We are now on Santa Cruz Island and anchored at Puerto Ayora which is the main commercial town in the islands.

The first thing you notice here is that there are far fewer sea lions. They still seem to like the main jetty and pier for basking but you do not have to be on constant guard against being boarded. We do have lots of small Black Tip Reef sharks swimming around the boat. When young and living in shallow water they are a lovely sandy brown colour on top, white underneath with black edges to the fins. We saw a parent close to the boat this morning……..

We also have nautical matters to keep us occupied as well as the animals. We have an aluminium Fortress second anchor that could double up as a bow anchor if needed. Mostly we use it as a stern anchor to stop us from swinging and up until now it has been rock solid – requiring some effort to dislodge it and pull it up. However, here it is dragging even though the bottom is sand. When we first arrived there were lots of tour boats in the bay and most were anchored fore and aft and so we followed suit. These have now gone but we have since been joined by the rally of Oyster yachts sailing around the world together and there are so many around us we cannot afford to swing too much – which is just what we are doing at the moment and so will have to reset the anchor a third time.

A second, more serious issue that we came across when resetting the stern anchor last time is that one of the four bolts securing the drive shaft to the gearbox is completely loose. We found this after investigating noise and vibration when in gear at low revs. We initially thought the loose bolt must be the problem but it may well have been the three blades on the flexofold propeller not opening equally at low revs. We have no idea whether the bolt has loosened recently or it has been loose for some while. It will neither tighten nor withdraw and we cannot get at the head as it is within the flexible coupling linking the gearbox to the driveshaft. Technical advice is being sought……….

The wildlife continues to amaze. When scuba diving it is usually a rarely fulfilled ambition (or fear) to see large creatures such as sharks, rays, turtles and so forth. Here they are in abundance and we have been privileged to swim with them. The turtles will come up to you, elsewhere they swim away when spotted (it’s the mating season, maybe they need some light relief or it’s a case of mistaken identity). What is transformative is the experience of swimming with big sharks. Jaws ruined things for me but when you are down there with them things are put back into perspective. Of course if a Great White or a Tiger shark appeared I might not be so confident but we have seen large Hammerheads (2.5m), White Tips, Black Tips and Galapagos sharks. They don’t hang around when half a dozen divers charge into view and seem quite timid. To film them the trick is to be at the front of the group. By the time the dive leader has spotted something, filmed it, shaken his rattle to alert the rest of us and a zealous photographer in the group has charged between you and the subject you are lucky to see a tail disappearing into the murk.

Occasionally you do get lucky and we have some footage we will try and upload. A GoPro camera takes a very wide angle view which is great when a turtle comes up to take a look but not so good for a Hammerhead that may only be 15m away but looks much further on replay. Annie has included some of my pics in her blog so there will be a bit of duplication.