It is day 2 and all is well. We headed out yesterday mid-morning under pretty cloudy skies since they have a tendency to hang out around Isabela. Over the course of the day, as the island got fainter over our stern, so did the clouds. It was a beautiful, clear night with the southern cross in full view and it is a bright, sunny day today. Yesterday, nearing dusk, a mahi jumped on our line and I had to come running from the shower to help Jon pull it in. So it was pan fried fish for dinner with Trader Joe's brown rice & sesame green beans. And orange cake for dessert later on watch. There were lots of seabirds yesterday, not so many today.
There were plenty of fishing lines to dodge last night however. After dark, Slick radioed us from a few miles ahead to give us warning that there were some sort of longlines or nets set up with strobed buoys and men in pangas (small boats with outboards that tend the lines). One panga had come alongside him to tell him in Spanish that he needed to alter course and sail around all the buoys. So we all did this. Over the night there were a few more of these fishing set-ups to dodge. It's really hard in the dark because you can't see anything. Radar doesn't pick these up. You're just sailing along hoping you don't snag anything. We have a towable generator to help us make power underway but we don't like to use it at night in case we did encounter a problem. But Slick was using theirs and he did snag a rogue piece of rope last night that stopped him dead in his tracks. They got it off OK within a few minutes. Other than the fishing lines, it was a nice night.
We tried out 6 hour watches for the first time. Other than the fact that I had to get Jon up for the first set of strobes, it seemed to work well so we're going to do it again tonight. I do the first watch 730-0130, and then Jon does the next one. We each take a little nap during the day. We changed course a little this morning to head more of a rhumb line to the Marquesas rather than go further South. Boats that are ahead of us checking in on the SSB radio net this morning where we give our position, were saying that they have good wind and no squalls on the rhumb line. This changed our heading from a close reach to a broad reach so now we're going slower but directly toward our destination so it probably breaks even. We have a fair current which can spoil you- you get this extra boost in speed without doing anything!  It has been a very nice sail so far and it's good to be able TO sail and make good time rather than use our fuel to motor or be wallowing in not enough wind. I'm sure we'll get a chance to do all of that in the coming days but we'll take this moment of pristine sailing and run with it!