Category Archives: Sailing

Every day feels completely different. Sometimes we’re all down and frustrated, the next day it seems as if life embraces us with all force. Our thoughts are too confused to write down as we still cannot say anything concrete about how it will continue for the Rancho Relaxo and us. But I would like to thank all of you for your support !

It is absolutely amazing !!! We’re can’t believe how many friends reached into their pocket to support us. And even more surprising is the amount of (until now) anonymous blog readers that step into the light and support us financially or by writing a few nice lines to make us smile again. To all of you: Many, many thanks and a big hug from the whole family !!

As soon as we can think a little bit clearer, I’ll write more but right now I’d probably only spread confusion.

We’d like to thank you all who sent us so many warmhearted emails, comments or called us on the phone (mostly in the middle of the night :-) Without your support it would be impossible to go through this difficult time. Be assured, we read ALL your messages but right now we don’t have the time to answer them – we are really sorry for that.

We would also like to officially thank our austrian friends Hannes and Christine who took us in on their catamaran ‘Optimist’ while the Rancho was still on the reef.

We are discussing different options to repair the boat and today we will go to Port Phaeton to look at a used mast that supposedly should be the right size for our ship. In the evening we had long discussions as to whether we should try to continue immediately or if it would be better to fly to Europe, get a job and earn money for one year. Either way there’s a lot of things to do and even more stuff to think about.

On the positive side: Yesterday we built a little roof to protect ourselves from the sun and the kids love it. I also tested the engine and it has no damage, going forward & backward works, as does the steering. So we now consider ourselves the owners of a heavily damaged an incredibly slow motor boat. Heh.

Oh and as some comments and emails go in that direction: We are NOT insured ! We’ll have to pay the salvaging of the boat and the repairs ourselves. Luckily the heroic helicopter rescue is free.

After one month in Tahiti we finally did it and left ! The ship is packed with paint, tools and groceries and after breakfast we left together with the SY Red Sky Night towards the neighbour island of Moorea.

The anchorage at Maeva beach is known to be very calm but still we were surprised to find ourselfes in a force six after just a few minutes running north. We had to wait for a landing airplane at the airport of Faaa before we were able to continue our journey. After passing the runway we set sail in papeete harbour and left the island with the small genoa. The passage was very fast and quite pleasent. It really was a good thing to be on the move again after such a long time at anchor. Our joy was a bit shortened bya a mayday call from a polynesian yacht that hit the reef in the Passe Tareu – that’s the entrance to the Baie d’ Opunohu which was our goal !
A few hours later we were already sailing along the reef of Moorea and passed the gorgeous Baie d’ Cook. Only two miles further west lies our entrance and we could already see the wrecked yacht. I don’t know yet how this shipwreck happened as the pass is a few hundered meters wide and pretty much without current but maybe we’ll find out tomorrow.

Right now we enjoy the silence of this little bay – no city, no airport and only a handful of boats here. And our kids are on the neighbor boat so we have the Rancho Relaxo all for ourselves ! Yay !

Slowly the summer is coming. Most sailors are leaving and the anchorage in Faaa (one of my favorite city names) is getting empty. We’re in the south. The moon works the other way around, we don’t know most of the local star signs and the seasons are totally wrong. Wouldn’t it also make sense that the sailing season is actually in winter ?

It’s the same as in the caribbean sailing season there is during the northern winter. Most sailors try to escape the hurricane season when the summer comes. The taifun season in the Pacific officially starts in January and ends around beginning of May. The timing tough is not as strict as in the caribbean. The season is actually only the time when the occurrence somehow peaks. Also the islands in the east are usually quite safe whereas the central Pacific definitely gets some decent storms now and then. So it’s no surprise that most of our friends who will spend the summer in the south have already left and are now in Tonga or in the Cook islands. After having changed our plan for a couple of times we finally came up with something that sounds reasonable: We’ll sail to the Tuamotus and spend the next weeks there. Then we get back to Tahiti at the end of November and my family will leave with an airplane towards South America. I will sail back to the Marquesas solo and we will be united two months later. Sounds good to me.

So why did we spend such a long time in Tahiti where most of the surrounding islands are much more beautiful ? Well, first we had a lot of friends that we met here and as one never does know if and when we could meet again, we had a few farewell parties. We were hiking and explored the island by car, later I was out of order for one week because of my infected toe. The last week we spent mostly in town, searching for missing parts. It’s not as easy as we’re low on money and the shops are quite but not always expensive. A 20l jerry can is 46 USD here but anti fouling paint is actually cheaper than in Europe. The record must be a little 12V piezo beeper that I bought in Panama for 40 cents. Here I found one for 42 USD. (A stupid BEEPER !) But now we got our sails repaired, we got spare parts and new hoses to redo the salt water installation and the bilge pumps, we got paint for the whole ship, new rubber for the windows, screws, filters and hoses for the engine and a hundred more things. On monday a man will come and refill our compressor fridge. After that I will probably spray half of the fridge full of foam to increase the insulation and decrease it’s size. I hope that will help a little. On our next visit I will also buy wood to do some enhancements to the interior and redo the cockpit floor. There’s gonna be enough to do when I’m alone on the boat.
Well if everything works out, we’ll be gone by the mid of the next week. It’s time.

Somehow lately I’m not really motivated to write blog posts. It might have to do with the flakey internet connection or that we’re not doing too much lately. We’re still in Papeete, still in the same anchorage and we still did not yet get all the parts that we need for the boat repair.

But in the meantime we ran into a lot of our friends that we met along the way. The Papillon arrived, we last saw them at Galapagos. The Red Sky Night arrived which we last saw in Fatu Hiva. And just yesterday I discovered the ‘Armatura Borealis’ that we ran into in Gran Canaria – a year ago !

So we spend a lot of time hanging out with friends, doing BBQ, the kids playing together, hichhiking to the city to get boat parts, etc.

We will stay for a few more days to wait until my toe gets better. – After climbing the mountains barefoot for two days, I managed to hit my toe on the way from the Carrefour to the Marina. Needless to say, the toe immediately got infected and my leg swollen. So now I’m enjoying antibiotics for the first time since we left Berlin….

Thanks to my parents we took notice of some good development in Somalia. It seems the country is heading towards having a government and the piracy rate during the last year went way down. There’s still a lot of danger in those waters but we immediately started plotting a possible new course through the read sea. Oooo if that would be possible it would be really nice. I’d not think twice of skipping that long crossing of the Indian ocean and then the Atlantic crossing from south to north for a nice, short ride throught the med. Well, in one year’s time we’ll know what to do…