The title indicates already that we don’t have much wind. 4 Bft means winds between 11 – 15 KN. Unfortunately it goes often down to 10 KN but very seldom to 16 KN. The only good thing is that, due to the lower waves, we can sail with an AWA of 60deg and it’s not too bumpy.

As for lunch Boh made a nice wrap with a tuna-mayonnaise-wasabi spread. Some fresh vegetables added was pretty good. And as we have still have pineapples, she even could include a dessert of fresh pineapples.

This tuna-mayonnaise-wasabi spread developed as universal food. It can’t only be eaten with a wrap, but also with rice, bread, and I would try it even with pan fried potatoes. With rice Boh made as kind of o-nigiri but the rice balls she made were really balls. Round like a ball, were as the Japanese o-nigiri are called in English “rice balls” but they are of triangular shape. Boh’s rice balls included also small chopped vegetables. Pretty good and stomach filling. Curious what she’ll prepare for dinner.

Writing about food, I have to add that my bread did not rise as usual. I consider it was the low temperature which would have required longer proving time. I need to adjust to antarctic temperatures of +22degC.

The currently SE wind is cold because it comes 40s, 50s, or even further south. And there it is really cold!

It happens that we are just now 24 h on our way into sails and we made a day distance of 152 NM. Not bad if I consider the longer periods of low 4 Bft winds.

The well known monkey with the tin tool was partially pretty successful in stealing wind…

It seems that Mr Lin-ux kicked the butt of Mr Wind-ow and the later started shuffling wind over to us. Right now the wind picked up suddenly and is in the middle range of 5 Bft. That’s a nice wind and MaRe enjoys running.

And I want now a mug cup of mocca!

During daylight with the main in reef 1 we sailed pretty fast. We had STW over longer distances of between 10 – 11 KN. 11.5 was also to be seen briefly.

Although I thought about sailing with reef 1 during the night too keep the high speed, I decided to give MaRe her pajama so I can sleep better.

With the wind changing much earlier than forecast towards E, the ride got bumpy because the wave can’t change their direction as fast as the wind can.

Around 0300 Boh woke me up because they was big dark grey nimbus cloud hanging low in front of us and it was clear that we will get it. We prepared quickly for a heavy rain but at the end didn’t get the rain.

When I started my watch duty, Boh told me that an hour ago wind was down that much that MaRe made only 1.7 KN. This must have been just after having passed the this deep hanging nimbus clouds when MaRe was in the “Kartoffelacker” behind this dark grey “beast”.

Difficult to imagine as she runs now with 7 – 9 KN STW.

I working on the bread, we want to enjoy for breakfast. The only slowly rising dough shows the effect the low temperature we have tonight. At 0400 I recorded 22degC in the logbook. I don’t recall a day with such a low temperature. We’re definitely sailing no longer along the barefoot route. I’m wearing long pants and a sweater. Boh the same before she got in her cabin.

I’ll continue now with my bread to have a freshly baked one for breakfast.

Around 1408, says the logbook, we lifted the hook and motored towards the reef’s exit supported by the genoa.

Once out, we set the main with reef 1 and the genoa fully. TWS is 14 – 18 KN or the 5 Bft range. At an AWA of 50 deg PRT we are running almost 9 KN STW. The swell is not too high.

Still, I increased the AWA to 65 deg PRT. Now MaRe runs mainly around 9.5 KN STW. I’ll keep this AWA and hope the wind turns from SE to ESE. For short moments ESE was displayed. An indication or wishful thinking?

SV Donella left about an hour before us. It seems she is sailing higher into the wind. She’s a monohull. Unfortunately she doesn’t have an active AIS, which means they receive our AIS data (among others, position, COG, SOG) but can’t send their own data.

We are all prepared and are enthusiastic about the last leg to NZ.

I just analyzed the latest wind forecast of ECMWF and GFS for the next days. The ECMWF looks a tiny little bit better in terms of TWD. However, the ECMWF has a better hit rate. If the GFS is closer to what we will experience, I will first sail a bit to W, and turn later faster S to correct the course.

If there is no strong negative influence from a low forming N of New Caledonia, we will lift the hook on Saturday afternoon local time. This would be at UTC Sunday morning.

In the ECMWF, the TWD starts with 119deg, which should give us an AWA of about 70deg. At this AWA MaRe runs well, especially as the waves are indicated at only around 2 m. In the following days it looks as of the TWD moves to E and later to N.

About the low N of Caledonia, it’s front side could help us with turning the wind from E towards N. Only if this low moves too fast SE, it’s backside would make us troubles.

Let’s see how all develops in the next days until departure.

Since yesterday the wind here in the reef is pretty weak. As a result of this, the waves inside the reef, are created by breakers rolling partially over the reef at high tide and not by the wind. These, up to about half a meter high waves have different directions and interfer either each other. This creates a choppy sea. Fully unstructured, like a Kartoffelacker (potatoes field) after the harvest. Without the wind shaping the waves perpendicularly to the wind direction and the boats at anchor being not aligned into the wind direction, the Kartoffelacker sea rocks MaRe a bit. While doing something on board, it feels sometimes a bit unpleasant. Such is sailing life as well.

Yesterday, we had another visit to the reef only with the crew of SV Donella. As Christian and Renate where here several times before, they know other interesting areas of the reef, which we visited. While looking for lobsters and big fishes for a dinner, we saw a few smaller sharks. Although I know they are harmless, and I get used to meet them, they always raise my adrenaline level for a short moment.

We neither found a lobster nor could Renate speargun a parrot fish, we found in a reef hole, thus we had “only” an excellent pumpkin soup with 5 (including Boh and me) people on board of MaRe.

The Minerva Reef is always a bit different depending on where you look at it or even better, walk on it. I also got some links to information about the Minerva Reef. At www.ghradio.co.nz/floatsome.html there is an article by Rich and Michelle of SV Pogeyan. They happen to be here as well. The article is based on their many visits to the reef. I got this information from Bob McDavid, in one of his weekly weathergrams. (His homepage is www.metbob.com)

I think I mentioned already the Wikipedia article about the Minerva Reef. There is some more to be read.

What is to be seen here?

Just a coral reef, which is at high tide always under water, and at low tides one can walk on the reef. In some parts there are some areas with smaller and larger pools of water being few centimeters to 50 cm deep. Small fishes escape into other areas of a pool when we came closer. But somewhere the water will be too shallow for them and they try frantically to go back into water just deep enough for them to swim and escape.

To express it with other words, there is no permanently dry area at the reef. Thus, neither land animal nor humans live here. Not even plants, except the ones growing in the sea water, are here.

What is this reef?

It’s only a nice and convenient place for sailors going to NZ or going N from NZ. Boats can go into the lagoon of the reef, drop the anchor, relaxe, do repair if needed, and wait for the right weather window for continuing their sail. It’s a refuge for boats and their crew. A quiet, peaceful place in the middle of the huge Pacific Ocean. It feels kind of surreal walking on the reef or being on boat in the – compared to the outside high swell and wind waves – quiet water of the lagoon of the reef.

If one want to sail from Minerva Reef to NZ one needs to ride on the back of a high pressure area.

The center of the high has to be ESE of the northern part of the North Island of NZ (roughly at 37 degS 180 deg) at the beginning and then it needs to move E slowly enough. The high pressure areas must extend N to approx Tongatapu.

One starts from the Minerva Reef with the wind still coming from ESE, which gives an AWA of about 60 – 80 deg PRT. After a day to two, the wind must slowly turn to E. On day 3 – 4 The wind should slowly veer to N. For the last day to two ideally it stays like this. Should it veer towards W, a gybe will be needed to run the last miles towards NZ.

Currently the high develops at around 40degS, 148degW, this S of Melbourne.

Departing on Saturday could lead to southerly winds on Sunday evening. Thus, this needs to looked at with tomorrow’s weather forecast.

I am a bit lucky because Vili, a Croation sailing friend, living in Switzerland, shares daily with me his consideration based on data he can get in the internet.

I used until recently mainly PredictWind and their data from the ECMWF weather model (on and off shore) and SPIRE weather model for offshore. Now I’m using ECMWF and GFS and receive these data from saildocs via my Iridium mail in form of highly compressed GRIB files for the area of my interest. I’m viewing the data with the XyGrib-reader, which is s part of the Linux Mint application depository. This gives an good overview and I can easily zoom in for details. I also can add information on where I am, and where I expect to be after 1, 2, 3,…. days of sailing.

Please keep fingers crossed that we get a nice weather window for the last leg to NZ.

At shortly after 0700 we started preparing MaRe for her Big Blue.

The Big Blue brought in average 50 + % in SOG increase. That’s what I wanted because this speed is needed to arrive around noon.

Now we have an ETA of 11:20 – 11:30. The point is not the minutes but the height of the sun to see bommies or other obstacles in the water. With Boh on the bow looking for bommies, I can stear MaRe safely through the entry passage and find a good anchor spot.

Sailing this morning was incredibly comfortable, so Boh and I had a long after-breakfast conversation. We stopped because I wanted to upload this and prepare every thing for the arrival.

I’m curious about the number of boats being there.

8.93 NM until the WPT “Minerva approach”

I woke up about 15 min before my alarm was scheduled to wake my up, because it is b…. f…. cold! A look at the thermometer and I saw we have a new temperature record on board of MaRe: 22 degC.

The last time I logged such a low temperature was in the Mediterranean Sea in fall and in winter in the Canary Islands before crossing the Atlantic Ocean.

On top of this wonderful low temperature we have a wonderful low wind speed of only 11 – 13 KN TWS. In the last two watch duties, mine and the one of Boh, we made only a bit less than 25 NM. We still have 38 NM to go. ETA at the WPT “Minerva approach” is around 1300 – 1500 right now.

When we changed watch duties, I told Boh that as soon it’s daylight, we set the gennaker for the remaining nautical miles. After my watch duty there will be around 26 NM left. We will take them with the Big Blue!

We are only making 4 – 5 KN STW giving us 3.8 – 4.5 KN SOG. The monkey with the tin tool stole all the wind from us and Mr. Wind-ow doesn’t shuffle new wind to us. How wonderful sailing can be!

The great news of the morning is that Boh prepared already yesterday evening a can of tea. Thus, outside my Dirty-Hansen jacket to keep me warm, and a cup of hot tea as internal heater. How wonderful sailing can be!

As forecasted, the wind changed to ENE and weakend. Currently we have only 12 – 15 KN TWS. Not much.

To get the necessary steering angle, I downed the main sail and use only the genoa. With this I can sail directly to the WPT otherwise 2 times gybing would be needed.

I assume that the higher speed with main sail and genoa and 2 gybes leads to a later ETA than the direct sailing to the WPT as I’m doing it now.

The remaining distance to the WPT “Minerva approach” is only 56 NM and the current ETA is about 1300 – 1400. This arrival time works be good because we can see pretty well inside water to look for bommies.

Let’s see!

Sunny weather. TWS between 15 – 20 KN from around 90 deg. AWA is around 130 deg. By pulling the clew of the genoa with the sheet and the barber hauler it stays better open for that AWA. MaRe sails with average SOG of 5.8 KN and a STW of 7.0 KN averaged as well.

ETA at the WPT “Minerva approach”, the first WPT of the Minerva Reef I set, fluctuates between 0700 and 1100 on the 17.Nov (UTC+13). From that WPT it’s about 2 NM into the center of the lagoon inside. So far we are good in time.

I did a few boat jobs and adjust wind vane angle so we sail close to the planned route. Boh finished her book and is drawing right now. While I wrote this, she came in and is fixing something lunch. I expect it will be delicious like always.

Life on board is very relaxed.