Day 7

Our most frustrating day so far!  We must’ve forgotten to put sugar in Neptune’s tea!  The skies were leaden, the sea a gunmetal grey – very agitated and rain – lots of it and lots of massive black cloud formations.  More like sailing in the north sea than the pacific. I actually wore long pants – so much for being 30 miles from the equator!   The worst was that we had very little wind to start with which, when it did increase during the day, was coming directly on the nose - from the west.  We had the choice of either going south (current taking us either further south) or north against the current or motoring.  Hobson’s choice really – if we sailed we would add at least an extra 100 miles to our trip!  So we spent the day and night motoring, sailing when we could.   Each time we got the genoa out we would get headed and put further of course – very frustrating.  However, we got our usual jobs done - no yoga on deck in the rain!  No cetaceans again but a few sea birds – in fact quite a few storm petrels and one red footed booby who kept coming to land on the pulpit to take a ride with us!  At the first misty light of dawn we saw a black shape looming ahead – which we initially thought was more cloud but as the light increased, the black shape turned into Isla Cristobal at 17miles, the most easterly of the volcanic islands of the Galapagos!  Yeah!  We only have another 127 miles to go to reach our destination of Villamil on Isla Isabella, but currently have 2 knots of foul current and as I write, Isla Cristobal has disappeared into the cloud.  Days distance: 130 miles