Two weeks at sea, and 2,000 miles since the Galapagos. You can imagine that we are counting the miles until our arrival, and last night we cracked the distance to go by dropping to 3 figures. On this 3,000 mile epic, we have been further from anywhere than you can be almost anywhere on earth.

It's extraordinary how the days seem to whiz by, there are jobs to do when the weather permits, repairs to make, winches to service, and countless jobs that as usual we haven't done, but there's still time!

Our night time is divided into three 3 hour watches, which begin after supper at 21.00. Giles or I do the first watch, followed by Gus from midnight to 3a.m. then one or other of us do 3 a.m. to 6 a.m., this is definitely the best watch. Depending on whether we have kept up to date with our clock changes you get the beginnings of dawn before the next watch starts at 6 a.m., when sunrise proper happens. Then you get the chance of another snooze before the day begins properly, whereas if you start the watch system at 21.00 you get up at 6 a.m. and don't want to have another kip later, so you're sleep is down. This can of course be remedied by a siesta, but somehow when there are only 12 hours of daylight, time is precious, even if all you're doing is reading!

I have managed to make three cushions, but it then became too rough for more sewing, so yesterday I spent hours bread-making, and making some banana bread, in an everlasting attempt to use the bananas up before they are all past it! It's all a battle as the seas are coming from our quarter, and we surge down a wave then lurch the other way in a trough, rolling violently as we go, so cooking in these circumstances is interesting!

When we left the Galapagos, we looked like a travelling vegetable stall, with most of our veg hanging in nets under the bimini and solar panels, at the back of the cockpit, but bit by bit we have whittled it away, our original array of pineapples, bananas, limes, cabbages etc have either been eaten or been transferred to the fridge as that empties. I think we'll still have plenty of fresh things by the time we arrive, which isn't bad, considering that some of it was bought in Panama over a month ago now! We bought a box of green tomatoes there, which started life in a net, and then after ripening,moved to the fridge, and are still going strong.
Cucumbers seem indestructible, they don't even need a fridge, just air for everything is the key to survival, and having bought things from a market un-refrigerated, and fresh. Not many of our veg and fruit at home are ever bought like that.

On our trip from Panama with Tim and Rowland on board, I was carefully untying a pineapple without realising they had been tied on in series, so another one fell into the water. We immediately turned the boat round to do a man-overboard to retrieve it, but we have no net with which to scoop it out, so Tim valiantly lent over, while the pineapple was just at his fingertips. You can imagine the rest, a huge splosh and over he went, but he did get the pineapple!

One thing we're certainly not doing is starving or suffering from scurvy! However, I do have to report a certain amount of problems with our fishing, we started well, and were convinced that Gus had all the 'know how' to maintain a fresh fish a day for us, but his undoubted talents have wavered somewhat. We have lost a reasonable quota of lures, so we have had plenty of huge fish that have got away (we've all heard that one before!) But the real frustration is the bragging that goes on on 'the net', which we find it hard to compete with!

The 'net' is our daily fix of other voices from other yachts. For those of us with SSB radio, there is a check in for yachts doing the same 3,000 miles as us, or variants on it, we all give our position, report on wind conditions and announce our distance to go. If anyone has problems this is dealt with as priority at the beginning. One yacht lost a shroud at about the half way point, and another yacht who was fairly near, like 100 miles away, went to assist.

We then grab our friends for a chat afterwards, and of course we plot each others positions, and see how we are doing in relative terms, so there is a certain amount of pondering over tactics and competition of who's going fastest and why! The net is run by yachties for ourselves, so when some of the organisers arrive, then its up to someone else to take over the show.

Imagine my surprise last night when I actually saw lights of another vessel, it was like hallucinating that I'd seen land, but bit by bit we overtook it, and then when dawn broke, I could see that it was a sailing boat rather than a fishing boat. I instantly tried to call them on the VHF, with nil response, and when our net was on we reported this mystery yacht, which wasn't part of our net. Eventually, a French voice came over the VHF, and they had finally spotted us, so we had a long chat. I'm not too sure what they do about watch keeping though, as this was at least 7 hours after I had first seen them!

Now that we're into the final third of our voyage, one can mentally allow oneself to think about land and walking up a hill, and moving without having to hold onto something all the time, and the sight and smell of somewhere new. The scale of the ocean is impressive, and the thought of the first settlers arriving in rafts to these remote islands is very real to us. We have all been reading Thor Heyerdahl's book Fatu-Hiva, which sets the scene, and poses plenty of questions. In the 1930s the Marquesas were some of the most unspoilt in the world, just because they are so far from anywhere. It
will be fascinating to see what they are like today. They're certainly not on any tourist trail!

I hope we'll be able to see their megalithic stone statues, similar to those on Easter Island, and of course we will visit Paul Gaugin's grave on Hiva Oa. A whole new culture awaits us.

p.s. Remember to send Emily your sweepstake responses, who knows, perhaps this might have given you some clues . . .