Thursday, June 15, 2006

Zefferin take the lead

We spoke to Zefferin early this morning and discovered that our paths had crossed in the night and we were now too far south and east of them. We continued to try to converge during the morning, but our fixes were no closer at midday so we decided that though it would have been fun, a mid-ocean rendez-vous was not meant to be. We should see them pretty soon in Fatu Hiva anyway. We never managed to speak to them on the VHF and we never saw their nav. lights. Hmmm.........are Zefferin really on passage, we ask ourselves or are they still enjoying the Galapagos? We would wonder if it wasn't for Revision II whom Zefferin met up with about a week ago.

Meanwhile we are passing milestones rapidly with under 500 miles to go now. We celebrated this by sharing a cold can of beer at lunchtime. The weather has been perfect all day; a consistent south easterly wind of about 20 knots, big, thrilling sea and a cloudless sky. It's like a different world from the squally mess we were trapped in a couple of days ago. All is well within the flotilla though most of us sound well ready to make landfall. If we keep up our speed and arrive on Sunday/Monday, this passage will have been considerably shorter than the Atlantic crossing despite it being a thousand miles longer - it's amazing what a consistent wind can do.

Fishing update - several bites but all got away AND we lost another lure! Reckon a) we're going too fast and b)we're hooking some big fish which are too strong for our equipment. We don't want to catch anything too big because it would be difficult to dispatch and the meat would be wasted as we don't have a freezer, so we're reluctant to upgrade the line.

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Position @ 20:35 UTC: S08°39' W129° 03'
Daily distance run: 151
Distance to go: 580
Cumulative distance: 2269
Engine hours:0
Wind: SE 15-20 knots
Weather: moderate sea, 0% cloud cover, 1010 millibars

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