22nd June 2017
Current Position : 03.03.7N / 080.03.85 W @2100 Panama local time.
Well last night lived up to our expectations, it was wild, wooly and rough. Very hard for the off watch to have a decent few hours sleep. We try to maintain our watches at five hours on and five off give or take and that combo works well for both of us.
Once again we had no birds seeking a safe haven for the night but we did wake up to our decks resembling a graveyard for quite a number of squid who must have been slammed onboard by the breaking waves. Their ink stain leaves quite a tough mess to clean up.
Today we pulled down the mainsail and Liam fixed our batcar that detached itself yesterday. A couple of screws had worked themselves loose and were just hanging in there by their toes. The captain had the foresight to put gaffa tape over them when we spotted the issue to prevent them falling into a watery grave. That made for an easy fix earlier today. Job done so back up went the main and off we went again.
Apart from squalls here and there the day has been pretty quite. Our sailmail program on our nav computer has begun to play up a bit and we suspect there is some in house fighting between a couple of parties on the hard drive. Without sailmail we would have zip contact with the outside world when it comes to emails. So rather than pull our hair out over the issue yours truly fired up her recently acquired HP computer, tweaked a couple of things on the program she'd previously installed just for moments like this and now we are back in business.
Our course over the last few days has been inching us towards the Columbian coast. It's a place we really don't want to go to by boat at this point in time. If we keep on this course then by midday we'll be about 40 miles off said coastline. Late this evening we weighed up the pros and cons about whether to keep tracking south in search of our favored route or to bite the bullet and head west now. Decision made, at 2100hrs we put our indicator on and turned right. So far it's been the right choice. The boat now has a lovely settled motion which is way more conducive to sleep and daily life aboard in general.
The Galapagos now lie almost dead ahead. Distance to run is a mere 583nm and we have smiles on our dials.
To see where we are follow us on our tracker at :
https://aus-share.inreach.garmin/GoneWithTheWind
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