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The first Low on my passage to South Africa is not too bad. I expect low winds tomorrow and I will even have to motor. At the moment the course is 212° to avoid two Chinese fishing fleets (photo to follow).

I dared to leave for my most difficult passage from Réunion to South Africa and was rewarded with several Humpback Whales some miles of the island.

A pleasant sail from Rodrigues, an easy port entrance in La Réunion, a very friendly harbourmaster to help me with the docking lines, and a super fast clearance procedure five minutes after my arrival, on a Sunday. Can I ask for more? Let’s have a nap before I check out the town Le Port.

Mauritius is one of the places I skipped on my route. My priority is to stay at fewer places longer to get to know them better rather than to squash in every possible landfall in a rush. Mut zur Lücke.

“Ore Shandong” is one of the largest dry bulk vessels. It is 360 m long, with a beam of 65 m, the draft is 23 m. The deadweight is 400 000 DWT, this is the measure how much a ship can carry. This ship loved Easy a lot and passed my bow at a distance of less than 1 nm. I had the right of way. I still have hope that one day there will be more translations of the COLREG (Convention on the International Regulations for Preventing Collisions at Sea, Kollisionsverhütungsregeln) including Rule 18 (a). A power-driven vessel underway shall keep out of the way of: … (iv) a sailing vessel. In an ideal world there would even be a copy of the COLREGs on the bridge of every ship.

My first evening at the Rodrigues anchorage. I could not get to shore, the outboard stopped working after starting. My mistake, I had flooded the carburetor by pumping too much fuel through the line. Rather than rowing to shore I decided to dry out the carburetor and visit the island on the next day. Thank you for the nice photo, Anna from SV Vista.

After 16 days and nights at sea I arrive at Rodrigues. Happy, proud, excited.

This is the broken genoa halyard. The reason why I nearly lost my new genoa. Last time I checked it for chafe was in New Zealand. Last time I had moved the halyard was in the Tuamotus. The halyard restrainer at the Nautor’s mast results in the chafe on the genoa halyard. I carry a spare genoa. I have a spare genoa halyard.

After my morning shower I put some more tension on the genoa halyard, the luff was too loose. 1. I could not believe what I saw next. The genoa (54 sqm) was sliding down the track and was soon in the very clear and blue water. I disengaged the windvane and retrieved the tow propeller of the hydrogenerator. 2. The large genoa acted like a drogue anchor, several attempts to pull the sail on the foredeck failed. I then started the engine and tried to back up against the wind, no chance, the waves were too high, the sail was now under the port side of the bow, reaching to the front of the keel. 3. I tried to pull the sail out off the water with the second, spare genoa halyard: Yes, it came out off the water a bit, but no chance to pull the rest on deck. 4. Engine in reverse and when the sail was in front of the bow, then backing up further, this time with the bow to the wind. 5. Engine in neutral and rush back to the bow (tethered in all the time) pulling the sail head like crazy. Then, pulling little portions (10 cm) of the sail over the railing, sitting on the sail and holdin it firmly to the railing wires to stop it from sliding back in the sea. This took me like one hour, I was totally exhausted but managed to get the genoa on deck. Freed a part of the genoa from the anchor. 6. Engaged the engine to go downwind to have less apparent wind. 7. Hoisted the genoa with the help of my remote controlled deckhouse winch while feeding the flapping sail into the groove of the genoa track. It was an absolute nightmare, I was totally exhausted afterwards. Still, I was very lucky that the wind (14 kn) and the waves (2,5 m) were low. Else I would not have been able to save the genoa.