Commodore
February 8, 2023

Wednesday 8 February – We are off to Galapagos

The big day has finally arrived, we are heading out into the Pacific! Typically the wind is not great for our passage, but the Arc requires us to all leave together crossing the starting line at 11am. Loads of little jobs to get done and then we were lifting the anchor. We did a little sail around planning to take it slowly from the back to stay out of the way of the 22 boats. Rowan executed a brilliant start and we were roaring off with Sporty Spice (Code Zero) powering us along. Really fun having so many boats about. It feels a little sad we didn’t see more of the 200 islands of the Las Perlas group, it really looked stunning as we shot by some of the islands.

Leaving our anchorage behind

Some boats still waiting to get going

Heading for the start line

Going round in circles waiting for the call to start

We are off

Honoured by an enormous fly past of pelicans

We did a little overtaking

Some gorgeous older boats

Renegade way out front with their eye catching dragon spinnaker

It wasn’t long before Rowan had Baby Spice up (small spinnaker), as we were heading directly downwind. The forecast is for the wind to pick up a bit so we didn’t want anything bigger up, and we were flying along, keeping ahead of Pachamama (from Argentina), a Lagoon 62 enormous catamaran.

We had to cross the canal zone that runs for 60 kms, it was amazing how many huge ships we had to avoid, crossing over it. We keep heading south to try and keep in the winds until we hit the ITCZ, which stands for Inter Tropical Conversion Zone (what Americans call the Doldrums!). Sadly the weather forecast is for very little wind when we get nearer the Galapagos. We made good progress all day, keeping up with the front 5 boats.

We had a lovely sunset followed by a delicious chicken curry that Edmund made. It was early to bed to cope with the shifts. I did the first shift which involved crossing a shipping lane which needed a bit of focus with all the traffic. It was a relief to have the light of the moon when it came up sometime after 10pm. Baby Spice stayed up all night and did a really good job of coping with the wind when it went over 20 knots.