Once we got sorted out with the rig we set 2 sails again on port tack on a heading of 250 degrees.  Made reasonable speed in the same wind and sea conditions as before.  Brian from Darramy had very kindly emailed us some details of riggers in Tahiti so we spent the afternoon composing emails to them.  It’s hilarious – I’ve just spent the last 12 months trying to speak Spanish and ending up with lots of French words – now when I want to revert to French I can only think of Spanish words!   Needless to say we got there in the end with a little help from Trevor on Malarkey, (they are about 180 miles north east of us), looking up some technical words for us. Must have been a strange radio conversation, with us giving an English word, then a long silence, followed by a phonetically spelled French word, followed by “next, over”. (I have numerous French books and dictionaries back in the UK and never thought to bring any of them!)  Then spent a lovely couple of hours or so taking in the sun on the aft deck just watching the sea pass by!

Time is a funny thing! We’ve now travelled 20 degrees longitude from the Galapagos, so put back our clocks an hour at mid-day. (15 degrees = 1 hr).  This means that we keep our watch system and sleep times in line with the sun, but our daily radio schedules back to Darramy in the Galapagos and some other boats on passage change for us, but not for them – if you see what I mean?  We’ve found that a 5 hour (ish) watch cycle works well for us during the night and if we need to catch up on sleep we do so in the daytime – so far so good.

Just before sunset we poled out the genoa and bore away to a course of 260 degrees. We held this all night and are still on that same course.  The wind has died off a little and with it the speed, however calmer seas and glorious sunshine are making it a more relaxing ride.  So far the big waves which were forecast haven’t materialised but we’re still seeing around 3.0 metre swells which sometimes appear to be getting longer but periodically break up and result in a more confused chop between the swells.

24 hour distance:  179 miles   Position: S09.58.334 W110.24.975