Position           03:40.30N 084:20.05W

Date                1200 (EDT) Tuesday 11 February 2014

420 nm from destination Puerto Baqeurizo, San Cristobal, Galapagos, 441nm travelled from Panama

Days distance run - 174 over the ground, 165.2 through the water

From the Mate (with editing by the Skipper):

3rd night en route to the Galapagos, very hot and 3 knots of wind only on the nose.  We have now been motoring for over 24hrs with the sea like a mill pond all day but all well on board getting into our passage routine.

A real treat this evening just before sunset was a visit by a large pod of Dolphins swimming around the bow, playing and running with us for about 15minutes.  Other than that the only sign of any other living thing was when the Skipper saw 3 large sea birds balanced on a floating log – shades of a Peyton cartoon there?

A benefit of no wind and flat calm was that we had our dinner on china plates this evening and put the big table up.  (Skippers note – dinner was chicken in a mushroom sauce with backed potatoes and fresh broccoli)

It was a great relief to finally get the generator fixed and leave Panama.  Saturday was hectic with provisioning for fruit and veg at the wholesale market a fascinating experience . You hire a porter with a trolley, $4 for over and hour.  Pineapples were $1 dollar each and we were able to buy green tomatoes and oranges. The only problem arose when we came to leave as no taxi seemed to want to take because we wanted to go en route to a supermarket and ATM machine I think they felt they did not want to bother with a strange English couple, the wife speaking bad Spanish and loads of bags.  However eventually a lady standing near came to the rescue and got one of the van drivers to take us in his own SUV to the supermarket then back to the boat.  He was charming and had an interesting conversation with Martin whilst they waited outside the supermarket – Peruvian Spanish meets non-Spanish speaking Brit; they both seemed happy with the experience.  Photos on an iPhone go a long way to breaking down resistance.