Greetings from yacht Ensemble!
Well, our luck with the wind seems to have run out. We are the furthest south of the fleet - which should mean steady trade winds and a good current. Unfortunately no one told the weather gods this - and we are
languishing in breezes of 10-15 knots - while the rest of the fleet (courtesy of a storm near the equator) - are enjoying 20 - 25 knot winds.
Still, it makes for fairly comfortable if not speedy sailing. It also destroys my theory on us travelling too fast to catch fish. They're still not biting.
We decided to have a go at putting up the Parasailor (the first time since it went overboard). Unfortunately the wind picked up and the sail was too twisetd to get up. Once we put the sail away the winds dropped again (Murphy's sailing law).
I took up my watch as usual at 4am. We are now more than 1000nm away from Gapagos - and further from anywhere else - in one of the most remote places in the Pacific. You can imagine my surprise when up on the radar pops a 'Maru' - Japanese freighter - and he is on a collision course. He passes 1 nm from us. What are the odds?
We also had a minor disaster on the cooking front - with weavils found in all the flour in one of our cupboards. Fortunately we have flour elsewhere - but we lost about half our supply (we still have 7kg).
We had a scare with the water maker when it wouldn't start. I mananged to get it working again after swapping the filters. A bit of a surprise - as we'd changed them out in Panama.
Well hopefully today will be a better day.
Cheers
Dave
10March2012 008