Galapagos to Marquesas - Day 5
Seaduced
John & Jane Craven
Thu 6 Mar 2014 18:01
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Day 5 -Galapagos - Marquesas
As you can see from our position, we are now making our
way across the Pacific Ocean towards the Marquesa Islands in French
Polynesia. You should be able to find these on a map, but you might need a
magnifying glass!!
Fortunately, we have had an uneventful first 5 days -
just the way we like it. Prior to leaving the Galapgos, we had all
spent a lot of time pouring over very uninspiring weather forecasts showing 5
days of low winds in the region of 5 knots, thankfully, the
forecasters got it wrong. We have had 5 days of almost continuous
sailing in perfect weather, the only downside being that despite being told that
it is downwind sailing, (where the boat is effectively flat, if
rolling slightly), all the way to Oz, we are again going along at what has
been described as a "rather jaunty angle". This makes life a little trying
at times. I was baking a banana cake yesterday, all the blooming bananas
having ripened and gone to mush in about 2 days, and measuring the ingredients
was a bit hit and miss to say the least. The result was fortunately a
success, however this afternoons job is to make another cake with the rest of
the rather gooey bananas! When we had our regular
afternoon chat with our friends, Pat & Stuart on Brizo yesterday afternoon,
whilst I had spent the morning baking cakes, Pat had been doing the laundry -
don't know about you but that seemed surreal to me, I mean we are in the middle
of Pacific Ocean!
The big highlight of Tuesday was a successful result
with the fishing line - we landed a large skipjack tuna, yippee. John was
in charge of tiring the fish out while reeling it in and Doug was the one
precariously hanging off the sugar scoop at the back of the boat, one
handed, to gaff it. (Doug did ask me to build up his bit so he
sounded like real hunter-gatherer!). We did try and weigh the fish before
we cut it up, but the suitcase scales only measured it as 1.7kgs - we have
enough tuna fillet for 4 main meals for 3 of us - I think they were
affected by the boat motion! We have now had tuna for dinner 2 nights and
have frozen the rest for next week. The line is now stowed, we don't fish
for more than we can eat, and we definitely don't need anymore tuna right
now.
The boat is sailing amazingly well, we are regularly
flying along at 9-10 knots over ground which is fabulous, we even reefed,
(shortened sail), last night and used the smaller headsail, and are still
doing well. We got very close to the mythical 200 miles under sail in
24 hours yesterday, with a total of 194 miles.
We have now been at sea for 4 days and are just starting
our 5th. We expect the journey will take about 18-20 days in total, so
that means we still have at least two weeks to go. It is an odd thought
that we won't get off the boat for another two weeks, its a bit like going on
holiday for two weeks and never leaving the apartment!
We should be showing our position on the yellow brick,
but our position in the fleet may be wrong as it only measures the distance to
go in a straight line, and doesn't take into account the actual route taken.
I will update the blog in a few days time.
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