Zwei Boote zwischen zwei Stürmen

Jakarta to Koh Samui

18.09.2011

On this day we decided to have a very special breakfast. We had been thinking about the best way to do it for a while. We did some research in formus and found that the most ferocious cooks use fish oil and other gross ingredients to celebrate the upcoming event. But since we hadn’t caught too many fish the previous couple of days, we decided to use ingredients that we still had on board. So in order to celebrate the equator crossing at 7.30 a.m. local time, we smoked our last vanilla cigar and had some rum to go with it. Couldn’t have been any better!

Check out the moment when we crossed from the deep South to the wild North in this video:

Crossing the Equator from Sailing Conductors on Vimeo.

21.09.2011

Wir funken mit deutschen Kapitänen

Radio-ing with German Captains.

During the night the wind had slowed down and did not really want to pick up again, which left us sitting in the middle of the port of Singapore … not the most pleasant place to be since ships from the megacities Jakarta, Bangkok, Hong Kong, and the rest of the world cross paths here and try to enter their docks. Our desperate attempts in compensating the lack of winds finally led to us contacting the nearest passing ship, the “Hamburg Süd” … a German ship, what a coincidence!

Ben: “Hello Hamburg Süd, this is the sailing boat Marianne”

Hamburg Süd: “Ahoi. What are you guys up to, except for making peoples lives a little harder?”

Ben: “Um, well … the winds have let us down and now we’re stuck right here. Would you by any chance happen to have the weather report for us?” …

After this nice little chat, we knew more about what was awaiting us: a maximum of wind force 4 from SSW. At least now we knew what we were in for.

22.09.2011

Das wird lustig.

This should be a lot of fun!

You know those moments that are etched into your mind like your name on the back of your iPod? Except for the etching on your iPod is something you asked for. Well this day was doomed to include not just one of these unasked for etchings. Around noon we got into the first pretty hard half-hour storm, which actually ripped our foresail in twain. Accompanied by loud cracking sounds as though someone was firing a gun on board, it whipped around like a wacky waving inflatable arm-flailing tube man, if you know what I mean.

Just a few hours later, I had to hold on tight in order not to be blown off of the foreship during reducing sails (again). Right before us lightnings came cracking down and dark cloud formations grew bigger and bigger whilst moving steadily towards us. I was able to set the storm jib, however as I was reefing the main sail, it happened … the main sail ripped. Damn!

As our last resort, we used only the storm jib for the next two hours, which left us with speeds of around 6 knots. You might be wondering what happened after those 2 hours? Dead calm, no winds, no waves. Which means; no speed. So in summary this sailing session was one of the more or less problematic ones. We are inherently positive thinkers though and refer to these days as very “dynamic”. And just like in music, dynamics are a good thing.

24.09.2011

Von Flauten und Sonntagsfrühstücken

                Making the best of low winds.

We don’t need wind to eat. So we ate. Basically anything and everything we had on board. Pancake, roasted onions, crushed peanuts, a little bit of the hot noodle dish from the day before, and of course jam and chocolate. Oh yeah. We be cookin’ on gas!

27.09.2011

Wie kommt der denn hier rein?

Well hello there, stowaway.

Birds apparently enjoy our company and probably not just that. This little guy is apparently catching a ride to his next destination. Car pooling as well as Boat pooling are an efficient and environmentally friendly ways of travelling!

  28.09.2011

We’ve been heeling (sailing in a slanted position due to unfavorable winds and currents) and the water has been splashing up against our jib for days on end now and this is a major wear and tear factor. So guess what … that’s right, our jib took a good beating and tore. But just a little! We were still able to bring it in and continue with our journey.

30.09.2011

Zwei Boote zwischen zwei Stürmen

Between two storms we got a glimpse of two fisher boats just doing their work. And stealing our food ;).

Two boats between two storms.

03.10.2011

Arrival in Koh Samui! Check out these pics, enjoy!

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