running. In front of me there were two other catamarans so I decided to follow them.

The route through the pass was not so difficult. There were 2 markers behind each other indicating the straight line for through the Only the current in the pass pushed MaRe to the left or right. This required a lot of concentration at the steering wheel. Due to the still strong current it took a while until we were through the pass. There were moments were I was afraid that the sea chart is wrong or we never make it through.

OBM was looking out for coral banks at the STB bow and Ruslana at the PRT bow. But in the pass there were no coral banks along route we needed to use.

Then there was the challenge to cross the lagoon to the eastern side were are the good anchor spots.

I plotted in advance a route from the pass to the place of Thor Heyerdahl landing site across the lagoon zigzaging to the coral banks as indicated in the Navionics sea charts.

I followed my planned route and was happy that the coral banks along our route matched the reality. However, there were two moments where I thought reality is now different to what I see in the chart. This pushed my adrenalin level quite a bit up.

Having Ruslana and OBM at the bows was good. They spotted the coral banks and I could identify them in the chart.

At the end we made it well to the other side and found quickly a good anchor spot behind two other boats.

We dropped the hook at 15 m into sand and floated the chain with fenders to protect the coral bommies.

We arrived in paradise.

The current coming out of the lagoon is pretty strong and carries a lot of water. It builds up waves partially a bit more than 1 m high. Going in against this current is impossible.

However, I had my chance to look at and feel the current. This is helpful for the next atoll where I would like to go in. Now we need just until we can go in.

Due to the storm last night and a period of almost no wind in the afternoon, we had no chance to make to the daytime slack tide yesterday. Yesterday afternoon, after testing and practicing with Big Blue, we used only the PRT engine to move as slow as possible to the pass of Raroia.

At about 2000 we were about 2 – 3 NM from the entry away, stopped the engines and are on drift. Even when the wind became strong, MaRe did not drift far. She has a great low wind profile.

As for the right entry time, the slack tide, during which the water flow in and out of the pass is zero, I have 2 data. The first is from the Tide Guesstimator, an Excel file in the Soggy Paws collection of information. Depending on who you ask, you can get a positive or negative answer to the question how good the Guesstimator is. The second data is an guesstimation I made from tidal stations closest to Raroia. However, I have no idea how good my guesstimation is. Had never a chance to test.

So we’ll be at the entrance at about 0700 to see what the situation is. Maybe we can observe the water flowing out of the lagoon, but maybe not. Thus, there are a bunch of things where I have und understand the essentials right onto lean the spot.

After having the Big Blue hoisted and doused several times today, I’m very happy with it. The sock and it’s control line are working just fine.

I don’t know where and why but the control line of the sock, stuck yesterday inside the sock.

Today all was fine with the Big Blue and I’m very happy with it.

BTW – I’m not too happy with the wind today. Currently, we are moving slowly with only 1 engine towards the destination and still arrive there at about 2000. Too late to see something tonight.

With the daylight I hope to see when boats are preparing for going through the pass. I consider to follow them. They know the pass I go through it for the first time.

At around 0200 Ruslana woke me up because MaRe, running under wind vane mode changed direction very much away from the planned route. I didn’t like this wind change because it took us the chance of going through the pass of Raroia just before noon.

Then all of a sudden the wind turned stronger from the originally E to SE, to SSE to S, to SSW. Close to the opposite direction of our route. The same time the windspeed increased tremendously. In a peak I saw an 8 Bft flashing.

With Ruslana I reefed the genoa, the only sail we used, to a handkerchief. As I didn’t want to go against the swell from where we came from, I kept MaRe at a 60 – 70 deg AWA on PRT.

She was nicely stable and made only about 1 KN forward away from where we want to go. Then waiting started. Waiting for the wind to go down and took change back to easterly directions so we could proceed towards WSW.

Ruslana went back in her cabin. I had a cup of tea, prepared by OBM in advance of the upcoming night, and I found cookies. Once this was finish I took off my foul weather jacket and took a 15 min nap. After that I had a pretty good situation.

Wind was down and turning back to E. I turned MaRe around and unfurled the genoa. Finally, I opened the genoa with the barber hauler and we were back to a sailing situation before the storm hit us.

I woke up Ruslana. She took over from me.

After a short period of nice and strong sailing winds – up to 28 KN TWS – from the right direction the wind slowed down again. I guess it was exhausted from blowing so strong and so long from various directions.

Now, hours later, we are since hours back on our course to Raroia for which we have a current ETA of around 1700.

In the afternoon the wind really went down to 3 Bft and did want to go up again. Thus I considered it as the chance to finally fly the Big Blue for the first time.

We prepared all. The tack and the clew were attached, but the control line for the sock was still coiled up and not in my hands because I tied the sheet to the clew. The wind going into the lower part of the gennaker was enough to push the sock up without pulling on the sock control line. This was a very bad but also a nice surprise. The nice surprise was that the friction of the sock material and the gennaker is so low that the sock just got pushed up. The bad surprise was that my control line flew high up in the air.

There was chance that you could hear me using 4-letter words!

How to get the Big Blue down without the sock control line?

OBM was at the helm station and steered MaRe the way I needed her to get as less power into the Big Blue, which enabled me to pull the trigger to set the tack free to get the power fully out of the Big Blue. When I then pulled the sheet I could get it down. By all these movements the sock control line got uncoiled and we could douse the gennaker easily. The aforementioned low friction really is nice.

Having now the sock control line under control, I attached the tack again and pulled the sock up. Not much effort was needed. Excellent!

But! Then the “but” came. The control line is too short by some meters. I could just hold the control line in my stretched arms.

Was it Doyle NZ or the US sock manufacturer who made the mistake, I don’t know. I’m just disappointed. Before I’ll hoist the Big Blue again I have to extend the control line. By some meter. I estimate the extension should be 10 m.

When the gennaker was flying I could briefly enjoy its nice color and the name “MaRe” in the center. It smoothed a bit the disappointment.

Thus is the first island of the Tuamotus, which we saw. It was OBM who discovered it first at horizon at about 1100 seen from MaRe.

Out of the distance – we are still about 5 NM away – it appears as rather high. I’m curious how it looks like when we reach the CPA (closest point of approach) where we will be as close as 1000 m.

Originally I planned to pass this islands at a CPA of 5 NM. However, as the weather is nice and it’s bright daylight, I shifted the CPA to only 1000 m.

Since about 15 min I’m sailing a bit closer to the island.

A sandy beach seems to fully surround it and forming the shore line. Pretty behind the shore, trees grow and cover the island. However, I can’t yet recognize what kind of trees they are. They don’t look like palm trees.

On the northern end there is an mast and several buildings to be seen. Appears to be research station or an outpost of the French navy. The latter one seems to be more likely.

Being now closer it’s to be seen that the unknown trees are indeed palm trees. They are supposed to be the only trees of the Tuamotus.

Now, we are already gaining distance to the island and I put MaRe back on track mode to the next WPT. It’s the one in front of the pass into the Raroia atoll.

It’s now my task to consider the strategy of the approach to arrive there at the right time to enter.