Heading South
Lochmarin
Thu 16 Jan 2014 21:06
Look at that! We're nearly 10 degrees from the equator! Further South than we've sailed before, further south than we were in Trinidad.
It's been a peaceful sail so far, big seas but coming consistently and from just one direction so no problem. We've not seen much shipping and our only contact has been with Savita - it was lovely to get their radio call last night, but unfortunately, when we tried again later, we were out of range. A huge moon rose just after the sun set and shone on us like a search light all night. Towards dawn the sky clouded over, the occasional breaks forming silver pools of moon light on the water. Sunlight showed us back in the deep deep blue water that we love. Beautiful! We've been taking it steady, pacing ourselves and spelling each other during the day as we realise we weren't yet quite as recovered from our stomach bugs as we thought we were.
If this keeps up we'll get to Porvenir in the San Blas before tomorrow lunch time, just right for getting in among the coral reefs as the sun will be high. When I looked up Porvenir on Google maps it wasn't there. I think they marked the airstrip but that was it, not even the island's marked. It really is a remote part of the world we're heading to. Only about 15 years ago coconuts were still the unit of currency. I'm getting excited.
By the way, Chirpy the cicada jumped ship in Santa Marta. However we seem to have acquired a collection of crickets instead. The youngsters from Field Trip managed to find 4 of them whilst searching for Chirpy, and we discovered that they can swim, well, actually they can walk on water, like water boatmen, but there's a good few more around the place. They're much quieter than Chirpy was thank goodness.
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