It is midday on Tuesday 11th April and we are now 160 miles NE of Isla San Cristobal, the eastern most island of the group and our intended landfall.We have had a great sail over the last few days although we have been hard on the wind (at least we have got some!) for the last 60 hours trying to get far enough south. At last this morning the wind has backed into the SE and we are finally pointing at where we want to go. We are hoping to make it in by sundown tomorrow but it is touch and go whether we will get there in daylight and if not it means an extra night waiting for the dawn so we can see our way in.  Even in these days of GPS arriving somewhere new like this is better when you can see. The GPS is generally pretty accurate but you also have to hope that the man who made the map (often at least a hundred years ago and using a sextant) was having a good day when he put that particular island or rock on the chart.

 

On Sunday afternoon we had an aerial visit from the US coastguard.  Apparently they have planes patrolling the waters off the Columbian coast so they must have stumbled on us and come down for a look. They circled a us few times at very low level and then flew off to the south, an unexpected encounter 320 miles from land!

I tried to speak to them on the VHF but they did not seem to want to chat.

 

This 24 hours should contain two little milestones for us. Firstly this morning as we changed watches at 0430 we completed our first 10,000 miles on Savoir Vivre and secondly sometime tonight we should cross the equator again back into the southern hemisphere. Lucy is not at all convinced we are anywhere near the equator as the nights are getting colder and colder  (due to the cold water coming up the coast of South America) and I found her this morning wearing a woolly hat. When she sees the penguins in Galapagos she is really going to wonder whether the navigator has any idea where we are!