World ARC - Day 54 - 2nd March – Leaving Galapago s

Nina
Steve and Lynda Cooke
Thu 3 Mar 2016 22:12
02:22S 91:46W

World ARC - Day 54 - 2nd March – Leaving Galapagos

The Start of the next leg - 3,000 miles of open ocean from Galapagos to French Polynesia: the Marquesas.....
This will take us about three weeks of sailing.

Finishing up and getting ready to leave the Galapagos islands was its own mixture of joy and pain.
The morning was the usual frantically controlled activity amongst all the fleet.
Everyone was required to go ashore and visit the Immigration office, starting at 07.15 in the morning, although only the skipper had to present all the documents and passports, everyone else had to be in the office with him. Sigh....... bedlam!
We were the third boat, so breakfast and fresh bread on the way back to Nina.
There was a blow in the harbour, and our stern kedge anchor had set so firmly that we could not pull it up with the stern windlass, as we were blowing at a 90 degree angle from where it had been dropped, so it required a call to the water taxi, and Steve pulled it up by hand.
The start was a nice wide line across the bay, in 15 knots of breeze, so we started on time with the rest of the fleet (well, a few started early) except for Widago, the big American Catamaran, waiting for water-maker parts from Miami, and Mystic Soul, who hit something in the water at night on the way over from Panama, and had snapped off half a rudder. His repair was proceeding well he reported!

After a couple of hours, the wind died a little, and Nina flew her Cruising chute and Main, wing-on-wing, until it died completely overnight, and we started the engine, and continued on into the night.

Sea lions and Dolphins.....
We saw a number of schools af dolphins fishing, excitedly gathering huge shoals of fish into a small area, then collectively jumping and feeding from the resultant fish ball.
Sea Lions, lying on their back on the surface, holding their back flippers, warming up on the surface, watching us go past with big wet eyes.

Fishing.....
Karen was very keen to start the fishing, so the evening and morning twilight times, being deemed to be the most effective times of day for catching fish, saw not a sign of a bite from the new squiddly lure. it was decided to leave the line out through the following morning. Success! but as we were winding in the line, the lovely looking fish that was being pulled in flicked himself off the line.
We left the lure out to try and repeat the success, but Lynda and Karen had much more fun kicking in the hand reel, that had to be retrieved and wound in, and then later pulling in all the line without winding the line in, and the consequent birds nests giving hours of endless fun having to unravel it all again. We may start fishing again tomorrow, but the girls have had enough for today.