Sunday brings us the eagerly awaited ‘Weathergram’ from Metbob - a well known and respected forecaster who covers the Pacific area. It pretty much confirms what we already know - light winds until 5S and squalls from 2S to 8S. The forecasts from the GRIB files we download is at odds with reality so often, we wonder if there is any point in getting them. Will there really be trade winds at 5S? I’m not holding my breathe... Take yesterday - we had rain for quite a lot of the day, cloud all

Yesterday we managed to sail until sunset when the wind disappeared, so we pulled down the sails and began to drift. The current seems to have turned mostly in our favour again, though there is a tidal element - in the middle of the night we were drifting slowly north losing some of our hard-won south! Anthony's watch was easy - drifting with no-one around. Amanda got the rain and squalls and called on me to help put up some sail. We started sailing south, then the squall passed so we pulled do

We’ve been sailing now for over 48hours which seems like a miracle after the first week! The forecasts aren’t really proving all that accurate - yesterday was supposed to be less than 5 knots all day, but we had quite a bit more - certainly very sailable conditions. Whether we trust the forecasts or not, we are still in pretty light conditions - not the ‘trade wind’ SE 15 knots we expect later on. Those winds were at 2S, about 30’ from here (minutes of latitude, considerably more sail

At 7minutes passed midnight, just into Amanda's watch, we crossed the equator at 86degrees west. Looking behind us we can see the plough pointing at Polaris but we can't see the star itself. Probably due to the cloud but theory says it is now below the horizon. The wind is holding at a lovely force 4 from the SE. We are doing 7knots ish through the water but the current is knocking us back to 6 over the ground (SOG). Still very happy at that and to have been sailing for nearly 24 hours. The cu

We found some wind! Not a lot, but very comfortable - so we made reasonable progress yesterday. Overnight the wind dropped off, and left us with flogging sails. Reluctantly we pulled them down and motored for a while, but by 3am the wind had re-appeared. We’ve been sailing nicely since then. We still have a lot of current against us though - which may persist as far as 6S. I hope not, as at times its been halving our speed. We’re definitely closing on the trade winds - right now its SSE fo

We are not quite out of the doldrums - not reached the equator yet, but we do at least have some wind we can sail with. Currently about 6knots of wind, giving us 3knots through the water. Unfortunately we are now in the equatorial counter current which is slowing us by about 1-1.5knots. Hey ho! We are also seeing lots of squalls. So far all in the distance, with lots of lightening but they will reach us as we get south. Boats ahead of us are finding them at 9S - some heading further south (our

Yet another day with zero wind although we are now getting swell from the south. It's quite large but very spread out so we cruise along rising and falling with the big lumps that come through. All very comfortable. Today's excitement came early - we swapped engines! We reckon we can afford the fuel to motor another 19hours from here and then we will be trying to sail on the wind that we have. That leaves us with plenty of fuel on hand in case we need some later. We should be able to replenish

Seastate is like glass because...

Lack of wind continues... We are still motoring but that will end soon. Metbob (who does a weekly weather summary for sailors in the South Pacific) suggests some northerly winds on April 7th but some southerlies until then. We have enough east banked that a southerly would be ok. But it does need to appear!!

We have spent most of the last day motoring along to try and get some South and closer to the promise of wind. I've just had two of the smoothest nights at sea ever! We have heard from a boat ahead of us that he just pulled down the sails and went to bed - we're not quite that brave! We haven't seen a ship since we saw the lights of a Chinese tanker looming over the horizon about 20nm away - but that is as close as they got. We continue to see lots of dolphins, whales, rays (even jumping rays!)

It's definitely proving to be slow going, but it's a long trip and we can't motor the whole way, so we just play with the sails and drift on in the sun. The sea state is very flat - soporific in fact! Today we've tried pretty much every sail combination. I put the parasailor back up on my watch in about 9knots of breeze - so not difficult to do it single-handed. That then self-socked due to insufficient wind to hold it open, so we motored for a bit. Then we put the genoa out and drifted along u

A day later than planned due to a last minute fridge issue, but we finally left the La Playita anchorage at Balboa, Panama this morning. We had to motor for a fair while due to light to non-existent winds, and we even spent some of the day drifting along with just the genoa out managing just under 1 knot. However, the sights were fantastic. We've seen whales, rays swimming on the surface, disturbed sleeping turtles and a huge pod of 100+ dolphins hunting nearby which then came over to swim arou

The photo of the tuna seems to have got lost. Here it is again...

Yesterday afternoon, Anthony and I returned to Duplicat with some large boxes of toys (and a somewhat emptier wallet). We quickly ascertained that the fault with the previous setup had been in the course computer, but not in the FETs. Probably it is somewhere in the power supply though we won’t be looking at that now. We do plan to try and fix it, as its nice to have a spare given our recent experience! Rather, we installed the brand new “Evolution” system. Given that we had a new linear

We made it safely to Las Perlas - but now we face a bit of a problem. Underway, we lost the wind - so doused the large downwind parasailor and began to motor. The autopilot reported “DRIVE STOPPED” and indeed, it was no longer working. There are a few things that could cause that, so we decided to continue to Las Perlas anyway. Shortly after that, we caught and landed our first fish in the pacific - a lovely 2.7kg tuna (photo to follow). Once anchored, Anthony and I set about ‘debugging�

Diesel: full Petrol: full LPG: check Itching to go: yup! Having provisioned, and more and again, we are so full of fuel, gas, food that we really need to get going! So this morning we hauled up the anchor, washing it as we did so, and turned south-west towards Las Perlas. We will stop for a night or two to swim and relax a bit as well as scrubbing the hulls. Once the final preparations are complete, we will haul anchor and head off towards Easter Island or Pitcairn. We are hoping for a reas

“WoW” is the remark most often logged on ships when ‘Waiting on Weather’. Of course, in their case it usually means that the weather is pretty bad. In our case, its the complete opposite. We’re currently languishing on the Pacific side of the canal waiting for a forecast with the promise of wind! Slowly, more and more boats are coming through the canal from Shelter Bay - boats we know and many we don’t. However, few are departing for Galapagos and beyond. Light, non-existent or sout

Some videos from the transit...

As mentioned, our advisor turned up pretty promptly, and we set off across Gatun lake. We knew that we were due to enter the Pedro Miguel locks at 12:46, with African Griffon entering behind us at 13:00. This would give us an easy transit at 6knots (which was what we’d put on our form). Francisco is the most experienced advisor on the program having been in the first advisor training program 15 years ago. He was a thoroughly nice guy and a pleasure to have onboard for the day - full of interes

Francisco, our advisor for the day, turned up at 7:42am (Matthew won the book on that), and we set of through Gatun Lake. Very nice it is too... Film crew hard at work..