En route to Galapagos!

Well, here we are setting off into the Pacific Ocean and it's hot 🥵 and the sun is fierce☀️ but the sea, so far, has been much calmer 😌

We've had quite a bit of cloud cover and rain squalls around, but even then the air is hot.

We're currently 2 degrees north of the equator, so I guess you may well say 'What do you expect!'

I'm happy to say sleeping has not been too bad. We've got a very effective fan in our cabin, a bit noisy, but earplugs work! And we can usually have our hatch cracked open a bit. 

We're starting the fifth day of our sail to the Galapagos. We're trying to get there under sail as much as possible. But the following trade winds 🌬 seem to have vanished at the moment and we're currently slowly tacking our way SW. We'll maybe be there in another 2 or 3 days 🤔 I'm learning you just have to go with the flow!

We should cross the equator in a day or two, so we're making plans for Neptune! We'll send photos of what we achieve.

In the meantime we're preparing the boat for the Galapagos. We're hiding all our chemical cleaning products and putting eco friendly ones on display. That's a job I approve of! We're also busily eating all our fresh fruit and veg, and nuts and seeds. All of which are prohibited. We're not sure what the score is on cheese 🧀 We're hoping we'll get away with putting it in our freezer with all our frozen meats🥩 which are also prohibited. I think they'll then seal our freezer while we're visiting the islands.

Had my first go at hand washing on-board yesterday. It's a bit of a faff washing clothes in a bucket, but at least we've got plenty of fresh water. And I've been keeping up with my travel log as well as continuing to sprout mung, mustard and chickpea seeds. The first two sprout in a couple of days and are delicious 😋 the chickpeas I've not had much success with, they tend to just go soggy. 😖

We've enjoyed our meals with Harri's tuna 🐟 Hopefully he'll be successful with his line again soon.

One of the other boats caught two baby sharks yesterday morning, both were happily returned to the sea 🦈 Another boat had a close encounter with 🐳 whales! We've seen a few dolphins, 🐬 rays and jellyfish, but seeing whales up close would be amazing. Maybe today... 🤔🤞

At the moment we're still eating very well. I thought we might lose weight on this trip, but no sign of that happening yet! I didn't really consider how little exercise you get sitting on a boat all day! I've been trying to do a bit of yoga and a few squats etc, but it's not easy. Will def have to get back into training for tennis.

On my 6am watch at the moment, so better get back to looking for squalls and ships (not that there's many of those around here).

Love to all Axx