After motoring all night last night, we had to motor all day as well and, unfortunately, we are still motoring tonight. There is not a breath of wind - I guess that's the Doldrums and one can't help but wonder what it must have been like for those sailing vessels, centuries ago, that got stuck here with no other means of propulsion.
We can't have everything though, so we settled for the beautiful sunny skies, the deep blue flat seas, the dolpins that stopped by to play in Paw Paw's bows and the yellowfin tuna Roy caught this evening and served for dinner - It's a sailors life alright!
We are hopeful though that we will pick up the SE trades within the next 24 hours based on the latest forecasts we analysed this afternoon and altered course to head SSW from our original planned course of SW. I guess time will tell!
With a good breeze at 120", Paw Paw was on her favourite point of sail. With Elaine helming and flying along at 7.5 Kts, it wasn't long, after we crossed the start line, before we were ahead of all the other catamarans and 3rd overall. We were indeed grateful for the wind that wasn't forecasted.
We settled into a lovely afternoon of sailing and as the wind dropped, with gennaker deployed, we were entertained by a pod of rather large dolphins - all of them at least 6ft in length. That was followed by a rendition of "Happy Birthday" via the satellite phone, to our grand-daughter, Capri. It was a perfect ending to a magical visit in the Galapagos islands and a perfect stsrt to our first cean passage!
Now we concentrate on fuel consumption as we motor along in less than 2 Kts of wind, heading in a southerly ditection in order to pick up the SE trade winds, but avoiding an area known for no wind, large swells and squalls.
S ent from Iridium Mail & Web.
Excitement is definitely running high on Paw Paw tonight with less than 15 hours to go before we commence our first ocean crossing. We leave the Galapagos at noon tomorrow and head into the great blue yonder for 25 to 30 days. Seeing land again, we believe, will be a welcome sight indeed after this voyage. It's a scary thought to think that, in 35 years together, Roy and I have never spent this length of time alone in a 46ft x 25ft space - Should make for interesting developments.
We will, however, have plenty of time to indulge ourselves with our favourite pastimes - Playing the saxophone and writing for Elaine; Fishing and reading for Roy and refining our Celestial Navigation skills together.
For now we're enjoyed a lovely dinner in the company of the crew from Waterman, content in the knowledge that we have completed all our planning and preparations to the best of our ability and look forward to this next chapter in our am azing adventure.
We've had a busy few days in preparation for the Wednesday start of Leg 4 to Hiva Oa, Marquesas - the longest passage of the circumnavigation - 3000NM. Activities have included laundry, topping up on provisioning, topping up on diesel, making water so we have full tanks, checking every inch of Paw Paw to make sure all the rigging is sound and in good working order, finishing off some last minute maintenance jobs, etc
It hasn't been "all work and no play" though. We enjoyed a get-together arranged by Mary Beth from Paradise Found yesterday evening followed by dinner with Steve and Linda from Nina and their new crew members, Karen and Peter. Tonight was the Skippers Briefing followed by an informal prize-giving and then dinner - a delicious three course meal served at one of the local restaurants, Il Giardino.
Tomorrow we'll finalise our passage plan based on the latest weather forecasts, take a last minute trip to the fresh produce market, finish uploading all our photos of our stay here in the glorious Galapagos islands and enjoy the last of "terra firme".
