second night from Las Perlas to Galapagos
Exocet Strike
John & Stella Dyer
Sun 15 Feb 2015 17:53
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What a contrast! from 30 to 40 knots to almost
zero. We have been motoring since 1700 local time, ie 2200 UTC due to lack of
wind. Overnight we passed within 2 miles of a small island way out in the
Pacific, none of us had heard of before, Malpelo, from the graphics of
birds on the chart plotter chart, I guess its a bird sanctuary. It has two
light houses shown, but we should have seem them and no sign. It was hazy and
around midnight but could not see anything, only a radar trace to confirm it was
there.
Over the last few days we have seen Dolphins,
Turtles, birds, one a Tern like bird landed on deck, and then quickly
flew off again. Others are more like
Gannets, but a different colour to ours.
The fleet seems to have spread out now, we have two
boats on our AIS, which is a system to identify boats that are within a
certaindistance, like ships et, which we often see at 80 mile range, but with
yachts we use lower power and usually the max is 10 miles, although the two in
range are 20 and 30 miles away.
The boats futher east of our position actually had
wind, Makena, almost 60 miles east had up to 25 knots over night, and Juno about
20 miles east had 15 to 20 knots, all very frustrating, but that is the nature
of this area.
John
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