The Marshall Islands are a rather unique cruising ground. While the capital Majuro isn't too amazing, the outer islands are absolutely fantastic. Where else can you sail, swim, dive & kite uninhabited atolls in the world with no human presence within 60 miles, with birds and fishes who aren’t used to human presence? Don't be deterred to sail there by the majority of cruisers who claim to have been there, but never ventured out of Majuro...

After three cyclone seasons in the Marshall Islands it's time to move on or better return to Fiji, which I enjoy as much as the Marshall Islands. More developed, but also more varied with more fresh food available. As beautiful as the Marshall Islands are, nothing grows on these coral atolls. You’ll have to revise the idea of tropical fruits dropping in your mouth.

The weather is pretty untypical this year. The water temperature is higher than normal, on the brink of El Niño, resulting in much weaker trade winds than other years. Bruce and Laura on Pacific Hwy are leaving on the same day as me and we’re keeping in email and SSB contact with half a dozen other yachts leaving within the next few days. I’m leaving in light westerlies, so light that I motor downwind to the Eastern end of the island before unrolling my new Code 0, which propelled me nicely in the light winds. Pretty soon the winds turned southeast and I’m sailing hard on the wind, which is very comfortable in these light winds.

I could write 20 paragraphs on all the wind directions I’ve had, suffice to say that I the winds are coming from all usual and unusual directions, allowing me at times to sail where I want and pushing or sucking me off course at other times. I’m having it all, but hardly ever above 15 knots and I’m sailing for the most part without a reef in the sails, rather unusual for light weight Blue Bie. After a few days squalls are starting to crop up, but even they are bringing less than 20 knots. I can hunt them for beautiful downwind rides under Code 0 during the day. During the night however, when I don’t see them coming, they have me walloping on the windward side.

While the light wind are making for very comfortable sailing, they’re not letting me have much rest during the night, because they tend to be fickle and ever changing. I didn’t see much traffic, but had wonderful starry nights when the full moon wasn’t illuminating the firmament. Slowly but surely the Southern Cross came into view and crept higher and higher over the horizon with every day I sailed further south. Easy to see how the old navigators could determine the latitude, but were struggling to determine the longitude.

After a week the days are starting to flow into each other, the beginning is too far away to remember, the destination too far away to think about and days and nights too contour less to keep them apart. The daily rhythm is given by weather, emailing and weather analysis in the morning, small errands in the morning, reading time in the afternoon, a 4 o’clock dinner and early evening SSB net. Communication has much improved thanks to the new Iridium Go satellite hotspot and the PredictWind weather routing. I’m not getting four different weather forecasts and routing recommendations. While you might think that four forecasts must be confusing, it’s actually the opposite: If all four agree you can have high confidence that they’re correct, if you have four different forecast, you know not to put too much weight on any of them – and I had lots of this during this passage. I can only recommend PredictWind!

On this background one of the most memorable experience of my life happened. While reading lazily the biography of Ferdinand Magellan, I feel a slight rocking motion. Not bothering too much, I rush to the cockpit when it repeats shortly afterward and see a fin sticking above the deck to the height of the lifelines. Not thinking too much, I'm heading over and see a whale swimming alongside Blue Bie, rubbing its belly against the hull and looking into my eye!

I'm freaking out and have no idea what to do. What can I do? Nothing! If it wants to ram Blue Bie I can do absolutely nothing!

The only idea I have is to get the camera and to take Blue Bie off the autopilot trying to avoid the whale. But that's kind of useless, because a few more times the whale is breathing at a distance, dives and comes up from behind, diving underneath the rudder, coming alongside and scratching its belly against Blue Bie.

My nerves are completely frayed. But there's never a heavy impact nor any air of violence. By the third time I’m starting to believe that the whale means no harm, to feel elated having such an extraordinary experience and to talk to the whale. It’s not talking back though, but it does have a very foul smelling breath! Reviewing the pictures, it has probably been a roughly 8m long Minke Whale weighing as much as Blue Bie. Interesting that Wayne and Christine on Learnativity see a pod of whales a few days later only a few miles from that position.

This encounter has shaken me to the core, I’m feeling totally vulnerable and it’s taking me two days to calm down. But the days start flowing into each other again, I’m crossing the equator the seventh time and after ten days I’m approaching Funafuti, a convenient stop-over. However, I feel so much in the groove that I prefer to continue towards Fiji without stopping. The wind continues to be light and from a favorable direction until the last day, when the SE trades kicked in and I had to tack 3 hours against 18 knots of wind before making it into the lee of the Lau Group and in the Rabi Channel. Tavueni is greeting me with wafts of verdant air and the song of birds and a few hours later I’m sailing into Savu Savu where I’m clearing in after 16 days at sea. Slow but very comfortable 1’600 miles. I could have shortened the passage time by motoring, but never felt like it.

Fiji is a big change to the Marshall Islands, lush with plenty of fresh fruits, friendly people and fast internet There’s a lot to be said for being able to wander between worlds. I meeting old and new friends in Savu Savu, but soon feel like heading over to Nananu-I-Ra for a few weeks of kite surfing, finally testing my new kite. More of that in my next blog.