Smooth sailing

Not fast, but smooth. The long Pacific swell is so nice after the short steep waves of the Caribbean. We're still beating to the Galapagos; another day hard on the wind. For the non-sailors, that means we're sailing as close to the wind as we can. Think taking a walk, do you want the wind in your face or at your back? Normally this is pretty much a dreaded point of sail. There is even a saying that "gentlemen don't sail to weather"; "to weather" being another way of saying "hard on the wind". But the long smooth Pacific swell, moderate wind, clear skies and warm air combine to make this about as good as it gets if we have to sail this close to the wind.

And we do have to sail this close to the wind if we don't want to motor. Late this afternoon the wind moved around to directly on our course, and dropped to about 5kts, too little to sail. So we shattered the peace and quiet and motored for about two hours. A really unpleasant reminder of what we had done much of the first two days to get through the ITCZ. Fortunately the wind came back and we were able to continue sailing.

The only negative is that we also have about .6kt of adverse current. So when we're sailing at 6kts (remember - light air), we're only moving over the ground at 5.4kts. Add to that the effect of the current on our course (it pushes us off about 10 degrees), and 6kts of sailing quickly becomes 4.5 - 5kts of progress. The adverse current is total mystery since normally there is about .5kts of favorable current flowing from Panama to the Galapagos. It's well documented and referenced in many books; even the Galapagos natural history book I was leafing through this afternoon. So how did we get .6kts of adverse current? And to further confuse things, the water is 84F. Normally the favorable current carries warm water to the Galapagos to meet the cold water of the Humboldt current. If water is flowing from the Galapagos to Panama (or at least Columbia), how can it be 84F? I'm sure some oceanographer has the answer, but they are not onboard.

The upshot of all this is that from 1pm yesterday afternoon to 1pm today, all sailing, we moved 104.6nm closer to the Galapagos. That's about 5mph. But of course if we wanted to get there in a hurry we could have flown.

This evening the sky is totally clear and I can see the Southern Cross for the first time. And while the Big Dipper is still there, the North Star that it points to is no longer visible. Our equator crossing ceremony can't be too far away...