We left San Cristobal (Galapagos) midday on Tuesday, it's currently Saturday morning - 2350NM to go (700 traveled) and all is well. It's been a very fast and easy passage so far, we're on a broad reach flying the gennaker and main during the day then furling the gennaker and unfurling our genoa for nights (being a little conservative this far out). We haven't had much wind above 15kts yet but the forecast is to rise to 20kts shortly which will be perfect. What has been most welcome is the south equatorial current flowing on almost exactly the same heading at around 1-2kts. That means we can be lazily sailing at 7kts and making 9kts over the ground! Our best watch average has been 9.5kts, not bad for a fully laden cruising yacht :) To be honest the wind angle has also been a pleasant surprise, we just assumed this would be a dead run like the Atlantic. We're sailing now on about 140 true (110 apparent - just perfect for our gennaker) and with the slight seas it's a very comfortable motion.

Thursday morning was exciting, we landed a 9ft Black Marlin! It took 30 mins to reel him in and we had to furl sails and motor backwards to help but we eventually got him to the bathing platform. It was a huge beast and very strong, we were wondering how on earth we were going to get our lure out of his jaws, but after some indecision and a failed attempt with the gaffe hook he flailed and snapped the line (60kg leader line). Shame he escaped with the last of our good lures still in his mouth (on the first day we lost two lures in quick succession to what we're guessing were similar sized beasts). In a way we were glad not to have to get close to his mouth but we're going to miss those lures, nothing else we have works half so well. We've a fishing comp with Ganga and feeling pretty confident he was a winner. Despite "letting him go" we got to see him beside the bathing platform which is 8ft wide and he was about a foot longer!

We haven't see any other yachts, despite knowing about 4 others who set off at a similar time we've encountered nothing. We've proximity alarms set on the Radar and AIS which will warn us in advance of any approaching vessel but so far the only alarms triggered have been by the radar finding a rain cloud. There is so little to do on deck it's hard remembering who's on watch.

It's very nice to see the Southern Cross though it still sits very low on the horizon.