Position as at 21.00 UTC on Sunday 28th April:
2 degrees 18 minutes north, 84 degrees 3 minutes west
We are happy to report that a southerly breeze finally kicked in at about 18.00 last night and we have been sailing ever since, close-hauled and trying to keep on the direct line to Galapagos. The normal advice is that we should have been aiming to cross the Equator at about 84 minutes west but we're still about 140 miles north of it and not making very fast progress southwards. Ah well, at least we are moving without the aid of diesel and the frustrating adverse current seems to have disappeared; looking at the weather files it seems pretty clear that we've left the Doldrums behind us, thank goodness. Dianne's sister Sue wrote to say that there's a YouTube video that's gone viral of a woman sailing a yacht in the Doldrums and she's completely lost the plot, singing and dancing around the cockpit in frustration.
Last night's watch was enlivened by a large ship on a collision course, coming straight at us. We were about to call her when she altered course to pass a mile ahead of us so we hailed her on the VHF to acknowledge this. A friendly French voice came back over the radio: "To answer our curiosity, where are you heading for?" – they obviously don't see many yachts around here and he seemed impressed with our destination!
All's well aboard. We've settled into the routine of reading, cooking, eating and sleeping in between the sailing tasks but we're both feeling pretty tired so the chance for a cat-nap is grabbed when it presents itself. We have just over 380 miles to go, so hope to arrive on the 1st May (Wednesday) if the wind holds up but Thursday is probably more realistic. Stormvogel is still in sight, about 2 miles behind, though Peter's more than a tad frustrated that he can't catch us.
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