Days 14 & 15 Crossing the Equator 00:13.52S 89:25.91W

Five Islands
John & Sue
Sun 3 Jun 2012 10:00
We crossed the Equator at 1614 hours on Saturday 2 June. We actually crossed it 3 times, as we shut down the engine just after we crossed and the current promptly sent us back into the northern hemisphere at 2.5 knots. We had planned on just drifting around for awhile and party on, but that wasn't possible, so we have been slowly sailing under the headsail only since then. We are now 61 nm from Academy Bay but only 26nm from the northern point of Isla San Cristobal. so we should be able to see land when the sun comes up. We want to arrive at about 0800 Monday morning so we will have to kill some time today (Sunday) as we don't want to get to close to the islands during the night due to the currents. We will have a wash day and tidy up the boat before the Galapagos officials give us the once over. We will have to eat all of our remaining mangoes today as they tend to confiscate them.
We have had a great last couple of days, really pleasant sailing weather with calm seas and light winds. Our main problem has been slowing the boat down so we don't arrive to early. We have just about sorted out the issue with the generator, we have a fuel line blockage somewhere. We ran it for an hour yesterday before it shut down again but then it ran fine for a couple of hours on the fuel line from the starboard engine so we still have a bit of work to do, but at least we have it running now and have topped up our water tanks again. We had a seal follow us for quite a while yesterday, and we also saw a shark swimming around on the surface, which dampened our enthusiasm for an equator swim.
Had a really good equator crossing party last night, after giving thanks to King Neptune and cracking a bottle of champagne, we had numerous games of Sequence and ox tail stew for dinner. Conditions are fantastic, we are currently sailing along at 2 knots under what looks like a full moon with really calm seas. It is just before 5am Sunday morning, and Sue will be up at 6am to start her watch and we will watch the sunrise and hopefully get our first look at the volcanic peaks of the Galapagos in just over an hours time. So life is good on Liseron at the moment, everyone is well and enjoying the trip. We plan on spending a couple of days (maybe 3) on Galapagos and then we we head off towards French Polynesia which is about 3000 nm away. We are currently just over 800 nm from Panama City, but we should make much better times now with favourable current and SE winds.

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