Berlin Express

If you only watch one thing from this site, it has to be this one. My recap of the first 6 months in the pacific. Rather big file, but worth it. Trust me!

sailing-the-pacific-2.wmv (16.0 MB)

2124 nautial miles in a month, 6 h stop in Surabaya and 4 day stop in Singapore. Heavy 40 knot squalls and no wind. 3 knots current against and with us… but we are here. Back in the ‘good winds’. Even time for a week of relaxing… Indian Ocean just out there, calling…

Current should be with us and even the wind should be at least abeam from now on. If only half of it is true we’ll be in Phuket under a week. BE is stocked up again and we had a small good bye party with our new friends from the marina. Signs are good that my parents soon get their first day on a beach… after 5 weeks!!!

What a passage! Headwind and current all the way, meaning constant tacking into choppy sea. Hece, for the roughly 1000 nautical miles direct line from Bali to Singapore we actually needed about 1600 miles and over 19 days! But who counts as we still had some fun on the way. Parents were even more relaxed than I was.

And now we’re finally in Singapore, a big too tidy, too clean, too organized, to artifical city for my taste but what the hell. Let’s celebrate, big time!!! and trying not to think about the repair work, I’ve to do and the 1000 euro bloody autopilot I have to replace… Such is life. BE is unstoppable and this is all part of it!

At 12:04 BE crosses the equator at E 104 58.3. Let’s see what the Northern part of the world has in stock for us…

I assumed the strong winds of the Java sea were the main challenge and we celebrated with all what our fading provisions could offer when we finished the crossing 3 days ago with only 400 nm left to Singapore. But we made the deal without Mr Current who had his own plans for us pushing Singapore a few more days away from us.

To make things even more interesting did our hydraulic autopilot decide to die and even with extreme surgery over 2 days could not be revived. However now the neclected windvane is back in action to continue our pathetic slow progress… don’t even want to think about hand steering or what may happen next.

Again the weather forecast looked promising with hopefully easing winds (but they alway said that…;-) But we needed fuel to push through this window and hence desided to call in Sumbaya for refueling. Easier said than done because we’d already cleared out of Indo. The authorities dove me mad as usual but thanks to two coast guards, who stayed at my side the whole day, I managed to get the fuel and we’re now off again. As long there are people like Andy and Hendri from the Coast Guard the world has a chance. It was also a great experience to navigate through the second largest harbour in Indo with million-ton tankers maneuvering just inches form each other with tiny BE inbetween.

The Java Sea looks more like a bigger lake on the map than an ocean and whilst the wind was forecasted similar to 3 days before who could possibly expect similar conditions? That would be far to predictable… but unfortunately was the case. I reckon it was 6 hours again after we chickened back behind an island… but at least we had our first 5 uninterrupted hours of sleep since the start.

I was wrecked! Westwards is were BE and I need to go. So what the hell is going on? I tell you what’s going on. Freakin’ NE Monsoon is what’s happening… and to make it worse, I knew it! The SE winds are over and replaced by thundery squally and rainy NW winds. I knew! Not happy! … and it even took some girly screaming and heavy manly swearing to make me feel better.

Making ok progress now behind the large Indonesian Island Madura and spirits are up again because of my amazing parents and some emails from close friends. But we all know that the Java Sea with its vicious western current and winds is still out there waiting. Let’s apply an offshore fishing strategy and let it fight and scream until it’s exhausted… prayers of a fool or genius? We’ll see.

Battling back to Bali only left us little cheer to celebrate the new year. A beer and a shy smile to each other whilst the orchestra infernal continued around us… Bang, Bash, Bang of the waves with Zzzzzzz, Schhhhhh, Jeeeeee!!! of the wind in the rig. Happy New Year!