05:04.20S 97:45.82W

 

We spent the last few days in Santa Cruz enjoying the antics of the inhabitants of the fish market loitering for the off-cuts, provisioning at the farmers’ market and dining in the street filled with restaurants serving fresh fish and lobsters, cooked to order.  We were in good order and ready to leave by Friday evening, giving us Saturday as a free day before the start at noon on Sunday.  Sadly this was not to be as a local tour boat dragged its anchor and crashed into us damaging our pushpit. Thanks to our resident linguist, Pietro, Tim was able to have a meeting with the owner of the boat who subsequently wrote an extremely fanciful report for the Port Captain. Not surprisingly, it bore no resemblance to our own which luckily was largely pictorial therefore leaving the Port Captain in little doubt as to the events of the evening. We will now have to wait until Tahiti for the repairs to be carried out but the owner has agreed to pay for everything ...... doesn’t seem very likely to me but we may yet be surprised.

Saturday afternoon brought further challenges when various electronics failed, terminally. Thanks to the brains of Tim, an aero space engineer in the fleet and another friend and expert in the fleet, the three of them got everything going again. For a few hours it was touch and go as to whether we would make the start. A really sad feeling. However, we crossed the line flying our pink & grey asymmetric which was hoisted to applause from the local spectator boat.

We are now on day 4 of the longest passage, we have found the wind and are roaring along at good speeds. All we’re missing now is a fish or two. It’s the longest stretch we’ve had without catching anything.