Day 9, Panama to Galapagos

1740Z 24MAY19, Day 9, Panama to Galapagos. Getting closer now, finally. Arrival should be early tomorrow morning.

Yesterday turned out to be another nice sunny day. Today looks to be the same. We are about 8nm from crossing the equator! The filthy, slimy pollywogs will be cleansed and emerge as shellbacks.

Current Position: 00 07N 088 49W
24 hour progress: 123nm, 5.1kts avg SOG, with 13.5 hours of motoring to drive us southward against the wind and a crossing current. Current progress for the passage is 1040nm with approximately 80nm to go. Winds were around 8-10kts overnight and they are around 12kts today. We are sailing close hauled with a good course.

The crew is doing well. We are excited to end this long, often frustrating, passage. Today we will cross the equator and tomorrow we will be in the Galapagos!

Yesterday the water turned back to dark green, but today it seems bluer again. Strange. We are now seeing the AIS hits of the boats around the Galapagos. After leaving the Panama area we have not seen many other boats at all. Those that we have, have been shipping container boats or tankers. Though two nights ago we saw a couple of boats without AIS, which is weird since the Galapagos requires the tracking information. Perhaps they were fishing boats, we only saw their lights and they were not close.

Last night we motored / motor sailed all night with our low (steaming/motoring) running lights on. There were so many boobies flying with us and lit up green on starboard and red on port. Only a few managed to land given the apparent wind almost directly on the nose and the deck obstructions affecting their approach/landing lines. This squadron had a dismal boarding rate, but had better range scores. It was entertaining to watch and another mess had to be cleaned up by Jon this morning.

Cribbage tally for passage:
Jon-1, Daxton-0