Sunday 10th June

At sea

0 42,436 S
89 42,169 W (at Midnight)

The rest of the night passed without any significant happenings. As the night sky turned into day we were still feeling the effects of the cold night – in fact we can honestly say that we didn’t get much warmer all day. The sun came out but unless you were sitting directly in the sun it was still a cold day. Both of us were tired for a good part of the morning and Gerry went back to bed for the greater part of it whilst I sat reading and watching out for anything that might disrupt our peaceful passage. Happily the morning was uneventful; there were no dolphins, no whales, no turtles, no ships, no rain and no waves. Our sailing continued to be fabulous, the wind was only 7 knots but we were doing 5.5 knots thanks to the current. The sails needed no adjusting and George (the auto pilot) took care of the steering for us. Fish patrol netted us no flying fish or squid today and whilst I had the line in the water all day we didn’t get a single bite – I don’t think the pacific fish like the new lures. I sat typing blog notes in the afternoon and the only thing we saw was one ship, possibly a trawler heading away from the Galapagos Islands. At 16.12 hrs the cry went up – "land ho!" Gerry could see a couple of land peaks in the distance, it turned out to be about 20 miles away but there was definitely land ahead of us. This was to be the excitement for the day, we wouldn’t actually arrive at our destination today but we were so very close. By he time 19.00hrs came around I was dishing up dinner in the galley when Gerry yelled out that he had seen a sea lion – of course it was nowhere to be seen by the time I got out on deck, I’m sure he is hallucinating! We were by then just at the beginning of the land which makes up the first of the islands. As night closed in around us we continued on our journey and began the final night watches for this part of our trip. Gerry had to turn the motor on at around 22.0hrs as the wind had dropped now that we were in the lee of the islands and we motored for the rest of the night. It looked like we would arrive at around 08.00hrs according to the chart plotter.