S 17° 59.798, W 176° 47.901 Almost 0700. The wind is pretty week and fluctuates between 70 – 100 deg. It’s pretty much as forecasted. Soon we have daylight and then I’ll hoist the Big Blue again. This will give us a bit more speed. According to the forecast we will reach the disturbance zone…

Today it happened at MaRe. MaRe ran with 6 – 8 KN through the water. The Big Blue pulled her at an AWA of 78 deg STB since hours. From early morning until about 1400. Then suddenly a strange nose came from the gennaker. At about 1/3 from top the fabric was torn horizontally. The…

S 18° 14.099, W 175° 47.312 Fortunately! According to the forecast the wind should come by now from 90 deg with 10 KN meaning 7.5 – 12.5 KN. However it blows still from about 125 deg with 10 – 15 KN. So we are making good speed flying the Big Blue. The sea is smooth;…

S 18° 37.123, W 174° 12.281 The above position is the position where I start writing a narration. Yes, we are out of Vava’u and on direct course to Fiji, which is at 284 deg ahead of us. The wind is not the strongest. We started early in the afternoon with 10 KN TWS sometimes…

S 18° 39.274, W 173° 58.927 The wind, which was forecasted for today, turned out to be delayed until tomorrow. Instead of drifting outside due to very weak winds in higher waves, I decided to delay the departure by 24 h, hoping we get then the winds, which are forecasted for tomorrow. Today we went…

S 18° 39.164, W 173° 58.977 When we sailed from NZ to Vava’u there was a bottle of liquid detergent standing behind the seat at the navigation desk. A big wave, often called bump, lifted Joe from the seat and placed her on the detergent bottle. The result was a big crack in the bottle…

S 18° 39.357, W 173° 59.003 However it started with a mental shock. Brazil gets 50 % tariffs because the former right wing president will be brought to court. Thus, take this as warning and don’t criticize DJ Dump, the USA, Israel, any right wing party, etc. or have 50 % tariffs slapped on your…

S 18° 39.357, W 173° 59.003 During the last days I spent quite some work on Joe’s PC issues, but we got it stable now and she considers to buy a new one Fiji. We got from a local foreigner (he lives since many years in Vava’u), a hint about a company in Fiji. As…

I woke up early, replied to a bunch of Signal messages, which came in during the night and will now write about the last days. One day I had to do IT work because the Joe’s adapter to charge her old Windows PC gave up. Now she is using my old Linux machine, which I…

The first work I took on was the genset. We need water, do laundry, and an efficient way of charging the batteries when solar and wind is not enough. After removing the enclosures on the left side, I found quickly the problem. The cables of the brushes of the generator chaffed at the fan of…