Sunday lunchtime the wind was supposed to disappear…..but, instead, we had 20 knots so we picked up speed dramatically. Was great fun but sadly we had to reef down as our ETA was now early hours Monday morning.
At just before 3pm we crossed the Equator – woo hoo! There were some traditions that had to be upheld before we donated a bottle of bubbly to Neptune in return for being promoted from Pollywogs to Shellbacks. Very exciting but we restricted ourselves to one glass only in honour of the celebration as we run a dry ship when on passage. There will be pictures and a video to follow once we get back on line…… Oh yes – we think we had a spy from Neptune – a blue-faced red-footed boobie sat on our bow throughout the ceremony.
At 6pm the wind started to wane and come 9pm we only had five knots….which was good for us. Gave us great confidence in PredictWind as a weather routing system as they were very close to actually what happened.
However we annoyingly picked up a monster current and, even with bare poles and no engine, we were still making 3 knots. So we had to work hard to slow the boat which also meant hand steering as the autopilot didn’t like the angle. This continued throughout the night and we were pretty successful as, in one three-hour shift, we only covered 5 miles!
As the sun come up this morning. Monday 20 March, we were approaching the end of San Cristobal and loved the dramatic scenery and the sight of manta rays jumping clear of the water. We also saw a giant turtle come up for air not far from us.
We worked our way slowly into the anchorage in Wreck Bay and dropped the hook amongst the huge diving live aboard boats. Was nice to see Chris on Sea Bear in the anchorage as we hadn’t seen him since his transit through the Canal. We are now sitting on anchor – in quarantine – waiting for the officials to turn up. This was a 916 mile passage that took us eight days and 30 minutes from anchor up to anchor down. We did it! Woo hoo! We are very excited to be here and can’t wait to explore. I think we might deserve a beer tonight.
One water taxi has already been by to find out our agent’s name…..and Richard has deployed sea lion defences on the sugar scoop to try and keep them off Morphie – sea lions rule here LOL. Have seen a few black heads checking us out already.
When we get on line again and catch up, I’ll post a blog of the photos you’ve missed and then normal service will be resumed.
Bye for now Jan