Day 3 - Galapagos Passage

Date: 21st February 2023
Distance travelled in last 24 Hours: 116 miles

It always happens on the first night. First of all I still couldn't get the SSB to work and the sat phone was not set up yet so no blog to our subscribers.

Anyway shortly after 8pm we decided to gybe and somehow after a nice gybe the wind steering went crazy, we lost steering and the wheel almost came off. No idea how! The wind strengthened and all hell broke loose for a while, 20 plus knots apparent downwind and the autopilot couldn't hold it either. Very hard hand steering on a lumpy course. Gill and Sally bore the brunt of it and were ready for their watches to end. It eased a bit for Peter's watch and as I came on we gybed again to avoid the traffic separation zone and the autopilot did its job. Later we discovered a batten had come out of the sail and was lost. No damage to the sail though.

The wind stayed lower at around 15 knots for most of the day as we slowly adapted to the broken sleep regime. 3 hours in the day, 2 at night. The current was with us and by evening time we had 2.4 knots of current to whisk us along at 5.5-6.0 knots.

Books were read, chats were had, plans were made and we started to learn more about each other's family. Tom, Peter and Sally's son, sails very fast foiling boats for Team Canada and sadly we heard his boat had been destroyed in Australia whilst being lifted out of the water in a squall. He has rope burns on his hands but is otherwise OK.

Fish? No. Birds? No. Whales? No [no whales, no whales, no whales].

We have managed to contact Kevin and Shawna on Meraki 2. Two boats? It's a race. And they are winning at present having taken a straighter course across the traffic separation zone where we opted to gybe our way past it.

We all seem to be getting on with each other well and Gill and I are learning more sailing techniques from P&S.

So after a hectic first night things are settling down nicely. We have less than 700 miles to go now.

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