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It’s a perfect sunny day, and we are flying across the ocean. Every now and then the boat buries its leeward bow in the ocean and water comes spraying up over the coachroof and all over the saloon windows. There are very few clouds in the sky, and we have yet to catch a fish.

We left our anchorage in Puerto Ayora two days ago, after waiting for what seemed like a very long time for all the officials to come aboard and make sure we were not absconding with any giant tortoises. We motored slowly out of the bay, and on to the ocean between islands. There was no wind. After a couple hours of motoring, we stopped the boat and jumped off the side. It was nice to get in the water, but the main point was to scrub away the Galapagos Fuzz that had accumulated on the bottom as we sat at anchor. This was a good deal of work, as some of the growth was rather entrenched, but not as much work as the similar operation was on our way into the Galapagos. That time we were going for cleanest hull award, which we got from the diver upon arrival.

Getting underway again on that first day there was some wind, and we flew the code zero for a few hours before giving up and turning the motor back on. After my shift I went to sleep to the throbbing of the diesel behind our berth. Sometime during the night I heard the high speed buzzing of a winch, and the engines shut off, and rolled over back to sleep, content in the knowledge that we were now sailing.

We have been sailing ever since, using every sail configuration. Today it has been a bit stronger, and we sailed under one reef for a while before shaking it out. A few minutes ago we hit 14 knots of boat speed. The boat does tremendously well, and I am watching with glee as a boat that departed at the same time as us falls further and further behind. It’s already 160 miles behind us. I think it would be hard to get used to another boat after sailing on an Outremer.

My shifts for this trip are from 6-9am and 8-10pm. Kate has the shifts immediately preceding mine. When I’m off shift I generally sit around and read. Sometimes I make food, or sit in the little tiller seat and look at the ocean. The sea here is rich with flying fish (one flopped onto the cockpit roof last night) and it is fun to watch them skim along the water for much longer than seems possible. Occasionally they get picked off by a booby, or other large bird. Yesterday morning I saw a large shark cruise by. The only thing I am rather hoping to see is a medium sized tuna

At some point along our trip we are supposed to reach the point in the ocean that is most remote from land. I don’t suppose we will really notice. The boat traffic has dropped right off, from a few fishing boats and freighters to almost nothing. We can see on PredictWind that there are boats out here, but they are well out of reach of our AIS. That’s fine. We are well into the trade winds now, and we just keep churning along.

We’ve been at sea for a little over a week now, and after the first few days the winds relented a bit, and we have mostly been cruising along under the gennaker with 10-15 knots. A couple days ago there were some minor squalls, but they just gave us a bit more wind to be getting along with. We are almost exactly half way now, as far as distance goes, and that puts us at one of the most remote from land locations anywhere in the world. It sort of looks the same as it did six days ago, but perhaps a slightly more settled sea state.

Yesterday was a big day, as we caught a big tuna! It was a skipjack and provided enough meat for three, five person meals. Today we put the line out again and caught a smaller yellowtail, which normally we would have been extatic about, but we tossed him back as we are in the market for Mahi. This brings the trip total fish on board to four tuna, one mahi, including the trip from Panama. I could eat fish every day, as it is very delicious when prepared fresh. For dinner we had seared steaks, and

Today I was talking about how impressed I was about how little had broken on this voyage. Then we decided to switch sails and discovered the furler was malfunctioning in two places. One was fixed back to normal once Kate discovered an alignment problem with one of the pressed in fittings, and the other I jury rigged with some wire. It will work until a more permanant solution is found. Working on a project was sort of diverting to work on a project for a moment, instead of spending all of our days in leisure.

Being out here has driven home the level of commitment we are exposed to. When you are climbing and something goes wrong, you can usually rap off. If something happens on the river, you can generally hike out. Out here, in the middle of the ocean the only way out is to keep going. The likelyhood of something going wrong is relatively smaller, but the consequences would be severe. It is interesting to contrast this sailing activity with our previous pursuits, as it is much more relaxed, and physically easy, until it isn’t. Surviving out here when weather or boat go bad would be about as extreme as it gets. So far we have not had a taste of that, as we have had nothing but excellent weather and sailing. The boat continues to impress, sailing in very light air and providing a comfortable and fast ride. We passed another sailing boat just above the horizon and it seemed like they were standing still.

The ocean itself provides infinite variety. On night watches I can sit and observe the bioluminescence explode in the wake of the boat. I’ve never seen it quite as intense as it is here. On clear nights the southern cross stands up against the port side horizon, while the Big Dipper is slightly aft off of starboard. The North Star is slightly out of sight below the northern bank of clouds. In the morning the flying fish start up out of the water, riding the wind over the waves ahead of the boat. Sometimes in schools of hundreds and sometimes singly they skim the water for up to a few hundred yards. In the morning during my deck walk I find their dried out little corpses from nighttime collisions with the boat, and toss them overboard.

Yesterday the wind picked up, and we are now under two reefs with an average of around 22 knots. Last night it picked up to 30. On my watch this morning, the boat hit over 17 knots as we surfed down a wave. While there are waves, they are not very big, and only occasionally do they come spraying up onto the foredeck. Even so, it is not the relaxed reading spot it was only a few days ago. The fishing line stayed in today, since we still have tuna on board, and catching another fish would be a little more than I want to deal with in the slightly riled seas. We should be in the wind for the remainder of the trip. We have a hundred miles to go before we begin to turn more south, and the southern pacific convergence zone to negotiate before we arrive in Gambier. I expect that the convergence will being gustier winds and perhaps some rain and squalls. Rain would be good, as the boat is sticky with salt and flying fish pieces.

The last few days at sea were stronger than the rest, and we got some rain. We kept up some good average speeds and arrived in the afternoon of our 15th day at sea. We anchored near the main town, and had a relaxing dinner before settling in to sleep on a stationary boat. That was nice.