N 01° 49.014 E 173° 00.896 Navigating into and across an atoll is always a challenge. Relying on the Navionics charts with their daily updates of useless, unedited pissmarks left by sailors, is playing Russian Roulette. One can’t simply rely on them. Unfortunately, there is no Soggy Paws Compendium for the Kiribatis. However, they have…

On Monday we called immigration to see if the permits for the outer islands are ready and where told we can come and pick them up but should bring all boat documents along. (At the end we only needed the passports.) Immigration has it’s main office in Bairiki, the real capital city or I better…

N 01° 49.028, E 173° 00.902 Just a quick update to explain the change in location. This morning, very early, we left Tarawa atoll and sailed to the Abaiang Atoll where we dropped the anchor in front of the village with the police station, where we need to register tomorrow. More in the next catching…

At about 0900 we took the tender and went ashore.Tobi found in NoForeignLand information about possible dinghy docks. One of them is pretty good and another one is good for refueling. The people are very friendly and curious. The question about from where we are we had to answer very, very often. One elderly gentleman…

N 01° 22.125 E 172° 55.748 First, I had a very bad night. I got cramps in my legs despite having taken 2 magnesium pills. At around 0600 I got up and started working. The main task of the day was looking for tiny spot at the second reef’s eye at the leech. I observed…

In our approach to Tarawa atoll/island I slowed down MaRe down to not have to v wait so long before we could enter the entrance pass. At 0400 we were outside at the entrance pass and I decided to continue sailing very slowly N to kill time. We used only genoa and needed to furl…

Finally Tobi got what he wanted since we started our sail to Kiribati, a big yellow fin tuna! We don’t have a scale to weigh it, but we both think 40 – 50 kg. It was a fight! The tuna went to STB side and in front of the keel it changed to PRT side.…

N 00° 41.286 E 172° 51.100 Today I have to steer a bit a difficult course. At the beginning I need to go straight N. Since an hour or so I need to dodge the Maiana atoll, which is just some 15 NM ahead. I’ll pass it is west side. I’m using the wind vane…

At 0425, just in my watch, I crossed the equator for the 4th time. Nothing exciting anymore. It’s just like, “Ok. I made it another time. “ After crossing the equator I starting making dough for our next bread.

S 00° 32.718 E 172° 46.866 As forecasted, the wind increase into the 5 Bft range. MaRe in her pyjama, runs with almost 6 KN in average through the nightly sea. With a wind vane angle of 50 deg her COG is around 12 deg. In terms of progress to our key WPT she is…