Day 12

I've had some complaints about the lack of numbers...... One from a librarian and one from a serial complainer. I really want to make them happy, so when Anne complained as well it was settled.
We're at 7 deg zero minutes S, 114.32W, doing 6.4kn, 252 degrees which is pretty much exactly where we should be heading. It's actually a great day for numbers. Last night we passed the half way mark from Galapagos to Marquesas, so less than 1500 miles to go. Marquesas are about half way from Panama to Australia so we've covered more than a quarter of that distance too. The Pacific is quite large, as we are noticing! It covers one third of the earth's surface and is bigger than all the land masses put together. Watching it go by bucketful by bucketful is really an experience I won't forget. This 3000 miles is the biggest single hop any sane yachts-person makes, there is no choice. The eastern half of the Pacific is more or less empty. You have Galapagos,then further south there are Easter, Pitcairn, Robinson Crusoe's islands or north, Cocos and a shoal we noticed on the chart a days sail from us coming out to Galapagos, but the rest of it is just water. Once we reach Marquesas it becomes a pleasant island hop all the way home. Two, three, seven days sail and another country.
The last 24 hours have been a bit tough, we should have taken the reacher down but.... The reacher is a great sail, it's our light wind trade wind cruising headsail and gives at least one knot over the normal genoa. One knot equals 24 miles in a day, so over these 3 or so weeks around 500 miles or more than 3 days saved. So we don't like to take it down unless the wind is going over 20. Trouble is, it's a bit longer than it's allotted space, from mast top to the bow, so it's furling device only works if there is not enough wind. Getting the reacher down in too much wind is like taking down a spinnaker, you can end up with it in the water for example. Since we do not want to injure ourselves or the boat way out here we tend to leave it up. So last night the wind came up to 25-30, seas were 3 m and a 3-4 m swell which combined with too much sail up front made a most unrelaxing night. No idle dozing, or gazing at falling stars! Wind is back down to 20 kn now, sea is starting to relax and autopilot is coping.


This morning I spotted a glint on the sea and headed for a little bundle of net floats. Anything that floats out here attracts fish. Sure enough a fish took the lure, the Ellida Mini Special, but it spent the next few minutes mostly in the air and managed to shake the hook. I did have Steve's prototype YockBait on that line, but it was showing 'tendencies' (mixing my Tolstoys here) and liked so swim around and around the other line creating a nasty tangle that I tended to find after dark. I tried to adjust the said tendencies, but failed, so ProtoYock was retired and the nearest thing to hand was the Ellida Mini Special. This is a small but very red triple hook on a light wire trace with a few strips of wine cask. (De Bortoli, Premium Reserve Chardonnay, 2001, 2 litre, a very shiny year) I really just wanted to see such a basic lure catch a fish, but since it lost the fish it is also retired in disgrace and a gracefully feathered pink leadhead is out in place.
We do have flying fish to eat most days, they are very delicious, a bit like whiting.
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