Position           00:44.92S 090:18.58W

Date                1205 (Local – Central American Time) Sunday 2 March 2014

                        Distance to Marquesas (straight line) 2962nm

I am not quite sure where the remainder of the time in Puerto Ayora went but as usual it disappeared effectively.

Days were filled with hanging around waiting for the fuel barge, a great game where it appears that everyone involved either short changes you or adds a dollar to the price of each gallon or both.  All fuel purchases have to be approved and certified, although why is a question that does not appear to have occurred to those applying the rules.  The Rally Team did a great job policing the procedure and succeeded in getting most of the short change issues resolved.  Team member Alex drew the short straw as after the first problems came to light he accompanied the fuel crew from pump to each boat to ensure fair play.  The procedure for the whole fleet took four days

We carted our propane bottles off to be refilled, no licence was required for this but a hike there and a taxi back the next day when collecting.  We had an interesting outing to the Saturday market where what appeared to me to be a huge quantity of fruit and veg were purchased; I am glad that the Mate is only catering for two.

There was also an ARC dinner, a prize giving party and a number of outing with friends from other boats to eat at a street full of open air eateries serving fresh fish, local lobster and good meat at modest prices.  We also had an Amel outing with Dagmar and Christoph from Flomaida II and Manfred and Mikael from Amel 64 Tulasi.

At last start day came, we received our clearances to leave and prepared for a 12 o’clock crossing of the start line.  Well we had no problem with crowding the start line.  It took rather a long time to get our stern anchor, cleaned of 14 days fouling and secured.  We eventually brought up the main anchor at 1205 and crossed the start line as tail end charlie at 1220 reaching away to the south west towards our first intermediate waypoint to try and find the favourable trade winds.