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 force 3-4 which is lovely as the swell is in sync with the wind. Yesterday we had a westerly wind for most of the day, giving rise to an awkward cross swell which left us lurching and bumping around. We’re also seeing more squalls. We got hit by a couple yesterday - some with rain, some with wind, some with both. We even had to reef at one point - which was a blessing as we’ve not had enough wind to worry about that sort of thing for so long!

The other thing we’ve been having is lots of lightening. Anthony and Amanda were ok on their watches, but on mine the sky was lighting up far too frequently for my liking. All of it was sheet lightening in the clouds, so not a repeat of our Morocco incident where lightening was hitting the water around us. Lets hope it stays that way.

If we keep this speed up, we’ll probably cross the equator around 10pm our time - but it may well slip later if the wind eases. Once we’re past that milestone, we’re looking to get down to 2 degrees S or further to really get settled into the trades - then we’ll ease our course a bit more westerly and aim for Pitcairn. In all likelihood, we have missed the weather window for Easter Island - but we haven’t quite ruled it out yet as it would be fantastic to get there...