MaRe is on the hard at The Boatyard Vava’u since Tuesday. On the right sail drive the shaft seals needed to be replaced.

All was planned longer in advance and Ralf of SV Barbarella, who happen to prepare his boat for the cyclone season on the hard of The Boatyard Vava’u, had the needed spare parts on board, thus shipment from NZ was not needed. Thanks Ralf for helping me out.

The replacement of the shaft seals was done in few hours.

What took longer was the welding of a stainless steel support of the hardcover. Over the years, little cracks developed hiddenly and in a night on our way to Kiritimati, a welding seam broke. I was able to build temporary support using pieces of wood I have on board.

The people of The Boatyard Vava’u already gave me the address of Ken Spence of the Friendly Island Fabrication Services before my arrival, thus this was already prepared in advance. Ken, a Kiwi, who lives with his French wife and two children on Vava’u, is a very knowledgeable and experienced stainless steel welder. We had to find some special ways to do the repair. Now it’s done and in NZ I’ll get some additional support elements attached.

Boh, my new crew member to NZ is already on board. After baking bread, with dough I prepared the day before, we cleared up and cleaned the cockpit area. We also flushed the round sail weight fresh water. It recently fell into the sea because I flew it to low. Hanging secured at the gennaker halyard it’s drying in the little bit of wind we have since yesterday.

When the work was done, Boh went into town to meet friends. I did a bunch of small jobs and then took a rest. The tension of the last days with the repair of the cockpit roof support was quite high and the rest felt good.

During these days of the repair I was very lucky. Ralf and Nora, of SV Barbarella invited me everyday for lunch. Thus, when Ken had his lunch break at home, I could have mine with Ralf and Nora. Thanks to both you!

Right now we turned at WPT “Vava’u W” into the final leg to the entrance of the Fahaiva passage.

My plotter calculates ETA with 0705 – 0716. Not bad compared to the plan of 0700.

After turning at WPT “Faihava outer”, we will furl the genoa and use the engines. The route to the Fishery Wharft – the dock for inbound clearance – has only 2 very narrow passes but they are well inside this no swell etc influence.

I’ll hoist now the courtesy and yellow flag. (Yellow flag is the “quarantine flag” meaning all are healthy on board.

From our “Slow Down WPT” we sailed with only the genoa towards our WPT “Vava’u NW”. As we were too fast e reduced the genoa. At the size that we are slow enough, it showed that MaRe cannot be steered by the autopilot anymore; the effect of the rudders proved to be too little.

Thus, we hove to with a reduce genoa only. MaRe became quickly stable positioned towards the wind with an AWA of 120 deg STB. Drift speed as “guestimated” in average 1.1 KN in winds between 13 – 18 KN. Movements in wind waves and swell strongly reduced.

In about half an hour to one hour we will start sailing again. The exact time depends on calculations on the always actual position. It can only be done in iterative steps.

Let’s see if we make it as planned until 0700 to the WPT at the entrance of the Fahaiva passage.

Fail to prepare is prepare to fail!

As I don’t want to fail, I prepare.

Tonight, we will reach Vava’u. However, I don’t want to go inside the group of islands at night.

My target is to be at the outer WPT of the passage at 0700 tomorrow. From there I estimate back. I also entered an additional WPT NE of Vava’u and about 20 NM E of the original route.

From this WPT I have 3 possibilities:
1 Heave to and drift in about W direction
2 Sail only with the genoa in easterly winds towards W
3 Sail with the gennaker during very early morning hours towards W if the wind is not enough for the genoa.

We also tested how fast MaRe drifts in hove to and a small party of the genoa only. Unfortunately, just in the moment the wind dropped down to only 7 – 8 KN TWS. Still, I got an idea about the possible drift speed on 15 KN of wind.

By now we have a plan with 3 alternatives and we can be relaxed.

Since we hoisted sails just outside of America Samoa we have pretty constant winds of 4 Bft venturing often into 5 Bft range. Directions E to ESE veering shortly into SE. The averaged SOG is 6 KN or pretty close to 6 KN.

The SE winds are a disaster because they blow us to the W and we would need to tack, if this continues. With ESE we loose only a little bit to W. Everything more E is fine. The best are the winds blowing from E. The very best works blow from ENE.

With winds from E, we can use the same wind vane angle and get back towards the planned route to a WPT NW of Vava’u. We actually could continue to the E of the planned route but here comes magic in. Whenever we are as close as about 0.5 NM to the W of our planned route, the wind veers to ESE and a bit further towards S and blows us again towards the W

Right now the wind veered towards E since a while and we are as close as 0.70 NM to the W of the planned route with the trend that this XTE is declining further. As we approach the route in a very acute angle, it will take more then 5 NM until we cross the planned route line.

Will this little magic continue?

It’s 1235 but not on the 27th but on the 28th. The reason is we changed board time to destination time already. Thus, we changed from UTC-11 to UTC+13; with other words we crossed the date line, thus lost a day.

Beside this, it is wonderful sailing. A quarter sky let’s the sea appear in millions of shades of blue. My favorite color. According to the Japanese fuu sui (based on the Chinese feng shoi) is Blue the color I need to stay healthy and in good shape. This could allow the conclusion that I have to sail until I die….

We have around 15 KN of wind, now more from E. The swell rolls on from PRT approx abeam. It’s height is around 2 – 3 m; thus not high at all. Wind waves are down to around 1 m. In this conditions we don’t have permanent slamming of waves against the tunnel.

Averaged SOG should still be 6 KN as it was through most of the night. Therefore we are faster then estimated. The log shows that we made already half of the distance in less than half of the considered time.

We could change the main sail to reef 1, which would result on about 1 – 2 KN more. However, we leave MaRe running with only main sail in reef 2.

ETA at the first WPT is tomorrow at around 2100. Now all depends on the wind. If the wind follows the European model, we should arrive later. As I don’t make a landfall at night for safety reasons, we will slow down tomorrow to reach the entrance at daylight. The chance that we can be faster and arrive tomorrow still at daylight I regard as zero.

As I’m just looking out at the sea in aft direction, I see my Highfield tender and I’m very happy that I have exactly this tender with modified (by myself) lifting points at the bow. With the bow line and an additional line at the stern, I can tie it up that it hardly moves more then a centimeter, which is excellent, considering the waves in which we are.

So we enjoy the sailing today a lot although it’s a bit bumpy.

It’s 0455 in the morning. I just finished the mixing of the bread dough with sourdough. Now it’s resting and I can write.

We are sailing with an averaged SOG of almost 6 KN with MaRe wearing her pajamas. The wind was for a while coming from almost SSE or 145 – 152 deg. This blew us to W and the XTE was almost 8 NM. (XTE is the cross track error which shows the distance to the planned route.) Then the wind turned more to E, and the XTE shrank to current 6.7 NM. However it became more bumpy because we are also sailing a bit against the waves.

The wind stays stable at around 15 KN.

While kneading the dough, my thoughts went back to American Samoa. It’s s place I like and I don’t like.

What I like very much are the very friendly people and, as a sailor the simple and straight forward in- and outbounce clearing procedure.

One sails into the harbor, calls on VHF CH 16 the harbor master and gets guidance on where to go and what to do. There is no need for an Advanced Notification of Arrival requiring internet to download the document fill it in and send it to email address (which in one case didn’t even work), waiting for a confirmation that I can sail into a harbor, but which doesn’t come. One way communication of “advanced” countries.

Public transportation is very simple and pretty efficient. Small buses are running on fixed routes with bus stops every few hundreds meters. To me it appears not to be a real public transportation system but a license business. The ones who get a license can buy a bus and run a along the routes. The busses are interesting constructions. The chassis frame, front part, engine and gear are from small sized bus, mainly Toyota. However, the rest is a wooden construction with few supporting metal pipes. Thus, the passenger compartment is about 1 m wider than that of a normal bus. The wider version allows to have 2-persons seats on each side. Most often such a seat is occupied by only one person with no space even for my half bum. There is another very special design feature, which can technically be called an audio system. It features a bulky bass speaker system under the last row of the seats. The other speakers are in the front part. Except for one bus we used, what comes out of these audio system is just high volume noise with huge bass bum bum.

Surprisingly few people smoke in the streets. It seems the local government is interested to keep smoking and vaping as little as possible. A pack of cigarettes, I heard, costs 11 USD.

What I didn’t like much was the USA influence which is to be seen immediately.

Big cars dominate the street. SUV or a pickup truck with huge engines. One I saw had even a V8 engine, more of them are high likely. Then I expect V6 engines. This all to just move the personal 2 t of steel around.

There is not really a center of a town or village. All types of buildings are mixed up. I could not identify centers of life.

“Restaurants” which we saw are all fast food shops, creating a huge amount of garbage. Where does all this garbage go on an island? I expect that there are also hidden restaurants for the people with more money. The majority of the people eats fast food junk.

The food quality also is to be seen in the obvious obesity people suffer from. I recall having seen maybe a handful of people with a normal body and guess that this is less than a percent. The sad result of USA food and drinks.

I love the very friendly people but…

Back to my dough, it’s already formed and just waits for Shigeo’s cookies to be finished baking and then my two breads go into the oven. Freshly baked bread for breakfast at 1030. Pretty late due is today.

Today, around noon, I called the harbor master for permission to lift the hook and depart from Pago-Pago harbor. No answer after about 10 calls. It seems the harbor master office, which is managing the traffic in the harbor is closed on Saturdays.

As we paid our harbor fees yesterday, and also got customs and immigration clearance for today, we just took off.

It’s known that the harbor is full of things, which where blown into the water a few years ago when a cyclone hit Pago-Pago. I was a bit afraid that one of these things might be at our anchor when it comes up. However, only the normal mud was on the hook. Dragging the hook for a bit and it was clean.

Oh the way out of the harbor we had the wind mainly pretty much on the nose. The swell increased the more we came to the exit. It was a rather long swell with not so much wind waves as long as we were not fully out.

But as soon as we were out of the Western exit, we set sails. With winds of 15 – 20 KN and the high waves I decided to use only reef 2 in the main. A bit slower, but we don’t bump so hard into the waves on our up-wind course to Vava’u.

With an wind vane angle of 70 deg PRT, the swell rolls on from abeam. One swell system comes from about 80 deg, the other from about 100 deg. With the wind shifting sometimes a bit more E, MaRe runs a pretty good averages course so far. Later the night the wind is supposed to turn towards E, which will help us. Worst case it’s that we need to tack when we are closer to Vava’u.

Right now it’s almost 1800 and Shigeo prepares to night a buckwheat meal because we got yesterday about 3 kg of buckwheat. Curious what he will create.

First we slept long. I slept 8 h non-stop! Almost a record for me.

After another muesli with board made yogurt and honey (me) marmalade (Shigeo) and a pot of tea, we are ready to go ashore.

But there is always a but, when we were about lowering the tender into the water Shigeo saw a heavy rain shower coming down the bay. Thus, we still stay on board and wait until the shower has passed.

Beside having breakfast, we also did laundry. Pretty heavy work with a washing machine on board. Now the laundry gets a final rain water rinse. Rain water can be expected on American Samoa being of potable quality.

On our to-do list for this morning we have:
1 Get information about:
– harbor master office location
– public transportation system
– barber shop
– supermarket
2 visit the harbor master for final registration and paying out fees
3 get SIM cards to download normal emails and to apps what needs to be done in the Internet
4 buy fresh vegetables and fruits
5 get our hair cut
6 buy first things in the supermarket – for the rest I need to analyze MaRe’s provisioning list

So let’s see when the rain shower has gone through; I hope it’s not a chain of shower clouds…

American Samoa does not require an Advanced Notice of Arrival, or what is normally needed for USA or close to the USA related countries like Puerto Rico, US Virgin Islands. There B1/B2 Visa needed and on board must be an internet connection and video cameras, etc.

Here arrival is like in the old days without internet and all its useless features.

We moved into the harbor and I called the harbor master on the VHF. When we got on contact, he was very helpful. We changed from CH 16 to 10 and we were both on standby for questions, and advice. He guided us to the pier for inbound clearance.

Waiting at this pier, all needed parties came by with their car, handed me the documents over to be filled in. Additionally they all needed a crew list. Actually the first office for agricultural matters told me I need 5 crew lists in total; this was helpful because I could prepare all at once.

The hole thing took about 2 h during which we even could eat a Japanese noodle soup. Once immigration returned out passport we were free to move to the anchorage to look for a spot and drop the hook.

We found a spot with 12 water depth. I let 60 m of chain out and tested the holding by pulling back with cruising RPM. It holds. For the night I have my anchor watch. I feel safe as always.

A friendly American sailor wanted to tell me by VHF that he hangs on 2 moorings and that one of them is somehow under MaRe. I could convince him that my anchor holds.

Then Dorothea of the German catamaran “Fredolin II” came over to say hello. They are 11 years sailing already. Now we know already where we can get SIM cards and fresh veggies etc. A few remaining questions we’ll ask tomorrow morning before going to the dinghy dock she told us where it is.

While I talked with Dorothea Shigeo got already in his bed and had a looong sleep. I also feel the tension is getting less after that long non-stop sail which can be called “An Odyssey”. We had all, from no wind over rain and sunshine, to 7 Bft wind with waves close to 4 m.

Last thing for today, is getting the outboard motor on the tender to be ready for tomorrow morning. Shigeo is fixing a vegetable curry with corned beef and rice. Then I think that sleeping is the most done activity after a shower on board of MaRe.