04:38.219S 105:27.304W 1000 Miles from Galapagos
Shaya Moya
Don & Susan Smyth
Wed 22 Jun 2011 21:09
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It's always so hard to start these blog entries...
Dear Diary...
We've been sailing now for 3 hours less then 5
whole days (24hour days) and we've already done 1000nm. That's a third of our
trip to the Marqueses. So the simple maths tell us we should be there in 10
days or so.
On the racing front well... We're Winning!! and by
some way. Hopefully we can keep this up but as I said there's still 2000nm
to go and they're are only 44nm behind us. They also have a faster downwind boat
so it'll be racing tactics from here on. All night sail trimming and as soon as
the conditions warrant it, we'll be hoisting Big Orange (our secret
weapon). Unless, of course, they are also reading the blog. In which case we
don't have a spinnaker...
  Dad on watch... on WATCH
It's
a bloody business but someone's gotta do it No.6 of 10
 We've still got some of him in the freezer.... 8KG
Mahi Mahi
We were also winning the fishing competition with
10 fish so far, but that has been put aside so we don't have to slow down to
reel'em in.
Otherwise life onboard is getting easier as we
settle in to our watches and chores. We've stopped alternating so we always have
the same watches for example, I have 0200-0600, 1000-1400 and 1800-2200. That
way we've been able to set our bio-clocks so that we're waking up now without
alarms for our watches. I still lie in bed until called of course.
We've been eating very well one main meal a day
either a late lunch or an early supper, with snacks in between. We've eaten
a lot of fish as you can imagine and I think Dad's starting to crave mammal
meat. I've tried to keep it interesting, making curries and stir-fry, Fish 'n
Chips etc but there's only so many ways to hide fish in a meal
so won't be long until he raids the freezer for beef.
We haven't seen any dolphins or whales. We do
occasionally have squid landing on the deck with a squirt of black ink, oh and
the constant bombardment by those kamikaze flying fish. Besides that the only
real thrill is when a reel starts to scream and we know we've hooked a
fish, or when like yesterday a captain of a cargo ship radios us to say hi, or
when we receive emails from family and friends telling us what's happening in
the real world... hint hint!!
Thanks in advance for all your wonderful
emails
R 'n
D
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