We have now spent 48 hours at sea on our long journey to French Polynesia. We are moving at a speed of only 3 knots with help of one engine trough an area of absolut ZERO wind. It´s hard to explain how quiet and still it is out here. I have seen a lot of calm waters before but this take the price by far. The water is like a perfect mirror, so still you would never believe it is an ocean you are on. ! It´s beautiful but also a bit frightening at the same time. If the engines decides to to stop completely we would probably be in this area for a very very long time!
The trip started of in worst imaginable way. We actually tried to leave Galapagos two times before we finally succeeded on our third and final try. On our first attempt the starboard engine broke down- a serious breakdown as well. The top gasket blow and we lost all our cooling water in a second or two. The engine oil was full with water so I am pretty sure it is the top gasket. To get it fixed in Galapagos would have been very time consuming and would set us back almost up to two weeks! So the decision was made- we will continue our journey with only one engine.
To compensate the missing engine we bought 40 liters of extra gasoline with us. So if the one and only engine also decides to stop we can always produce water with either solar power or with the help of our little Honda generator.
On our second attempt we got our self a really big Wahoo (a fish) on one of our rods and everything looked fine until Davide cut himself badly on the hock! He managed to get a pretty nasty cut on his right wrist and blood was actually spraying out from the wound! We decided to go back and get it overlooked by a professional before we set sail towards French Polynesia.
Anyway- here we are, in the Pacific! Life is slow- very slow!
This is what has been going on onboard so far!
- Yesterday when we stopped the boat for a 24 hour check of the engine we all went for a swim in the big blue! A pretty big silky shark showed up and we were all swimming together!
- Davide kicked Nicos ass in chess
- We got ourself a tasty tuna (fish number 2)
- A white whale just past underneath us
- A couple of sea lions were playing a couple of meters from us
- We had dolphins swimming with us
- We have watched 8 episodes of the TV-show Entourage
- We have been eating a lot of fish
- We managed to communicate with an other boat that was on its way to the Easter Islands
- Helena and Victor made us an awesome pancake cake with chocolate and strawberry jam.
- Katrin made us a very tasty chocolate cake
We hope to leave this area with ZERO wind within 3 days and hopefully we can proceed with sails only from that point!
//Daniel with crew