The advice from sailors who have sailed to the Galapagos before was to wait until you have a strong North breeze before you leave Panama. If not, you end up motoring most of the 880 miles due to lack of wind. While checking the weather last week I noticed some tightening isobars headed our way from the West Coast of the US. Hmmm, I thought, that should bring some wind (it sure did :). The original plan was to sail back to Isla Perlas (Pearl Islands) about 30 miles South of Panama to relax and wait there for the Northerly wind and our chance to head for the Galapagos but this wind looked too good to pass up. We had a couple days to finish up some boat projects, buy the last bit of food and supplies and get the kids school work emailed to their teachers. BTW...the kids are doing extremely well with school and they busted their humps to finish several lessons in time for our departure. We may not have high speed internet access for a while and we needed to get their tests in before we shipped out. I could not be more proud of my kids right now!!

Okay, we left Panama around 9am yesterday (Tues Feb 17) morning headed for the Galapagos. We motored for the first few hours but the wind was predicted to build. It sure did! We started with light breeze and some slow going but by 9pm, 12 hours from departure, we were screaming along under doubled reefed main and jib in washing machine type seas. The wind was blowing 30 to 35kts from the NNE and we had shortened sail to make it more comfortable. Perfect conditions for this trip!! We are headed SW so the wind is coming from behind us and driving us directly toward the Galapagos. It's now 9am Wed morning and we covered 220 miles on our first day...That's a record for us. The conditions last night were rough and bouncy but not too bad. Everybody is doing well and we caught a nice tuna and Monique made an incredible sushi dinner (picture above). The wind is down a bit since the sun came up this am. We are currently sailing along at 7 to 8 kts and we are about to bend on some more sail. The wind is predicted to be light for the next couple days. We'll keep you posted. So far so good!