27.04.2013

Almost there

I can't believe it yet. Our long, long journey across half the Pacific will end in about 8hrs /52nm. It looks like we'll arrive at the Gambier Islands just with the sunrise. White sandy beaches, a green island with a hill to hike up, turquoise water and a colorful and lively underwater world with little, harmless (so everyone says) riff sharks are expecting us. And probably the French, about 52ft long Aluminum Yacht Alioth, which left Easter Island a day before us. Since Mangareva is the only port for immigration to French Polynesia we all have to pass by there. So in the next days we also expect the rest of the boats anchored at Easter Island with us, which are 4 French boats and first the Belgian Alubat (our litte sister boat), which supposedly left later the same day as we did, to arrive there.

I have learned to be grateful for the good wind and thus the fast travel we had and to put the gratefulness over the stress from the continuous rocking of the boat in the waves. That calmed me down a lot and lets me enjoy the trip. But I am well happy when it's over tomorrow - we all are. We can all pretty well handle the waves by now in moving around the boat, but it is absolutely no fun to cook under these conditions. The goods you're trying to cut always roll away, nothing ever stays in its place, anything higher than 7 cm (2 inches) tends to fall and cover kitchen with its content - including yourself. If I open a door to get something out of the cabinet a good part of the content wants to greet me and in the best case falls into my hands - or onto the floor. If I want to take spices out of my spice cabinet I can only quickly open, grab what I need and close the compartment. Hopefully just the required spice is in your hand afterwards…We can't eat at the table because yes, our sticky placemats work great and fix the plates to their place, but the food always finds its way to emerge from the plate, especially if you have a little bit a sauce on it. If not the food it's the cutlery falling around or….So, we hold the plates in the hand…If we had a calm day, like Marcus' birthday for example, of course we enjoy it and have nice meals at the table… That's a sailor's life out on the ocean.

We had a gorgeous day today again with one great rain shower. Just before the moonrise an hour ago the beautiful star sky showed itself from the best side as we're travelling with 5Bft wind / mostly 17-22knots and an average of over 7kn speed towards our desired destination. We're all looking forward to swimming and relaxing for the next two weeks.

This morning, our log showed 1400nm, now we're at 14064. Wasn't it just yesterday that it switched to 10000nm? Counting our trip from Turkey, longitude wise we've now travelled half around the world. Counting just the miles we're already more than half the great circle. That to me is quite an unbelievable achievement for a total of 10 months travelling time (9 months on this trip and 1 month from Turkey to Canarian Islands). I think that alone allows us to hang out a bit…

As soon as I have explored our new home for the next two weeks I will connect o the internet and share photos and information with you. So long. Michaela in her last night shift for a while…. Oh, by the way: my information says we're 10 hrs behind Germany and 1 hr behind LA time.

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