Since yesterday the crew to sail to the Gambier Islands is fixed. We are sailing at MaRe with Günther, our sailing cook from the Atlantic crossing, Doris, his partner, and Mia who joined yesterday. To use Guenther’s motto for the Atlantic crossing ” Always say yes to new adventures”; all of us said yes to…

As this is not a public site – the link is only given to people I know – I will, from now on write the first names in full length. Should someone would prefer to have the first name only abbreviated, please sent a message to skipper-cat-mare@myiridium.net

When another skipper says the docking manoeuver was excellent, it was an excellent one with a good 5 Bft wind from abeam. Ral did a great job! SV Katinka it’s perfectly docked for the strong north-easterly winds blowing here. Final preparations for the long sail to French Polynesia via Ecuador start now also on SV…

Once we changed course to roughly SW the wind comes nicely from beam reaching to broad reaching directions. Katinka runs currently with 5 6 KN.

Yes, we are sailing but the wind is weak and Boris Hermann’s race yacht is s bit faster than Katinka. Just needed to change course because of a container ship which wanted to cross our course.

It’s 0230. At 0300 we will get up and try to sail – not motoring – to Vista Mar Marina. Looking at the PredictWind forecast we will not have much wind. How good is the forecast in the various weather models?

It’s past noon and we are still in La Playitas at anchor because there is no wind to sail. It’s a bit hot but still not too hot. 2 friends will disembarks in next hour. We, the remaining 3 on SV Katinka will sail tomorrow – wind is forecasted – leave very early and sail…

At 1950 we dropped the hook at La Playitas. It was a long day! We got you up at 0500, thus had a 15 h day. So we have now the experience of going through the Panama Canal in a 1 day trip and in a 2 day trip. The 2 day trip is really…

About 0500 the advisor was on board and we lifted the hook and moves towards Gatun lock. When the advisor came on board, we had winds of 5 – 6 Bft and waves of about 0.5 m. Under these conditions the pilot boat had to come so close that the advisor could step over to…

Today there is the focus on sailing, or in other words, sailing required my focus. During the last hours of my watch, the wind went down and I needed to get the main from reef 2, the night gown, to reef 1. When Tjasa came out we changed to reef 1 and gained speed. As…