Galapagos to French Polynesia

After our "incident" with the Parks folks we thought it may be wise
to leave that night.

Night 1
01-16.4S, 90-29.6W COG 253M

We had a light dinner and a power nap and pulled up the anchor at
10:00 pm. We hate leaving in the dark. At least it was a very easy
place to leave. Just pull up the anchor and head west, then dip a
little south. Nothing to hit for 3000 miles!

As we pulled the hook it was windless so we planned to motor for
a bit to get south and pick up the trade winds. About 10 minutes
out of the anchorage it started to rain, just a light drizzle.
Great!!

After about 30 more minutes the wind picked up to about 12 knots, we
were able to sail it in a close beat. The sea was flat so we were
really moving along managing to sit between 7 and 8 knots for the
whole night. Apart from the rain it was excellent sailing - fast and
flat. Reverie was really having a great time.

We on the other hand were struggling to get into the passage groove.
We normally leave in the morning and have all day to sort ourselves
out. Jo was having trouble sleeping and Jason managed to pick up a
cold from somewhere! - First one in 3 years!. bring on the Codral
cold tabs!

The rain continued on all night, the air was also really damp so
even having side screens in the cockpit everything was damp or wet
from the rain, not a great night to be outside!

Day 1

At around 8am the rain eased off and we started to dry out!! Boat
speed was still up in the 8's but we could feel the wind starting to
back around behind us which will slow our progress as the wind
pressure will ease. Listening in on the Pacific radio net there
seems to be some odd weather out here, some guy about 400 miles in
front of us has wind from the North East!?! - what the!?

At around 10am we were much dryer, there was a little sun out and
our speed had fallen right off. We were sailing at around 5 knots.
So in went the jib and out came the big spinnaker. As soon as it
went up we were off again back in the 7-8 and sometimes 9 knots.
With flat seas, a full main and the big kite we really moving, it
was great!.

Cooked a great omelet for lunch and watched a really bad movie
"Heart Break kid" with Ben Stiller - Avoid!!

4pm the wind died and we were back to plodding along in slow
motion!. We have moved our course to get more south hoping that the
wind will come up some more. There is also a lot of dark clouds
around so it would be good to get out of this and into some clear
air. It will be an early dinner tonight and hopefully we both can
catch up on some sleep! Looks like our 24hr run will be about 150
miles. We will start tomorrow doing a noon to noon run rate.

Night 2

Wind fell off a little and the rain came in again and stayed with us
for most of the night. We were able to keep up some nice boat speed
but we seemed to have picked up a current heading the wrong way, so
our speed through the water is quite good but our speed over the
ground is less that great!.

Day 2 Position 02-23.9S, 093-59.5W COG 242M speed 7knots

Looks better today than yesterday, rain has gone and the wind is
still from the south. Seas quite flat so it's making the upwind sail
quite nice.

Not bothering to fish yet, we will wait until the weather is a
little more "sunny", and we are both still a little tired getting
into the swing of night watches.

Yesterdays run rate was 150 miles, nothing to
get excited about, hopefully we will find our way out of this
counter current. We really want to be averaging at least 170 miles a
day so we have some work to do ahead of us.

Wind was quote solid all day, which was nice, still lots of cloud
cover around, but we can see it is starting to get thinner. The
boats ahead of us are now in clear air so we have that to look
forward to!!

The last time we did this passage on the first Reverie each morning
we'd wake to see the deck covered with flying fish, this time no
flying fish but lots of squid? good size too, just a touch bigger
and we may have to cook them up, this morning we had 11 on the deck!

Night 3 (4:41am) 3-00.5S, 096-04.3W COG 238 SOG 6.2Knots

Still got this bloody current, wind has moved around to the east and
is blowing in the 20's boat speed is much the same as we don't want
to push it too much at night, we will worry about that in the
morning. Trying to get a little more south to see if there is any
favorable current down there.

Clear night!!!, lots of stars out so looks like tomorrow will be a
sunny day lets cross our fingers for some favorable current. Looking
at the weather fax that just came in we should have 15 knots from
the SE for the next few days, that should make some great sailing.

Day 3,

Wind stayed up all day today which was great, unfortunately we
still had the current against us which was taking a little more than
a knot off our speed over the ground. Sky was clear, it felt like we
were in classic trade wind sailing conditions. Tried fishing a
little but we decided that if we caught anything we really were not
in the mood for the messy job of chopping it up and dealing with the
mess.

We also noticed that there was a petrol smell inside the boat, very
slight but it was there. Looking at the jerry cans in the back
locker we found one of the jerry cans with petrol has developed a
small split in the bottom, maybe 10mm long, it looks like we have
leaked a couple of liters out of the can. Some of it was caught by
the foam pad the jerry's sit on, the rest has evaporated away or
made it's way into the engine bilge area. We managed to drain the
petrol into another jerry can and do a clean up on the areas we
could get to, the rest will have to clear itself through time as it
slowly evaporates away, hope it does as it's not a great smell to be
around.

Moving into the night, the wind has dropped off a little so our
speed tonight will be a little slower than we want., but it's
comfortable, and makes our watches easy. If it follows the trend it
should pick up later on in the night as it's done this most other
days.

Current position 03-35.1S, 097-31.4W COG 249, SOG 6 knots

More coming soon......

J&J