Day 4, Passage to Mainland Ecuador

1200Z 09JUN19, Day 4, Galápagos to La Libertad, Ecuador. Our progress remains steady. We are finally making a good course over ground and even have had a chance to fall off just a little bit from time to time. The slog to windward continues, but perhaps a tiny glimmer of the end is coming into view.

Current Position: 01 03S 083 11W
24 hour progress: 99nm, 4.1kts avg SOG, approximately 155nm to go. The weather has been overcast again since yesterday late morning. The temperature is pleasant but the humidity is quite high inside the boat. We are sailing a close haul to a close reach, with a reef in the main, and with winds of around 15kts. We STILL continue to have a 2kts (maybe more) current against us.

The crew is doing well. We tried our luck with fishing again yesterday. We caught 2 small skip jack tunas over the course of the day. We threw each of them back as we weren't really in the mood - skip jack is not the tastiest tuna and requires a good marinade. Then, late in the day, we had our most bizarre catch to date. We caught a rather large 🦑 squid 🦑! While we fish with lures that look like small squid, get the occasional small squid on deck and know that giant squid exist, we have never heard of anyone catching a large squid on the ocean surface. He was something in between a giant squid and the largest squids that we have seen in fish markets or eaten in restaurants, with a body about 2 feet long not including the tentacles. He tightly grabbed our cedar plug lure and caught the hook into 2 of his tentacles. He was difficult to bring aboard and looked quite strange in the water. When bringing him aboard he shot water at us 3 times. We thought he would ink us in continued protest. He did try to devour the cedar plug as a last meal on deck. In the end Jon got his tentacles free (no help given by Megan's squeals or the kids continuous discussions about him) and we returned him to the sea. He was fascinating to watch as you could see him flashing color through his body and his tentacles were impressive as he grabbed and slimed Jon a good deal. Kindly, we were not inked. The little monster would have likely been really tasty as enormous calamari steaks; however we didn't want to have to kill him, clean him and properly prepare him; nor could we possibly have eaten that much calamari. In the end it seemed best to put this mini kraken back in the sea in order to avoid any wrath that may have come from The Mama Kraken!!!

We are looking forward to our arrival which we are still hoping will be sometime on Monday. It really depends on whether or not the winds stay up and how badly the current continues to set us back. Sometimes a day light Monday arrival looks possible and other times not so much.