One Week & Still Moving On

Current position: 00 39.00 N
085 21.590 W

I should never have mentioned how gorgeous it was out here. Ever since then, it has been horrible! The wind, waves, currents and anything else you can think of have been right on our nose and it has been almost impossible to sail in the direction we'd hoped.

Galapagos sits just south of the equator at 90 degrees west and all information indicates that one should cross the equator at 84 degrees west in order to take advantage of the best conditions at this time of the year. Well, it's been nigh impossible to head south given our current conditions without motoring into the heavy seas and currents. Calypso simply doesn't carry enough fuel to motor all the way so we've had to take what we could and sail further west. Our current position probably means that we will be offering libations to Neptune this evening and, hopefully, finding that elusive wind which will help us get to our destination by Wednesday.

Vagabond is still within a few miles of us and managed to pass us yesterday afternoon. She seems to be able to point into the wind much better than us as we think our tired old head sail is a tad weary and we dare not haul it in as tightly as we'd like. Bamboozle, on the other hand, will be dropping anchor this afternoon so they've really done well. The advantage of leaving just half a day ahead of us really paid off for them: they have a much faster boat and they also managed to pick up the winds before they reversed. We now have another two boats nearby but they have motored non stop but even still, they battled against the currents. Whatever happened to that idyllic Pacific sailing we've always read about?

All's well on board but we still haven't managed to catch a fish. Lil on Vagabond has just announced that she landed a big-eyed tuna just large enough to feed the three of them aboard so we live in hopes too. Some of the time it was just too rough to have the lines out - if we'd caught anything, it would have been fairly scary trying to land it.

Let's hope the next time I write, we'll be safely anchored at Wreck Bay (hell of a name of an anchorage - it doesn't give out much confidence) and watching the sea lions at play.