Las Perlas to Galapagos day 3
24 May 2011 | 03 23.12N 081 29.63W
David
Yesterday morning after writing the blog which I am doing every morning at 6am by the way I was so sick of pounding into the waves I raised the sails, shut off the engine and told the crew we were heading directly for the Marquesas. That lasted for about an hour as we were only able to sail NW back up into the ITCZ which I was not keen on doing. So back to plan A , the Galapagos with a different strategy. Instead of motoring directly at our destination we would tack back and forth but still using the motor to enable us to point higher. Well it was more a comfortable ride and we covered a lot of miles but in the end after doing it all day we were still only 50 miles closer, the same as we would have been if we had motored directly towards the destination. At sunset we shut down the engine and sailed SSE all night loosing ground (VMG of -.5 to -2 knots all night) with the idea that we would not catch any nets in the prop if it was not turning. This has been our first night doing any speed since the log. The other reason to head south is looking for a favorable current which we have not found yet. Yesterday we passed a point on the chart that we had reached in March 08 after 34 hours sailing and no engine hours. This time we were at 60 hours, all of them with the engine on. Just pulled down the latest grib, shows we should have 5 knots from the west but we have 15-20 from the WSW. 547 miles to go.