01 06.76n 29 53.69w

 

Yesterday saw us cross the equator at 00.00s/n and 28 36.9w and we celebrated with champagne, crocodile pate and bacon rolls getting the obligatory photo of the crew either side of the GPS screen in the cockpit.

We slowed down overnight wanting to be at the St Peter and St Paul Archipellego at first light rather than in the dark. Look on wikipedia or google it to see pictures. The chart said there was a light 29m high visible from 15nm flashing every 10 seconds! In actual fact the lights we saw were two fishing boats off to the N of the rocks so lucky we didnt plan a night arrival. The research station was manned the light didnt work and despite a very enthusiastic team of 4 Brazilian scientists trying to converse with us and inviting us to come aboard the station on the rocks we unfortunately could do nothing but take photos. There was a bit of a swell and the mooring they kept asking us to pick up was a ship one and would have required us launching the dinghy to get a rope on and trusting the boat to it while we braved a ladder up from the sea to the rock in a bit of a heaving inlet. We were all disappointed but Thomos (who tried gallantly to make us understand had only a few words of English and I could only remember thank you in Portuguese) more so. We had to sail on past with them calling us for a while hoping to get us to understand we could use the mooring. Still it was a bit of a one off seeing it at all.

Wind is fickle but we are progressing with our current waypoint as Grenada and Prickly bay some 2006 miles to the North and West of us.

All well on board.