It’s 1. Jan.2026, the year I will reach Japan. The first destination of my looong sail from Europe to Japan and back, bridging my European heritage with my wife’s Japanese culture.<\/p>\n
The last days of the of 2025, we move from Anemawot islet to Eniko islet. Main purpose was to dive there. The wind was great and we just sailed the 2 NM and found another good mooring ball.<\/p>\n
On our way along the almost 10 islets, it was to be seen that there are houses. Some might be used always, some are weekend houses. The way they are built, they belong to people with money. Solidly built houses, no palm thatched huts.<\/p>\n
The dive was interesting but not the way I expected. Between the neighbor islet, I thought, there is bit a deeper part with corals and holes in dead corals for lobsters. But it was very shallow. Partiality 1 m and less.<\/p>\n
In the shallower area a black tip shark came out of the deep blue of the lagoon. It was curious and made an about 3\/4 circle around me, which I didn’t like at all. But then he passed, with safe distance between Tobi and me to disappeared in the blue of the distance.<\/p>\n
The reef dropped towards the inner side of the atoll pretty steeply. However, it was a boring sandy drop off of 45-60 deg.<\/p>\n
On another area of the shallower part, there are plenty of corals, living ones and bigger dead ones brought in from the outer edge by severe storms, thundering on the outer reef. So we looked under them for lobsters and octopuses. No lobsters at all. Only a very small octopus. But, a very big “fugu”, as a blow fish is called in Japanese. It was the biggest I ever saw. It was hiding under a rock looking at me with its big round eyes but without fear. We left it there. To dangerous to prepare and eat.<\/p>\n
After an hour we slowly swam back towards MaRe but closer to the islet’s shore line. There we found plenty of big corals. “A coral garden”, was what popped up in my mind. It just was beautiful. On one particular huge coral, there were hundreds of small, very colorful coral fish, and when I dived down to look under it at the bottom for a lobster or octopus, there was another school of small yellow-golden fish. I enjoy seeing them and watching them coming off the protection of the coral and shooting in again when I came a little bit closer. Just a short but nice time around a single huge coral.<\/p>\n
Then we arrived at MaRe, a bit exhausted.<\/p>\n
The next day, the 31st, Tobi wanted to go back to the big corals for fish, lobsters, or octopuses. But, the wind from SE picked up a lot, building waves of around a meter height. So, no diving.<\/p>\n
After Tobi’s planned diving we intended to go back to the mooring area where we first hanged on when we arrived in the Majuro atoll. We wanted to join the New Year’s Eve party of the local yacht club. With some of it’s members we had dinner on Christmas Eve.<\/p>\n
The wind picked up to 25 KN exactly from SE, where we needed to go. Inside the lagoon I didn’t want to tack upwind because I don’t trust the depth indicated in the Navionics sea chart. We waited for hours for the wind either going down or turning N of E. It went down a bit and turned shortly N of E. But not really stable. The 10-min-waiting rule never was applicable.<\/p>\n
In the middle of the afternoon I decided to try go to the planned place SE from our current position.<\/p>\n
It was unbelievable, shortly after we took off, the wind turned to ENE. With a very tightly trimmed genoa we sailed almost half of the distance.<\/p>\n
Once in while one deserves to be lucky.<\/p>\n
For the second half the required course and the wind didn’t match that well anymore, so I had to use the engines to reach the mooring field.<\/p>\n
There we were lucky again and a got a good positioned mooring ball, with a line withstanding my pulling test. So, MaRe was safely moored again.<\/p>\n
Tobi made a very special dinner. Without a raclette grill he made a excellent kind of raclette dish.<\/p>\n
Thereafter, I called a very good friend with whom I did sports when I was pretty young, lost contact, met him again in Port-St-Louis-du-Rhone, and then we kept in touch, sailed some times together on MaRe, where he even coached me on maneuvering a catamaran in a narrow marina.<\/p>\n
I decided to stay on board.<\/p>\n
Tobi got picked up by Rob for the party.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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