Day 7 - One third of the way there!

Our position as at 18.00 GMT, Friday 17th May:

05 degrees 58 minutes south, 104 degrees 36 minutes west

Distance run in last 24 hours: 184 nm (a new Maunie record!!)

 

As you'll see from the 24 hour mileage, we are still making very good progress, though last night was very rolly so we didn't sleep as well as usual. The wind backed to a more easterly direction so we were sailing with the wind almost behind us to try to keep on our 'pretty much west' course. This morning we rigged the pole to pole out the foresail on the port side, with the main on starboard, allowing us to go further down wind without the foresail collapsing in the wind shadow of the main and this has steadied the ship somewhat.

 

There's further good news on Maunie, we're glad to report: firstly, Dianne's flapjack was superb (a sugar rush in every bite, but with plenty of slow-burn energy from the oats so the very thing for dark night watches) and secondly we're about to pass another important milestone. This afternoon we'll have covered more than 1000 miles and will be over one third of the way to the Marquesas – we'll have our first beer since Galapagos to accompany our supper.

 

Hopefully the photo of the chart is legible enough for you to see the scale of the voyage; most of our navigation is on the electronic chart plotter but it's prudent to have paper charts to back it up and it's another daily ritual to mark our position and extend our track-line a little further west. As you can probably see from the track-line, we haven't made a straight line course for our destination but did a dog-leg south west to find the trade winds and will now stay along the 6 degrees south meridian to keep the favourable winds and the brilliantly helpful current.

 

Thanks to those of you who teleported aboard yesterday and reported back – lovely to hear from you. Thanks especially to Sarah – we'll be in touch for some of your easy cake recipes but remember that Graham used to run a cake factory in Bolton so if the recipes don't involve 250kg mixes, automatic depositors, 60m long ovens and in-line wrapping machines, he'll be at a bit of a loss. Luckily Dianne is rather more adept at the hand-made variety.

 

Stormvogel is less than a mile from us, amazingly, and we know that quite a lot of friends of Peter and Heidi also follow our blog (hello to you all), just as many of our friends follow their very witty blog www.wiedekamm.com (with or without the help of Google Translate) so there's an opportunity to see two different perspectives of the same voyage. For us, it's great to have the reassurance of another boat close by and we enjoy out twice-daily vhf conversations which are becoming increasingly funny (we have to make our own entertainment here).

 

Only 2,000 miles to go!