Pacific Puddle Jump, 3100 nautical miles – 28th of May to 14th of June (16 days and 12 hours)

After stocking up on some more food for the big crossing (food is expensive in Galapagos, I refused to get more Nutella at $16.00 per little glass!! But we got lots of nice bananas in all ripeness stages, the bananas are just delicious here and other nice fruit and veggies). Then we set sail and were on our way. As we had been at anchor for a while again, we had to get our sea legs again, so Jack, Lisa and I laid flat for a few days to wait for the sea sickness to go. But then it went better and we even got some school work done. Finally the wind turned from the east (we had to sail a fair bit south first to be able to catch the trade winds) and we could put the parasailor up. Then we got the speed! The parasailor is just great! With an average speed between 9 and 11 knots the boat just glides along beautiful!

But of course the wind did not stay all the time as we wanted it, so it became often a daily routine of Parasailor up, Gennaker down, Gennaker up, Parasailor down, Head sail up, Main sail up, Main sail down! I mean, you know, we can’t get bored!!! Kept us fit! Sometimes when we had to get especially the parasailor down because of the wind getting too strong, it was really hard work to get the sock over the sail with the wind blowing into it.

 Another beautiful sunset

But all in all it was a very good crossing, we cooked beautiful meals, had many movie nights and the time went quick. Besides overtaking one sail boat on the second day, we did not see one boat on the whole crossing and also the wildlife was reduced to some dolphins, flying fish and squid. One night Lisa slept in Jacks back cabin as it was too bumpy in the front cabins to sleep a lot of the time. Anyway, in the morning Lisa opens her eyes and looks at something next to her on her pillow, which she reckons looked like a big blob of snott!  But the snott had big googely eyes and Jack touched it and it was a little squid! Disgusted he went into his bathroom to wash his hands just to find 3 more in the sink! We had lot of the squid on the boat. Don’t know, if they just got washed with the waves on the boat? And then of course flying fish all the time! We put our flyscreens on the hatches to not end up having them lying in bed, like Ben had one morning! 

It was great to eventually see land again! And we did the whole journey very fast, 3100 nmiles in 16.5 days, which means we had an average speed of 8 knots! Pretty good! 

We lived like kings: cakes...

home made pizzas

Schoolwork

Breakfast

We arrived at Nuku Hiva short after midnight, found an anchor place in the bay and fell exhausted into bed, to wait and see what this new island will bring....