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.<\/p>\n
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 it to 2 bars.<\/p>\n
The alternative would have been heaving- to. However, considering the wind and current drift, I decided to not heave-to to not have to tack several times on the way back to the entrance. The sailing north variant was more attractive.<\/p>\n
On the way back from N, we needed to sail upwind. So we hoisted the main with reef three to not be too fast. It worked out. For the last part l hand steered MaRe to sail her on 30 deg AWA very high into the wind to reach the leading line for the entrance pass without taunt l tacking one b more time.. Despite the by small AWA she was running fine the required speed of about 3 KN to be there in time for the passage.<\/p>\n
Interesting was the “skyline” of Tarawa. The big ships inside the atoll dominate the “skyline” completely. Without looking through binoculars the palm trees would not be recognized. The houses dissappear inside them. The vessel gave an apocalyptic impression, like vessels being exposed to an over ground nuclear explosion.<\/p>\n
Then the moment of sail down came. With all sails down we used the engines to go \u00ecnto the atoll.<\/p>\n
The leading line in the Navionics map was matching the way through a few but well visible cardinal sign.<\/p>\n
When we were just at the point to turn right, a Chinese fishing boat passed us from behind and forced us to stop the b engines. No understandIng of the situation they \u01f0ust forced us to let them turn first. Chinese fishing boats own the Pacific Islands’ waters!<\/p>\n
The anchor spot I considered first, was too close to a main channel inside the reef. So I decided to drop the hook in the vicinity of two other sailboats. A French and a Danish. Friendly greetings by waving the hands.<\/p>\n
The hook went down at a bit less than 8 m. I gave 50 m of chain and the hook holds perfectly fine. A looong and challenging sail came too it’s end.<\/p>\n
Inside the bay 1\/3 of the 19 vessels are Chinese. 4 of these vessels are very modern fishing vessels which can pull in huge nets at their special designed sterns. They dock to a freighter like ship and transfer their catch. A pattern I saw the first time further east in the pacific en route from Cook Islands, Northern Line Islands, to Samoa. Getting the Pacific Ocean waters empty with highest speed is the objective.<\/p>\n
As I was informed by email, I called the authorities on VHF CH16. We got a very warm welcome. They confirmed a few data from the documents I sent by email in advance and asked us to please wait until the boarding party comes. The boarding party has first to clear a Chinese fishing boat and then will come over to us.<\/p>\n
At about 1600 they came from the “friendly” fishing boat which pushed us aside in the entrance channel.<\/p>\n
The boarding party, about 5 men and 2 ladies, was very friendly. The procedure was straight forward and effective. As the skipper, I had to write an informal request for permission to go to 3 outer islands. Additionally I had to forward all documents again to one of the ladies.
\nWithin 15 min all was done.<\/p>\n
And now I’m waiting for the tuna sashimi and freshly cooked rice!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1554","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-16"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sosx.de\/cat-mare\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1554","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sosx.de\/cat-mare\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sosx.de\/cat-mare\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sosx.de\/cat-mare\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sosx.de\/cat-mare\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1554"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sosx.de\/cat-mare\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1554\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sosx.de\/cat-mare\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1554"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sosx.de\/cat-mare\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1554"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sosx.de\/cat-mare\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1554"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}