Category: Latest News

The moon had an impressive halo last night. This halo is also called 22° halo. It can signalize a coming front. This time, no front came.

Each rainshower brings windshifts, gusts and phases of no wind. At 5:30 h I finally gave up. I put on my lifebelt and tether line, climbed on the swimming platform, unscrewed the windvane and lifted the watervane out off the water. I switched to the autopilot, untied the windpilot steering lines and started the engine.

Frequent rainshowers are a feature of the ICTZ (Intertropical Convergence Zone).

A big raincloud brought erratic winds last evening. The cloud was moving very slowly, so this disturbance lasted about two hours. Heavy downpour of rain for some minutes was very impressive to watch. Luckily no heavy gusts. Very spooky was the wind doing a quick full 360°-shift within 30 seconds twice. Easy followed the slower windshifts steered by the windvane. The blue line is my course. Originally I was heading 302 degrees (northwest). Then you see the line turning straight north, then west, south, then a complete figure of eight. After two hours the conditions settled, and I could commence my heading of 300°.

I am sailing into the ITCZ. This is the belt around the globe where the passat winds from the northern and southern hemisphere meet. The air rises, rain clouds and thunderstorms develop, the wind is low. And it is hot.

35°C in the shade is way too hot. I found this fan in New Zealand on top of the waste bin. It really made my day today.

This was today’s sunrise, literally my daily highlight in the morning. Enjoy.

The constant leakage of seawater requires nerves of steel. Always something new to learn in life.

When I woke up in the morning my cockpit plotter was not working. I had no GPS position in the network and the navigation had stopped. Step one was to check if the plotter was working. The plotter is ok, see photo. Next step was to find the bug. So I checked the fuses, switches, then sections of the cable. Following the cable I noticed water flowing into the bilge. The rudder bearing is still leaking, more than ever. All that effort, time and money in South Africa has been completely in vain. The bilge pump is saving my life. The plotter problem was caused by the water leak. The water had found its way into a junction of the cables leading to the cockpit. The cable joints had corroded. Eight hours later I had fixed the cable connections, all navigation electronics are working normally again. The electric bilge pump is running every hour. This will be my routine for the next months, until I can haul out Easy and get a proper repair of the rudder bearing back home.i

This is my social contact for the last three days.