Position           02:07.65S 092:18.90W

Date                1200 (Central American Time) Monday 3 March 2014

Distance run - 150nm over the ground, 127nm through the water

                        Distance (OG) covered from start 150nm

                        Distance to destination (straight line) 2826nm

                        Original distance to Marquesas (straight line) 2962nm

Well we crossed the start line only 20 minutes after the gun with the fleet still well in sight.  One boat, Celebrate, remained in harbour awaiting a spare part for their navigation system.  Sweet Pearl returned to harbour to sort out a stuck main sail and restarted within the hour.  KoKo, a Norwegian Najad 57 had to return within an hour with a failure of their autopilot and remainded there to await repair and spares – good luck in the Galapagos on that one.

For the rest of us we had some wind from a sensible direction in which to sail and a favourable current; as can be seen from the days run.  That of course could not last and at midnight we were headed and the wind dropped.  Most boats set off realising that the first 600nm, getting away from both the Galapagos and the equator could be difficult with light and fickle winds so the first twelve hours sailing were a real bonus. 

The second half of the day was a combination of motor sailing close to the wind under main, staysail and mizzen and just plain motoring.  On the up side we had started with only 250 litres of water and by 0600 with the water maker running on 24v we had a full tank of 900 litres.

During the morning reports came in of sightings of long fishing lines between small and difficult to sot floats being set from rather small skiffs.  Our sister Amel 54, Flomaida, Christoph and Dagmar Hartung, saw no skiff and caught a line around its keel.  Christoph had to snorkel to clear it.

Not to be outdone at 1030 I noticed that our speed had dropped 2 knots for no accountable reason and looking astern it appeared that we had caught a fish.  As we did not have a fishing line out this was a good indicator that we also had caught a fishing line.  The extension diving tube, purchased in 2012 on Pam Wall’s, OCC Port Officer Fort Lauderdale, recommendation had its first deployment in anger rather than for hull cleaning duties.  This kit consists of a 60 feet long tube joining a dive tank stored in a deck locker to a second stage regulator (mouthpiece) and allows diving on the hull without a buoyancy jacket (BCD), tank and for quick jobs, weights.  It therefore allows a diver to get into the water quickly to sort problems as the kit is left ready assembled, only requiring the air to be turned on.

The line had caught itself around the pod of our forward looking depth sounder, cutting a small groove into the fibreglass and being well stuck.  Diving was the only solution and I was able to pull it free and untangle the rest of the caught line from the keel. 

Who says that we do not fish!  Re-arrange the standard ARC mantra:

DEPLOY LINE CATCH FISH

And you get the Caduceus version:

CATCH LINE DEPLOY FISH

Easy really and no filleting required.