…a huge trough will reach us from behind. No way to escape because it .

We will watch it’s approach closely and when it is closer, we get the gennaker down and use only the is genoa.

Since this morning we are flying Big Blue and make good speed with 8 – 10 KN of wind from 90 -120 deg AWA. In average the SOG was 4.8 KN.

“Was” because we changed sails in the meantime. Flying now only the genoa being opened it with the barber hauler to ketch as much wind as possible.

The dark grey “beast” is now at or PRT side. We can smell already the cooler air but it’s not yet enough for faster sailing.

We are both sitting in the cockpit waiting for the wind. Shigeo wears his baseball cap – or I should better say his “sailing cap”. Once he wears this, he is ready for sailing actions.

The first rain drops hit us. The sea is sprinkled with rain drops. Each one makes another drop of water jumping out of the sea’s surface. An endless game of physics.

However, no wind! This is unfair! I expected and wish for 15 – 20 KN of wind. I’m sure the monkey with the tin tool makes the fat nimbus cloud stay just in distance to make us wet but we don’t get wind.

We have currently 12 KN of wind and behind us already a blue sky with cumulus clouds at the horizon. Big action for nothing; but I always prefer to stay on the safe side with smaller sails.

However, as he first dark gray “beast” is gone, we see there’s another one in 0730 direction. Great rain in the distance. Will it be empty when reaching us? It pisses also with no wind increase. However, the trough is very broad and there are more on the horizon coming to us…

This is what I wrote just before to a friend in an email.

The watch duty is boring because Mr Wind-ow doesn’t work. He might be hanging around with his favorite key customers instead of shoveling wind to small sailors. I’ll send Mr Lin-ux to peck him heavily.

TWS is 7 – 8 KN in the moment. Just now I saw a value below 7 KN. The wind is not even able to keep enough pressure in the main sail to keep the boom stable on the leeward side and I have to use the rubber damped preventer to reduce the movements of the boom. When MaRe is on top of a swell wave, the boom goes a bit leewards to just swing back with a pretty loud sound; a sound I don’t want hear because it puts a lot of strain onto the material.

What pitty this lousy wind is after quite nice sailing for days. If no wind comes up when it’s getting 0700, I hoist the Big Blue. Although the new gennaker, the Big Blue, is very easily to be handled, I don’t want to use a 123 m2 sail at night.

Let’s see what the next hours will bring.

For the sake of a better word, I call the church we visited on Sunday in Penrhyn, the “Ziona Church”. This because “Ziona” was written outside above the entrance and on each support column inside and outside the church.

As the voices singing at the school fund raising event were so wonderful, we decided to stay one day longer to visit the service on Sunday to get another chance to listen to them.

All the people we talked to about visiting the church on Sunday said we should be there by 0800 – 0900 while the service starts at 1000. They also warned us to not be late because then everybody will look at us including the priest who is preaching from above the entrance door.

So we were there at around 0900 and nobody else was to be seen around. The only one church door and the windows were wide open.

Then a first visitor and an official person came. I use the term “official person” (OP) because I don’t know what there real title and function is. I just describe what I saw. All OPs and the priest were wearing suits and neckties. Shoes varied between beach sandals and basketball sneakers. Other men, incl us, wore long pants and shirt with a collar; the requirements for male visitors. The ladies all wore hats and a dress; the requirements for female visitors.

At 0930 we were welcome by an OP with a handshake and asked to sit in the last row.

We sat down there and I just looked and observed.

Minutes later, 3 ladies and 2 men started singing a hymn.
At 0950 there were 17 ladies, 2 men, and 3 OPs in the church.

I got the impression that places are assigned to certain persons without name plates on the benches. The community is small, thus all is remembered fast.

The singing I heard so far was not what I expected having listened to a hym on Wednesday evening. Maybe some leading voices were still missing.

At around 1000 a procession of mainly kids came from the mission to the church. There were adult caretakers among the children and they moved into the church bench with the children. To me it appeared that a certain number of children wer assigned to one caretaker.

At the very left and very right side, between walls and church benches, there ate corridors, about 1.5 m wide. In these corridors , at a distance of about 5 min to each other, there were chairs for OPs placed. OPs first greeted the people close to their respective chair, with handshake and then sit there. We also were greeted again by handshakes of OPs close to us.

I made text notes on my mobile phone – not taking pictures – and Shigeo made notes on his paper notebook. I was asked, by one OP close to us, to stop making notes on my mobile phone; Shigeo could continue on paper. I stopped.

The church was filled to about 1/3 and counting gave about 60 people. Considering the village has 180 people, 1/3 of them visited the Ziona Church’s Sunday morning service. As there are 2 more religion communities in the village (7th Day Adventists and Roman Catholics) these 2 split the other 2/3 of the village’s population.

There was a lot of singing, interspersed with reading of texts by OPs and the priest. Prayers were most likely included as well but I didn’t get this due to the Polynesian language used.

At a certain moment, the priest walked up the stairs to the pulpit just above the door. He also read texts from a book, but as his main activity I recognized the sermon he gave.

There was an activity, which I don’t understand without talking to someone who can explain it to me. An OP, sitting immediately beside the door, closed the door during the service several times and opened it again after a felt minute.

The singing, for which we mainly came, was loud. Women and men sang with the full power of their bodies. In terms of well balanced sounds, the Wednesday’s evening singing appeared to me as better. However, this is my personal opinion and I don’t want to make a general judgement.

At the end, of the service we met outside a few men and had little chats. On the way back to our boats, Olaf needed to pick up a yellow fin tuna for him and Manfred at Junior Andrew’s house.

For me this offered a chance to talk with his wife and the charming, outspoken daughter. Shigeo mentioned once that the girl is like her mother; a wonderful description. This was the last time we could talk with them.
Like others, they stay in our memories and hearts.

Beside strange dreams and the creation of magic yogurt, we are also sailing. In the meantime waves and swell are down since a few days. The wind blows according to forecast (ECMWF and SPIRE) from mainly E but also from 120 deg (a bit more S than ESE) to 70 deg TWD. The AWA is around 90 deg STB.

Sails are unchanged except for some trimming since days. TWS ranges from 10 – 20 KN, thus no need to change sails. Trade wind sailing!

When sitting in the cockpit, the wind coming from PRT is just nice. It’s a bit too strong to have our meals on the cockpit table. Food gets cold too quickly. Beside this the cockpit is a comfortable place.

For writing my narrations I’m sitting mainly in the cockpit where my eyes and thoughts can fly over the huge “disc” called “Pacific Ocean”. Sometimes I wonder what old days’ sailor thought about the disc where the distance to the edges of the disc never changes.

After having eaten fish, fish, and fish, trolling started again yesterday. Unsuccessfully! Most likely we are, with around 5 KN, too fast. We will continue today towards the late afternoon.

Since yesterday we are using the new “wish lure”. It’s a magic lure! (There is a lot of magic on board these days.) The one who puts this lure into the water only must strongly think a the preferred fish to be caught and the preferred fish swims from up to 100 NM far areas and puts itself on the hook.

The “wish lure” is board made. An empty tube of high tech “Charbon’ toothpaste made by “Soft” is cut open at it’s end and then cut in about 4 mm stripes parallel to it’s side lines. They hide the delicious hook, hungry fish loves to eat. And then we love to eat the fish. (It’s always better to be on the high side of the food chain.) Keep fingers crossed to see that the magic “wish lure” works according to the design specs; it’s a prototype.

Today we will have the first pizza on board for dinner. Dough is made; just needs to rest. As toppings we have whole tomatoes with Mediterranean herbs, small canned sausages cut in slices, olives, and grated Emmentaler cheese as the bag is open already.

It has nothing to do with the pizza, but we will also make couscous today. Shigeo prepares already the garlic. We have bread freshly baked yesterday.

The first you know already; my dreaming about my wake up alarm…
(See previous narration).

The other could be called “magic yogurt” and we wonder if it has the effect of “magic mushrooms”.

Yesterday Shigeo made yogurt. He took the cleaned glasses, filled them about 1/3 with boiling water, shook glasses a bit to kill any bacteria inside, filled in the powdered milk as I use it for making yogurt, stirred well, filled the glasses with cold water to the defined level. Stirred until the temperature was down to 43 degC. He closed the glasses and put them in the warm water heated “yogurt incubator”.

And now comes the 1 Million Dollar question. What was special with Shigeo’s yogurt making?

The result, after 10 h in the incubator, is something which looks like yogurt, tastes like a very mild yogurt.

Here is the answer to the 1 Million Dollar question: He forgot to fill in the yogurt culture from last time.

Thus, he created a something, which I call a “Shigeo®”, tasting like a mild yogurt.

Will this magic yogurt have the same effect as a magic mushroom?

Whoever has a reasonable explanation on this magic yogurt, please send it to skipper-cat-mare@myiridium.net. The first answer gets an invitation for a free 8 – 10 sail from Tonga to NZ including a daily portion of magic yogurt.

Do I sail too long already?

Is my brain seriously influenced by being at sea for such long time?

There were two events last night which made me thinking above questions.

First – just before my first watch duty, I woke up 10 min earlier because I dreamed that my alarm rang. When I was up, I recognized that I dreamed the alarm and thus got up.

Second – I woke up for my second watch duty being terribly tired. However, I got up because it’s my watch duty. I had my normal take over conversation with Shigeo and registered all boat related information. I made my log book entry at 0415.

Quite a while later, after after talking with my OBM over the sat-phone, and while writing an email, my mobile phone played the “get up melody” and wondered why this melody is played again. When I looked at the phone I saw “0355” and “watch duty”. I was baffled.

Why is my phone ringing the alarm of an hour earlier again?

Then slowly a thought crept into my mind. I only dreamed the first alarm exactly 1 h before the alarm was supposed to wake me up. I made my log book entry at 0415 because the pointer of my wrist watch showed a quarter past an hour.

When now, at real 0700 Shigeo told me that at he asked me to go back to the sofa and sleep one hour more. I did get the boat information but I didn’t get the information that I’m one hour to early.

I leave the answers to above questions open…

The narration about giving up to enter Kiritimati was my way to deal with my frustration of having to give up. I sailed about 700 NM to visit Kiritimati and was forced to give up just 30 NM front of the “entrance door”.

Today, towards the end of my second watch, I’m sitting in the cockpit looking over the sea with its still 2 m waves and a swell difficult to recognize. However watching for a while, the swell can recognized as of about 100 m wavelength and hight of 2 – 3 m. TWS is still between some 13 – 20 KN.

Just now I saw again one of my favorite waves; one with a “glassy” top. They appear, when waves from 2 sufficiently different directions meet each other and form a pyramid shaped wave. Its top then looks “glassy” because it becomes translucent. It’s color is based on darker green and becomes brighter with increasing translucenticy. It is created in a fraction of a second and disappears for every on another fraction of a second.

I’m also enjoying the sunlight warming me up. Why is warming up needed? We just crossed the equator again some 25 NM back. I was surprised myself when I sat inside, close to the open door and felt I need my comfortable cotton sweater I got once in one of my frequent Lufthansa flights between Japan and Europe. The logged lowest temperature last night was 25 degC. I feel I’m changing, because I need sweater at 25 degC. Am I getting closer to my wife in respect to comfortable temperatures? For her everything below 30 degC is cold!

In between writing these paragraphs I am always looking at the waves and enjoy MaRe’s dancing with the waves. When a wave comes from behind with an angle towards MaRe’s direction, she swings her bums around towards the waves to let the waves going through beneath her bums.

An endless game and I’ll watch it a bit more while uploading this narration and write an email about an idea I got while watching these inspiring waves.

I had to give up one of my most interesting thought island: Kiritimati.

Why?

During the last day on our way to Kiritimati, we had not much wind and drifted with the current in the worst position possible. The forecast showed much better wind conditions for the last days. But, a forecast is a look into the future without any guarantee.
We saw no reasonable chance to go to the entrance of the pass. We would ha had a fight for more than 24 h, most likely even more than 48 h. This against 15 – 20+ KN of wind blowing directly from where we needed to go and in waves being up to 3 m high. Additionally there is a current of 2 – 4 KN almost in the same direction the wind blows into.

We tried with only the engines on the shortest route and we made only 0.5 – 1.5 KN VMG (Velocity Made Good, the velocity MaRe made good over ground towards our destination WPT.

We also tried to use sail and engines. This brought us a bit more. About 1 – 2 KN VMG. Still we had to make 30 NM to the entrance of the pass, which would have taken us roughly 15 – 20 h. But if you can’t go through the pass due to such wind conditions it does not make sense to go to the entrance in the first instance. A boat cannot just be parked like a car in front of something.

Heaving to was, in this case, not an option. The current would have pushed us at 2 KN of current (minimum current value) 48 NM roughly towards NW per 24 h. On top of the current drift, there is MaRe’s drift speed when heaving to. This is about 1.5 KN. In 24 h this would have been plus 36 NM. In total we would have been moved away from our destination at minimum (48 + 36) NM/24h = 84 NM/24h in minimum. (As the angle between the current and wind was not too big, a non vertical addition is possible.)

Additionally, I could not be sure if the pass is free of bommies and if we find a sufficiently big sandy spot to trop the anchor. Even if we would have made it to the entrance, wind and sky conditions were not suitable to go into such a water where visible navigation by looking at the sea bottom is mandatory.

The weather forecast for the next 4 days showed no substantial improvements; I use only ECMWF and SPIRE weather models as they are the best. Looking further into the future is equivalent to reading the crystal ball.

At a certain point, Shigeo made a comment about going directly to Samoa. Also I have a never give up attitude, I didn’t see any chance anymore. It was then, that I remembered Shigeo’s words and asked him if he is serious about it. He was and the decision was made to sail directly from outside of Kirimati to American Samoa, which was our next destination after Kiritimati.

Sometimes it’s better to give up something when it can’t be achieved at reasonable effort. Here it was an effort and chance driven decision.

Mr Lin-ux came back to me and reported by that Mr Wind-ow is completely drunk. Stoned so to say. Thus there will be no more wind today. Simply useless.Lesson learned: “Don’t rely on Mr Wind-ow!”

The monkey with the tin tool is full with drugs and nothing can convince him to let more wind flow. Why do people need drugs? Makes them useless!

NO WIND!!!

The ECMWF forecast model indicates more wind starting at 1800 but going up to 20 KN straight from E. This requires a few tacks.

With this wind I’m try to go closer to the entrance of the pass and then make a heave-to. The easterly wind will blow us with about 1 – 1.5 KN to W. Currently I have hope that the island blanks the SE current, which flows with 2 – 3 KN. Then we would drift only with 1 – 1.5 KN. This would be a reasonable distance to tack back to the entrance of the pass.

Clouds are also a problem. I need direct sunshine from behind to go through the pass and search an anchor spot

Let’s see what comes up.

As for sailing and arriving in time at the entry of the pass into Kiritimati, I had a serious talk with MaRe. Here are the minutes of discussion.

I asked her why she sails so slowly and doesn’t arrive in time at the WPT Kiritimati SW to make it through the pass into the lagoon on the 6th in the early afternoon hours when we have a good view to the seabed to see the bommies.

She explained that she was wondering why the wind is so little and that she tried to see from the top of her mast Mr Wind-ow to ask him for wind. However, he was not to be seen at all. When she then looked for Mr Lin-ux, to help her searching for Mr Wind-ow and peck his lazy bum for more wind, she suddenly recognized rather far E of us the money with the tin tool is steeling the wind. It just blocks the wind that nothing comes through to her. Of always the same nasty guy!

At about 0700 I decided to do some cloud riding to sail a bit faster. However, clouds are locally limited, thus we want get wind for the time we need it. It was a great ride, but far too short.

At noon we are still some 40 NM away from the SW WPTi place close to Kiritimati. With several to many AWA adjustments I tried to get somehow faster to the SW WPT. Still we have only an SOG of 1.5 – 3.5 KN.

“Please Mr Lin-ux can to see, if there is some wind, wind for me,
Not only peck the bum of the Wind-ow guy
But also the one of the other one”

I can this song to me Mr Lin-ux (melody: Mr Postman, The Beatles)

Now I need to see what Mr Lin-ux can do for me!