Cuban coast is very close by. In about an hour we will turn into the bay of Puerto de Vita where also the marina Gaviota is located. We established a very good contact with the marina staff. Responsive. Friendly. Informative. We just watched a fishing boat not far away from us. Two men are sitting…

Early in the morning, just before 0700, we set the gennaker because the wind was only 3 – 4 Bft. It turned out that this was the wind all day long. The gennaker well trimmed we made almost 5 kn in average. With almost no swell and the wind waves around 50 cm, heading NE,…

After motoring for 27 h the wind improved enough for sailing. We are not yet moving fast through the water but the sound of the water streaming along MaRe’s hulls and the sound of the wake at her sterns is just great. It’s silence broken by this gentle and peaceful sounds. Please keep fingers crossed…

Last night was a workless one. The only thing to do was checking the radar screen every 15 min to see ships before we hit them or they hit us. Additionally, the most difficult task was not to fall asleep. I wrote a bunch of messages and emails, which will be sent once I have…

Yesterday, late afternoon we started the Genset to make water. 2 h resulted in 360 l of fresh water of excellent quality. The same as in the bottled water sold here. Here it’s called “purified water”and on the bottle is stated that it’s made by “reverse osmosis”. This is the same way our water maker…

Just before sunset I checked again the potential to change to a butterfly configuration and finally it was good enough. We put the main down, set the genoa on PRT and the jib at STB. Carefully adjusting the AWA for the wind vane mode, to 163 deg S, we saw that we can reach out…

Last night we experienced this again. Until about 2200 sailing was just fun with the butterfly configuration. The track was about 10 deg north of the planned route. No problem because we will get a situation where we can correct the deviation. Then the wind got weak and changed direction up N. We had no…

After getting help from the friendly president of the marina in Puerto Real with getting a taxi, we could reach a supermarket at the outskirts of Puerto Real and could buy all the food we wanted for our sail to Cuba. What we see here again, is that the local supermarkets, of which we went…

Yesterday, at 1400 hrs (UTC -4) we dropped the hook in Puerto Real. The anchor ground is sand; depth around 3 m. We arrived here in 7 h from Bahia de Guanica. There we spent a day exploring what is around us. First we went by dinghi to the tiny Island Gilligan. It’s basically was…

The anchorage where we dropped the hook for last night was an interesting place. Completely surrounded by mangrove covered islands and cays. The wind was pretty weak and the dense mangrove trees are a good wind protection, so we had only small ripples on the sea surface. Well protect from the island and cays, no…