After a no-nonsense check out on Monday 27^th Feb, we set off on what is probably going to be the longest sail of our lives!  But with non of the frenetic activity to prepare this time – we had changed/sorted/fixed the few things from the last leg whilst we were in the Galapagos – so it was up with the anchor and off!   Half an hour later we had hooked our dinner – a nice little cero!

This leg is around 3000 miles, but the trick is to get south through the doldrums as efficiently as possible, then it’s a left turn into the SE trades and off. After much studying of the grib files we came to the conclusion that we would probably not have any wind for the first 300 or so miles so expected to motor sail south for a couple of days.  Yep we were right!  Whilst motor sailing during the day we saw another fabulous display of bottlenose dolphins leaping high into the air.  The wind came in a bit more at around 9pm so whey hey we sailed for an hour!  Then it died off again until early morning when we were able to set sail (and knock on wood it’s still set).  Just as Matt was taking a drink of coffee after breakfast, he jumped up, spilt the coffee but he had seen a blue flash steaming across the water towards the lure!  Sure enough we had hooked a maui maui!

24 hour distance:  125 miles.      Position: 02.37.403S  092.12.027W