The wind has barely got over 3 knots, the only excitement this morning was a few dolphins along side us. The sea is as flat as a pancake with gentle long rollers. All very tranquil, but getting steamy with no wind to cool us down. We have slipped down a couple of spots on the leader board as Renegade an American boat, slowly passed us about a mile away during the night. We are not going too fast as we don’t want to chew up our diesel. Getting fuel is a bit of a pain in the Galapagos, there is no fuel dock, so it is either delivered in jerry cans or you can pay 75cents more a litre to get a barge to your boat. Our tanks store 800 litres! The forecast is for no winds the rest of the journey so we have decided to take it easy and enjoy the ride.
We had a busy day, Rowan got our second anchor all set up with the men involved in splicing and whipping up ropes. We can run the washing machine in these calm waters so it was a good laundry day. The afternoon was steamy with the oven on cooking crunchie biscuits, baking bread and roasting vegetables for Jonny’s dish he prepared for supper.
Jonny and Rowan had fishing lines out all day but had no success, made all the worse by a few boats sharing on our fleet Whatsapp that they had caught mahimahi and tuna. It is so sad how much rubbish is floating in the water, one of the mahimahi caught had a plastic bottle top in its gut. I’m secretly rather relieved we haven’t caught anything but fresh sashimi did sound very appealing! We have our wasabi and soy sauce ready and waiting. Too cheer ourselves up and cool us down Rowan stopped the boat and we jumped in for a swim. We put a rope out as there have been some strong currents about. The water was really warm, just tickling our toes was cooler water. It was great fun and very refreshing.
We had a lovely sunset up on the trampoline in these calm waters, Rowan made us non alcoholic gin and tonics (Seedlip) which was a real treat and a very special tranquil moment out in the middle of the Pacific. We drink no alcohol on overnight passages. The evening was finished off with Jonny’s signature dish of red peppers, anchovies, mushrooms and garlic. All served on some thin wholewheat spaghetti with seared courgettes and goats cheese. Fishing boats appearing on the radar made the night watch a bit more exciting!
Great start to the day with delicious home made Rhubarb and ginger jam from our neighbour Dave in Mettingham
Swimming in the flat seas of the Pacific, not another thing on the 360 degree horison
Jonny enters the clear blue waters
Widge does a bomb drop while Edmund tests the buoyancy of the Pacific
Widge surfaces
Non alcoholic sunset drinks
Spectacular sunset
Just look at how flat the water is
Predict wind showing us in the doldrums (blue/pink colour), fingers crossed we get to those green winds showing before Galapagos
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