Pacific

We knew that sailing this part of the trip would be difficult as the winds are notoriously light to non-existent. We did well to start with, sailing very slowly, sometimes at 1 knot but with a helpful current. During a couple of nights, when the sails were flapping too annoyingly, we motored for a while but we were doing fine. Once over the equator, where we expected to find a good current and possibly wind, we found neither, just a strong counter-current. We therefore decided that drifting fast in the wrong direction was stupid and we'd rather spend more time on the Galapagos. We motored a lot more after that.

There was a total lunar eclipse just after we set out but of course only the 'before' pictures came out!	Malpelo rock about halfway from anywhere, in the middle of nowhere in particular.

Let sleeping Fosters lie, even when they are supposed to be on watch!	unless you come armed with a cuppa.

Crossing the line and a libation to Neptune	And here he comes now, probably to complain about the quality of the wine

Ee! the things you do to amuse yourselves when you don't have a telly!

We have had a request for some interior pictures of the boat so here is the bow cabin/music room!	The navigation table and garlic storage hat.

Erik busy in the galley...	...and resting from his labours in the main cabin. All the stuff under the table is food for which we couldn't find any other place.

The only dramatic event so far was the G key spring on Foss' saxophone breaking. As far as Foss was concerned this qualified as an emergency so the satellite phone was used to get advice from the nice people at Hanson on how to remove the stub without damaging the instrument. Here is the result, temporarily mended with a piece of spring steel.
These are the highlights of a fairly uneventful passage. What happens really is that you see an awful lot of sea. So if you haven't got anything better to do have a look at
THE SEA
and after 11 days of it THE GALAPAGOS ISLANDS