N 07° 06.206,
E 171° 22.374

Yesterday morning, I checked again the weather forecast and the wind was suddenly not good anymore. A bit strange so because the forecast was stable for almost a week. Decision to delay departure by 24 h.

The big advantage was that I gained a day for cleaning the hulls. This was necessary because despite 3 dives with another 4 + hours, there is still a bit left to clean for today.

Last night, after dinner, I was knocked down just wanted to go in my bed.

Today, I want to make the first dive at 0700, then breakfast, then outbound clearance, then 2nd dive, then final departure preparations, then departure…. to next islands 4-5 days away.

My youngest grandson will say “Opa is real stuiderball” (my grandpa is a real spring ball) jumping again to another island.

N 07° 06.195
E 171° 22.398

On Monday Tobi learned in the hospital that he had nothing at his lung but an infection in his ear. He got antibiotics but can’t go into the water. So, I have to clean the hulls by myself.

I need 4 dives in two days for both hulls. Each hull requires about 2 x 2h.
Yesterday, I cleaned both hulls inside.

In the break between the two dives of 2 h, I backed bread and after the second dive I plotted a first draft of a route from the Philippines into the Indian Ocean. More reading and fine tuning needs to be done.

Then I went really exhausted.

BTW Yesterday I used again a brush instead of plastic spatula. I feel the hulls are cleaner, thus we should sail faster.

Today I have to continue and it is departure day. It will be a bit tough.

N 07° 06.195,
E 171° 22.387

Yesterday, I informed S. Smith of Kosrae, Micronesia, on our planned departure from Majuro, Marshall Island, where we are right now.

Only about 2 h later I got a mail from the official in charge of issuing the permit to sail into Micronesia, a mail saying he will issue the permit in the next days. A few days before, he wrote me he will issue the permit on the 5th. I got back to him on his promise and that I would like to get it in the 5th. Only hours later the permit was in my email inbox.

It took 3 month and plenty of reminders to issue this document!

We got even more today. We got additional 200 l of freshwater into MaRe’s water tank. It is rainwater cleaned in a chain of mechanical filters, 2 charcoal filters, and a unit with UV light to kill any bacteria. It took us 4 runs with the tender and MaRe’s two 25 l water jerry cans.

Tobi went to the hospital to get a check for the cause of the coughing he gets every evening after dinner. No problem with the lung was identified. We still trying to find the route cause.

The wind continues behaving like the forecast which shows favorable winds from Wednesday on in all models i get: ECMWF, GFS, AISF, and ICON.

AISF is a new model on which a weather AI runs over the GFS model. I’m curious now how good the model is in practical life.

All models show the same wind for the next days so the wind should be a good boy and behave like the forecast says.

N 07° 06.196
E 171° 22.405

I feel I should explain this term I introduced a while ago when I wrote about the garbage in the streets of Tarawa.

“Convenience” is a driver in our daily life. “Convenience store” or “convenience food” etc. It means don’t walk far, just shop in the convenience store next corner. Don’t bother cooking a fresh meal just buy convenience food in a convenience store and heat it up on the microwave oven.

Convenience means simply do less by yourself and let others do it for you.

That’s how I came up with the word “convenience litter”. Just throw away the things you don’t need anymore and let other clean up for you. Don’t even bother to think about who will clean up the garbage who threw and throw away. “Convenience thinking”, switch off your brain and let others, which includes Al, think for you.

N 07° 06.200
E 171° 22.407

Yesterday refueling 140 l diesel in MaRe’s tank and 20 l in a jerry can on the center bow comparent. The fuel station was only about 100-200 m from the dinghy dock. Pretty lucky. We only needed to runs forth and back.

We are additionally lucky, because we can get water just 50 m from the dinghy dock south of MaRe. 1 gallon for 1 USD, which is cheaper than the other source for USD 1.50 / gallon. We can get it from the producer, who makes it by reverse osmosis. On Monday we start refilling the water tank.

As for water, we found ways to collect rain water and do all possible with rain water. A pretty good way to save freshwater. The problem is only rain. It doesn’t rain that often.

Yesterday, we walked about a kilometer down the street from the fuel station until the K&K supermarket, which sells not only food but also kitchen appliances. Food means also a lot of ready made food, which only needs to be heated up. Convenience for the price of eating a lot of chemicals needed to produce and preserve such food. But this food could be less draining the wallet than fresh food. Vegetables and fruits are pretty expansive. I assume that these are coming by plane from the US. Meat on the other side is comparably cheap possibly transported by ships. Tobi bought the most needed food.

While walking down the street, I saw again all this convenience litter of mainly drink bottles made of plastic, but it’s not limited to that. Houses don’t use much solar panels but get electricity from a central supplier using diesel generators. This is the same as in French Polynesia but there is no convenience litter or at least very much less in French Polynesia.

For lunch we had street food. Grilled pieces of meat and rice. There were also 2 pieces of another, much starch including vegetable sprinkled with coconut flakes. Taro maybe? And, 2 in thin plastic foils filled big table spoon volumes yellow and sweet paste. As stable food a big portion of rice. All in a disposable container with a plastic fork. Although the container marked as made of a starch and not plastic it’s a disposable item for convenience. So, quite some garbage was left over for burning.

There were about 5 people working at the stand grilling the meat, filling the disposable containers with food and selling them. 1 box is USD 5.-. How many do they sell a day? 50? 100? It gives them a small income for a life in an expansive place.

Once the fuel was in the tank, we took a break and had coffee and cinnamon rolls, which I could get at the fuel station. Delicious.

Weather forecasts indicate wind for Thursday, so outbound clearance on Thursday and then lifting the hook.

Today, Sunday, small boat jobs and emails… I love to write emails…

N 07° 06.200
E 171° 22.407

I didn’t believe myself that I wrote 48 emails on a single day.

A big chunk were emails to push again for the permit to sail into Kosrae, Micronesia. There is – fortunately – S. Smith who always reacts to my mails but he is – unfortunately – not the person who has to issue the permit. But again I pushed the group of persons who are involved. And I got an email with a forwarded “not deliverable” email to me. The reason was a mispelling of “mare” in the email address. Instead of using the reply button it was misspelled and never cross-checked when the “not deliverable” message arrived. After all the mails on this matter, I got, beside apologies, a mail that the person in charge will issue the permit once he had finished another work. This should work now, and if not, I have his name and valid email address.

Internet made sailing into a country pretty cumbersome and no one in the authoraties sees the increase of work on their side…

Another big chunk were related with weather forecasts.

I’m using since this year the forecasts from saildocs. The following short history I copied from an information mail of saildocs.

“Saildocs was started in 1999 to provide internet weather data to Sailmail members. It was created and is supported by Jim Corenman, who co-founded Sailmail with Stan Honey and wrote the Airmail software. The grib project started in 2002 as a “science project” and has recently moved to a new server with high-bandwidth connections to NOAA’s servers. Saildocs continues to be available without charge thanks to the support from Sailmail (www.sailmail.com).”

“Grib” is short for “gridded binary”, a data format originally used for computer forecast-model data but also used for forecaster-generated dat. (Taken from a saildocs document. )

From saildocs there are the forecasts of the global GFS, ECMWF, and ICON models available. I get the forecasts of these three models for the sea area I specify with coordinates of the corner points. I compare the forecast of these three models. The better they match, the higher is the chance the wind shows up as forecasted.

I looked yesterday for the reason that me extension of my subscription for the ECMWF model doesn’t work anymore. It seems, I used one wrong parameter, which is not checked when requesting a subscription. Thus, I got a confirmation that my request is valid, but the forecast in grib format did never come. Now it seems it works again.

I also looked for bulletins with information about storm warnings, troughs, ridges and fronts in the area just north the equator. I have links to bulletins on the homepages of NOAA (US) and JMA (Japan) but they cover only areas further north, while I’m looking for Micronesia, and Mariana Island. After searching through the long saildocs list on available items I found what I looked for. I got files send as single requested ones and wait now to see if I can get them in the subscription mode as well.

On top of all these mails I had to write a few other emails and messages in Signal and Threema.

At the end, I was exhausted.

N 07° 06.200
E 171° 22.407

The ITCZ with its huge calm areas is moving SW and hits the area between Majuro and Kosrae, Micronesia. So we are trapped in Majuro.

We will start refueling diesel and replenish freshwater. Freshwater here is pretty expansive. About USD 1.50 per gallon (3.87 l).

It’s 1. Jan.2026, the year I will reach Japan. The first destination of my looong sail from Europe to Japan and back, bridging my European heritage with my wife’s Japanese culture.

The last days of the of 2025, we move from Anemawot islet to Eniko islet. Main purpose was to dive there. The wind was great and we just sailed the 2 NM and found another good mooring ball.

On our way along the almost 10 islets, it was to be seen that there are houses. Some might be used always, some are weekend houses. The way they are built, they belong to people with money. Solidly built houses, no palm thatched huts.

The dive was interesting but not the way I expected. Between the neighbor islet, I thought, there is bit a deeper part with corals and holes in dead corals for lobsters. But it was very shallow. Partiality 1 m and less.

In the shallower area a black tip shark came out of the deep blue of the lagoon. It was curious and made an about 3/4 circle around me, which I didn’t like at all. But then he passed, with safe distance between Tobi and me to disappeared in the blue of the distance.

The reef dropped towards the inner side of the atoll pretty steeply. However, it was a boring sandy drop off of 45-60 deg.

On another area of the shallower part, there are plenty of corals, living ones and bigger dead ones brought in from the outer edge by severe storms, thundering on the outer reef. So we looked under them for lobsters and octopuses. No lobsters at all. Only a very small octopus. But, a very big “fugu”, as a blow fish is called in Japanese. It was the biggest I ever saw. It was hiding under a rock looking at me with its big round eyes but without fear. We left it there. To dangerous to prepare and eat.

After an hour we slowly swam back towards MaRe but closer to the islet’s shore line. There we found plenty of big corals. “A coral garden”, was what popped up in my mind. It just was beautiful. On one particular huge coral, there were hundreds of small, very colorful coral fish, and when I dived down to look under it at the bottom for a lobster or octopus, there was another school of small yellow-golden fish. I enjoy seeing them and watching them coming off the protection of the coral and shooting in again when I came a little bit closer. Just a short but nice time around a single huge coral.

Then we arrived at MaRe, a bit exhausted.

The next day, the 31st, Tobi wanted to go back to the big corals for fish, lobsters, or octopuses. But, the wind from SE picked up a lot, building waves of around a meter height. So, no diving.

After Tobi’s planned diving we intended to go back to the mooring area where we first hanged on when we arrived in the Majuro atoll. We wanted to join the New Year’s Eve party of the local yacht club. With some of it’s members we had dinner on Christmas Eve.

The wind picked up to 25 KN exactly from SE, where we needed to go. Inside the lagoon I didn’t want to tack upwind because I don’t trust the depth indicated in the Navionics sea chart. We waited for hours for the wind either going down or turning N of E. It went down a bit and turned shortly N of E. But not really stable. The 10-min-waiting rule never was applicable.

In the middle of the afternoon I decided to try go to the planned place SE from our current position.

It was unbelievable, shortly after we took off, the wind turned to ENE. With a very tightly trimmed genoa we sailed almost half of the distance.

Once in while one deserves to be lucky.

For the second half the required course and the wind didn’t match that well anymore, so I had to use the engines to reach the mooring field.

There we were lucky again and a got a good positioned mooring ball, with a line withstanding my pulling test. So, MaRe was safely moored again.

Tobi made a very special dinner. Without a raclette grill he made a excellent kind of raclette dish.

Thereafter, I called a very good friend with whom I did sports when I was pretty young, lost contact, met him again in Port-St-Louis-du-Rhone, and then we kept in touch, sailed some times together on MaRe, where he even coached me on maneuvering a catamaran in a narrow marina.

I decided to stay on board.

Tobi got picked up by Rob for the party.