10:24.9S 138:33.9W

We’re there! 

We dropped anchor at 0930 this morning after a gentle night with just enough wind to sail most of the time.  It is fabulous.  Quite unlike anything we have seen before.  We are in a small, very steep sided bay surrounded by high rocks, palm trees and deciduous mixed vegetation.  There is a small village nestled in one corner and a football field!  We have the company of about ten other boats and we have something in common with every one of them because the only way to get here is to sail for over 3,000 miles.  Jackie and Walter on Jean Marie dropped anchor a couple of hours after us so we have now actually met them face to face after all the time talking to them on the radio.

We are delighted that Jonathon, Kerry and Emily ( who had come through the Panama Canal as line handlers for us) are here on their yacht Sud Oest.  They gave us the traditional welcome by sounding their claxon as we arrived which was a bit emotional.  We have already been over for coffee along with locally grown, huge, grapefruit and fresh coconut that they had picked themselves.

It is tremendous to be completely flat and not to have to do everything one handed because we need to hold on to something and it will not take us long to get settled as a result.  The hull is absolutely filthy with marine life that has grown in the lovely warm water of the Pacific.  Interestingly it has grown on the white part of the hull above the waterline but where the waves and swell sweep the hull.  The antifouling is absolutely pristine so well done to Seaject Platinum at £500 a pop.  The other boats here have clearly all cleaned their hulls so we are showing ourselves up a bit.  At least we will be able to do the cleaning by swimming round the boat rather than from the dingy which is much more difficult.  Maybe tomorrow.

As we came round the headland and the water flattened out Carol suddenly got a burst of energy and started hoovering.  Weird.

We don’t know if there is wifi here but if there is we will start uploading the detailed blogs with photographs, otherwise we will carry on with the quick updates via the sat phone.

Not sure how many days we will stay; for now we will catch up on sleep, eat at normal times and do some walks ashore to get our land legs back.

We have sailed a total of 3,013 nautical miles, which is 3,460 statute miles, in 24 days.  Our longest passage so far and hopefully the longest we will do!

We never did catch a fish but something took the lure and bit through the wire trace yesterday so we at least attracted one.  Probably best it escaped though, if it could bite through the wire it was probably bigger and nastier than we wanted to deal with on a rolling sea.

All is well and we are very pleased with ourselves.