I'm not sure I'll be able to do this justice with my words, but this moment is one for the memory box indeed.
Under the brilliance of stars on a moonless eatly morn, on the glass-like flat Pacific Ocean with the morning star reflecting off the water, with sparkles all around Paw Paw from the bioluminescence, with the Southern Cross hanging in the skies overhead and with Southern Cross by Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young blasting out, the Island Girl and Pirate crossed the equator with champagne in hand, topped of with freshly baked scones and jam.
Welcome to the Southern Hemisphere and the South Pacific. It is what dreams are made of!
Like all passages, one plans them with the best knowledge and information one has prior to the start. For us we thoight the ITCZ would influence this passage somewhat in terms of little to no wind in sections. So, in order to minimise the amount of motoring needed, we chose a route that would maximise the availability of wind with a reasonable sea state in terms of wave height and direction, keeping safety paramount. Well, Mother Nature had other ideas and we basically ended up being the proverbial magnet to unfavourable conditions. First, by ending up in winds and seas worse than we wanted at the start of the passage and then today ending up in a 3.5 to 4 Kt current which, no matter what we did, kept setting us too far north and west of our destination. We eventually had to "bite the bullet" by dropping the sails altogether and turning on both engines to get out of it. After motoring all night we hope to be far enoigh south to avoid a reoccurrence. For now though, the Southern Cross, in a dazzling night sky, watches over us, Paw Paw is surrounded in sparkles as her wake sets off the bioluminescence in the water, we have birds for company and the champagne is in the fridge as we plan and look forward to our "crossing the Equator" party!
Elaine awoke this morning after her early morning watch to a delicious cooked breakfast with freshly baked soda bread, all prepared by Roy - a lovely surprise!
I guess if someone had told us 35 years ago, when we celebrated our first Valentine's Day together, that we'd be out in the middle of an ocean, on a yacht, celebrating this Valentine's Day together, we would definitely have considered the idea romantic, but ludicrous! Elaine remembers the card and beautiful bouquet of roses she received from Roy that day like it was yesterday. Happy Valentine's Day everyone!
As for being on a yacht, we had a good sailing day in 18 to 22 Kts of wind in very lumpy seas with swells around 8ft, but we made great progress towards Galapagos with our top speed reaching 13Kts. This evening things slowed down, but unfortunately came to a standstill about half an hiur ago, so we're having to motor. Hopefully the wind will pick up again as it did l ast night.
Just seen the Southern Cross hanging in the southern sky. Our latitude is 06°46'. This is the furthest south we've been since leaving South Africa 21 years ago. It's been a busy day and night with plenty of traffic to scoot around, but there's always a little something to make it worthwhile - a huge leatherback turtle surfaced to take a peek at Paw Paw and some of the yachts behind us saw whales. And now we await the breaking day and another sunrise at sea!
The day didn't start off very well due to high seas and strong winds - we inadvertently ended up on the edge of a sector of weather we were trying to avoid, but by mid-morning things started to moderate. It seems to be feast or famine here in the Pacific, as earlier tonight we had to put one of the engines on for about 1.5 hours due to no winds. We did, however, get to see dolphins again and Roy had two nibbles on his rod, but both fish got away unfortunately . Elaine had a moment when "reality hit home" that we were actually doing our first ocean crossing - better late than never!
We're off to the Galapagos tomorrow. Lets hope all the bureaucracy doesn't prevent us from staying, because we'll just sail on to the Marquesas if need be, but not before we see Ondular (Isabel and Mick) - No real downside. Today we explored Contadora, enjoyed a lovely lunch at one of the hotels and managed to get all of our photographs uploaded to the gallery - enjoy! Tonight we enjoyed a beach bardeque and the prize-giving for Leg 2. Of course Paw Paw was disqualified, along with Nina, because we were sensible enough to wait for better weather before leaving Santa Marta. Tomorrow we're going to be just as sensible and leave before the official start rather than sail across the startline at extreme low tide with insufficient depths. I guess, at this rate, Paw Paw is going to be only only yacht to be disqualified from every Leg except the first one! I guess it's fair to say, once a maverick always a maverick!
