Tintin - Galapagos out of sight

The islands are over 50 miles behind as as dawn is breaking this
morning, and the other boats in the fleet are now beyond our limited
horizon too. It's us and the Pacific, stretching on in every direction,
a sight we will be getting well accustomed to.

10 knots of gentle breeze over our left shoulder is pushing us along,
and together with around 3 knots of westbound current we are
managing to make decent progress in the right direction. The strength
of this southern equatorial current is amazing. It stretches in a
relatively narrow band with no obvious land formations to guide it, and
gives us the bonus of a good walking pace's worth of extra speed.
Paul,thank you for advising where to find the best of it.

We have started our watch system devised by Steve of 3 hourly shifts
from 6pm to midday, followed by three 2 hour shifts in the afternoon.
This pattern will allow our body clocks to get into a bit of a routine
by having the same shift hours each day for one week, after which we
will slip back by one shift to give some variety. We will put the ship's
clock back one hour in a week's time and continue to do that once a
week. The Marquesas are at 138 degrees west, another 45 degrees of
longitude west from here and the clocks there run at 3.5 hours behind
Galapagos time.

Breakfast time. Stocks of Jimmy's marmalade are
running perilously low.