[password] Ridingmore
[position] 00 54.9N 93 49.8W
[weather]SSE 12-15 knots, 0.5m S swell
[speed] 9-11.5 knots
[status] Well hellooooo freight train! We're finally moving, and really well, on the South Equatorial Current, which is adding about 2-2.5knots to our boat speed. Which constantly reads >10 knots for the last 12 hours, and hasn't dropped below 9, now that we are west of the Galapagos, awesome! We spent the whole of yesterday weaving past a handful of the Galapagos Islands, including getting pretty close to the top of the largest, Isla Isabella, just as the sun was setting last night - very photogenic, with the drone doing overtime running loops around the boat!
The 10-12 knot S breeze is now abaft the beam @110deg, and our rolling motion is slow and manageable, and everyone slept well last night. These are the conditions that we are expecting until we arrive in the Marquesas:)
We are now well outside of the Galapagos Marine Park, so the lures have just gone back in the water, as the last of our tuna was consumed last night for dinner. After our slight diversion to take in some of the Galapagos, we are now heading slightly N of W, to give us better sailing angles as we approach the Marquesas in a few weeks time. We'll head west at about 1 deg N, just above the equator for as long as we can, before the trade winds evolve into ESE and E, and we start our descent towards French Polynesia. Lets hope we can maintain these speeds as we will be there in less than 2 weeks at this rate! With the lovely afternoon sailing past Isabela yesterday it was very hard to not have a cold beer - very much looking forward to that in FP!
Patea signing out.
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