First of all – if you’re reading this Graham – happy birthday – have a great one! 

Things moved on in much the same way as the last couple of days – the wind a wee bit lighter during most of the day and the waves a bit less which made for a very comfortable sail.  Continued with the genoa poled out but reefed more again for the night.  Wind got up in the night and fluctuated around a bit.  This morning we have just taken the genoa off the pole and are now 2 sail reaching on a course of around 255 degrees.

We’ve been fighting our little enemy Chafe all the way with various pieces of plastic hose located at strategic rub spots. However he popped his ugly head up in a new place yesterday!  The trouble is that it’s easy pickings for him when you have the sails in the same position every day.  When we shook the reef out of the main we found little patches of him on the outhaul line. Chafe is unique to settings while broad reaching on port tack due to the angle the line comes out the forward end of the boom, then crosses the base of the kicker. We have obviously never spent much time on this point of sail in the last three years! Good thing we have plenty of plastic hose pipe on board, bought specifically for the purpose.  He’s a little devil!  We’ll re-new and reroute the outhaul line when we get to the Marquesas.

SSB radio propagation not good this morning.  We have gradually been losing Brian on Darramy as we have gone further west and he is still in the Galapagos - now 1800 miles apart. We’re going to try different frequencies and times tonight, The theory is that propagation is best in the evening, night and early morning but that makes it quite awkward with the time differences.  Brian’s location in a harbour surrounded by hills and boats does not help at his end. We will see how it goes.  Brian has done a sterling job so far and we are hoping to do the same for him when he leaves the Galapagos.

Not much else to report – I’m at an exiting bit in my book just now so spending a lot of time reading!  Great things these kindles – certainly cuts down on the weight you have to carry around and saves space and you don’t even have to turn a page!

24 hour distance:  183 miles      Position: S09.41.37 W119.25.56