Mexico to Galapagos - Day 18

[Mar 19]

Total Distance: 1523 nm
24 hr Distance: 69 nm (DMG: 35)
Distance to go: 406 nm
Lat/Long: 3°56.06'N / 94°22.51'W

Another day of head winds, so e've zigged and zagged, while making very little headway. Although, there is enough wind to be sailing for most of the day, which is great, even if it isn't in our preferred direction. It's quite a mind trip to be finally so close, yet not be able to make headway to the finish line.

So for now, we take pleasure in the simple things...a piece of chocolate after dinner, cold orange pop in the heat of the afternoon, dolphins playing in the bow wake, refreshing evening showers in the cockpit, and lots of great books.

Mexico to Galapagos - Day 17

[Mar 18]

Total Distance: 1454 nm
24 hr Distance: 118 nm (DMG: 103)
Distance to go: 438 nm
Lat/Long: 4°27.85'N / 94°36.26'W
Engine hours: 6

An uneventful sailing day. The wind came and went. When we had wind, it was from the South East...where we hoped to go, so we are once again sailing away from our intended course line. The night was finally uneventful. Our first night without rain squalls and lightning in five days. But that also meant that we had light winds, and were adrift for several hours. You just can't have it all out here!

We finished our potatoes today (hash browns), and still have a few onions, limes, garlic, head of cabbage, apples and chayote. Other than that we're into canned goods. No shortage of food, as we have provisioned for a couple months. We experimented with a can of hot dogs. John bought these to invoke memories of his childhood boating days, which always involved yummy cheese dogs, and to this day, he loves hot dogs on the boat. BUT...these were not up to the task. At least he only bought one can!!

Food storage was a bit of an experiment. Tomatoes lasted really well wrapped in newspaper. I wish I had bought more of them. Carrots didn't last at all...very surprising! Everything else lasted as expected, and or the most part, we used it up before it went bad. Of course, BIMBO bread (think
wonderbread) lasted forever, but we only had one loaf, so we're now baking
foccacia.

Mexico to Galapagos - Day 16

[Mar 17]

Total Distance: 1336 nm
24 hr Distance: 83 nm (DMG 72nm)
Distance to go: 541 nm
Lat/Long: 5°39.55'n / 95°50.70'W
Engine hours: 1

A slow day today - we motored on and off for about 5 hours today (only one hour was prior to noon - when we took our noon position above). We did have some nice sailing today, interspersed with drifting. We are still seeing lots of grey areas on the horizon, and we frequently run through these squalls, which cause a bit of a fire drill around here as we run around closing hatches and ports, and try to protect the cushions from getting too wet.

A wild night as we sailed through a squall with lightning all around us, and gale force winds battering the boat. We ended up cranking up the motor to race ahead of the storm. Luckily these squalls don't move fast here, and we were out of it soon enough. Eerie.

Finished our tuna today, so we'll start fishing again tomorrow.

Mexico to Galapagos - Day 15

[Mar 16]

Total Distance: 1253 nm
24 hr Distance: 100 nm (DMG: 92 nm)
Distance to go: 611 nm
Lat/Long: 6°40.15'N / 92°29.27'W

Good winds for most of the day, until evening when the wind died off, as is typical of the last few days. Beautiful, clear, blue skies today...which is the first time in a while. Lately, it has been very cloudy with visible storm cells all around us.

Mexico to Galapagos - Day 14

[Mar 15]

Total Distance: 1153
24 hr Distance: 75
24 hr DMG: 31!!
Distance to go: 702
Lat/Long: 7°35.24'N / 97°43.80'W

As mentioned in yesterday's post...we did a lot of zigging and zagging yesterday...so you see how our total distance travelled - 75 miles - is way different than the actual progress that we made towards our goal - 31 miles. Oh well...such is sailing!!

Today was a phenomenal day. It must have been due to all the good wind wishes we've received from all our friends (and a wind dance from Adios!). We've had great winds all day, from first light until now. I hope it continues through the night. Lots of rain squalls this morning. We were both so tired from last night, that we didn't bother trying to collect the water, instead I spent most of the afternoon napping. The good news is that we caught a beautiful Skipjack Tuna today. We had the most delicious sushi for dinner!

Mexico to Galapagos - Day 13

[Mar 14]

Total Distance: 1078
24 hr Distance: 85
Distance to go: 732
Lat/Long: 8°00.00'N / 98°01.23'W

A pretty crazy day. The wind picked up, and we found ourselves navigating between a series of storm cells all day. For the most part they were pretty benign, and gave us the opportunity to collect delicious water for our tanks. But we did find that our track was an unefficient series of zigs and zags as we accomodated the shifting winds. In fact at one point, we did a complete circle, as even our autopilot was confused!!

The evening was similar - a large squall with frequent bursts of lighting in our path forced us to tuck tail and run the other way - after all, our mast is a big lightning rod. We spent a few hours running away from the lighting, back the way we had come. When we finally felt safe to resume our course, we were only 5 miles from our noon position!

Our mainsail furling system broke today. Not too major, and we knew it was coming, it has been looking very tired in recent weeks. We had already asked Dom to bring us some needed parts when he meets us in the Galapagos. In the meantime, John was able to tap out the mast, and re-attach the winch...we have furling again.