Passage to Galapagos – Day 5

Time: 6:00 P.M. EST, Position: North 1degree 15.3 minutes West
86 degrees 43.6 minutes. Heading 231 degrees

Here we are in day 5 of our passage already. The wind has
increased to a nice 10 or 12 knots, but since about 10:00 a.m.
today it has been pretty much in our face so we had to pull down
our sails and motor. We hope the wind will switch to a better
direction soon so we can put up the sails again. It is so much
nicer sailing than motoring. It is interesting to note the
weather changes – although we are getting closer and closer to
the equator it is actually feeling much cooler. That is because
the ocean temperature has been dropping steadily as the Humboldt
current brings in cool water as we approach the Galapagos and
the resulting wind blowing off the water is significantly cooler
than before. It felt comfortably cool all day long, and we will
have to put on long pants and sweatshirts for our night watches.
We have had some seagulls following us for the past few days
and we were enjoying their company until we realized they have
been using our deck for target practice. We also found another
squid on the deck this morning. I guess this is all just a
little bit of a teaser for the wildlife we are about to see once
we reach the Galapagos.
Last night we saw a few ships – early in the evening we went by
three fishing boats ( how and why they were fishing hundreds of
miles from shore is unknown) and later a big cargo ship passed
in front of us.
Our crew, Annabelle and Matt are great helps – keeping watches,
helping with sail changes, cleaning dishes and being good sports
about everything. Matt has a fantastic set of music on his IPOD
which will help augment the 17 gigabytes of great music I have
on my IPOD. We plan on listening to every note during the coming
months. Tomorrow we cross the equator! We haven’t decided yet
how to celebrate, but my guess is it will involve food.

L.