The wind died in the night at the end of Day 3 and so the motor went on. Looking at the weather forecast that we can download via the Iridium Go! satellite internet thingy it seemed like the best place to find wind was south, down around latitude 4 degrees north. Looking at the longer range forecast (the coming 3 to 4 days) it seemed like if we could get down there we’d be good for a while to sail westward across the top of Galapagos. We were about 70 miles too far north and without enough wind to sail we decided to put on the engine and motor south in the night.

Motoring into light winds and lumpy seas is not much fun, after a few hours we decided to take down the mainsail to stop it from getting too beaten-up by the motion but of course that only worsened the experience for those onboard. In short, we all ended up with broken nights sleep and uninspiring watches.

At about 6am the wind came back and we had made good progress down to around 4 degrees and 40 minutes north. There is something wonderful about turning off the engine after 12 hours of motoring and setting the sails. The boat becomes quiet, calm and the motion is more relaxing. And except for a couple of hours of light winds in the middle of the day we’ve been buzzing along under sail making great progress, great speed and perfect direction. We have a happy yet tired crew on Itchy Foot.

Everyone was a bit subdued today. Thanks to Jon’s dad we noticed that the Iridium Go had stopped updating out position so that should be fixed now and the link below should show us well on our way almost half way towards Galapagos. Please let us know at jonwright@myiridium.net if it’s not working.

http://forecast.predictwind.com/tracking/display/ItchyFoot

We were a bookish boat today.

Teo managed a few good hours of boat school – he often complains that ‘it’s too distracting’ to do boat school when we’re sitting quietly at anchor, flat calm and not a drop of wind. But seemed OK with doing school when we’re blasting along and 6 knots and leaning over at 40%. Then he spent much of the afternoon listening to Harry Potter on audiobook while flicking through ‘Help Your Kids with Science’ – we’re not sure how much of the organic chemistry is going in but he does talk a lot about making potions.

Mia and Tina are both reading the same book, Ready Player One, and have discovered a novel way of sharing the novel. Tina is about 50 pages ahead and so reads a chapter, rips it out, Mia reads it, then throws it in the sea. Jon thankfully has read it before. While trying to catch up on sleep Jon has been reading Ilium by Dan Simmons – a very successful horror writer who also produces wonderfully dark and mysterious works of science fiction which always seem to weave into them the classics, in this case Homer.

The fishing hasn’t improved too much, Jon switched his lures to ones of different colours and seemed to initiate interest from something big, black and with a giant fin. One lure went shooting off with smoke coming out of the reel for about 5 seconds and then was promptly spat out. We’re kinda of glad we don’t catch everything that is out there. So despite pleas to the sea to provide a little fishy for our dishy, dinner was Risotto – thank you Supabra (Norway) for making a great dried risotto and thank you Gunnar and Mona for bringing out 20 packets to Panama.

Nothing obviously broke on Day 4, so it must be hiding and we’ll find out what it was tomorrow.

The weather forecast told of no wind and lots of motoring so we were pleasantly surprised to be able to sail for the majority of the day. Albeit a bit slow and not really in the right direction, but if you do this crossing in May rather than March you should be happy to take what you get.

Jon focused on beefing up his fishing game by tidying his lure and hooks up, now they are nicely organised inside a bag we’re sure to have more luck. Tina started the day with a spot of Yoga on the aft-deck which shows you how calm the sea was on day three. Mia and Teo approached the day with a similar sleepy style, Teo coming out of the back cabin laying down on the sofa and promptly falling asleep again for an hour. Thankfully the coffee perked everyone up.

There was some renegotiating who was making lunch and dinner, I’m not sure what was traded but somehow Mia got out of making lunch and Tina make lovely cheese and onion toasted sandwiches. Teo, not being a fan of onion that can be identified by eye (he’s happy with the flavour so long as he doesn’t know they are there) managed to get himself honey on toast – there are clearly some benefits to flirting with Tina and being so cute.

Sometime in the afternoon Teo came scampering up to Jon exclaiming that “the toilet is leaking, it’s all over the floor!” He wasn’t wrong. Thankfully the entire bathroom (heads) floor in Itchy Foot is really a giant plastic shower tray so any spills, drips, slashes and overflows are caught and easily pumped out (now that Mia stripped and fixed the shower pump in Panama) into the sea. But, yes the toilet was leaking. Basically it was back flowing from the sea into the bowel and because we are leaning over so much it has sloshed onto the floor. So, Jon has the dubious honour of stripping the toilet at sea and replacing the Joker (I wish I was) Valve which had failed. Then a big clean-up and we’re back in business. The only collateral damage was to a bag full of cans which Mia had sneakily squirrelled away under the grated floor in the bathroom (she has an amazing ability to find places to store things) and so she had the pleasure of sitting on the back of the boat and cleaning them too.

The whole event was musically narrated by Jon and Tina singing alternating verses of ‘There is poo on my screwdriver / hands / toothbrush / feet etc.’ until Teo demanded then begged us to stop.

Living the dream.

As ff that excitement wasn’t enough for the day then Tina ran the first Itchy Foot quiz, involving question about Panama, a music round and even a poetry round. It was neck and neck until the final poetry rendition when Jon and Teo snuck the win from out of Mia’s hands and were proclaimed Champions by Freddy Mercury. Jon claims poetic genius, but the safe money is that Tina is just sweet on Teo.

Finally before dinner Jon read a couple of stories from ‘100 greatest solved mysteries’ which was given to us by Interlude Mike in the marina. In the cruising world it is common to refer to people by boat name followed by first name – for example Itchy Jon – no we didn’t think about that before hand. We started with the mystery of Big Foot and finished with Sea Monsters!

Unfortunately the wind died after dinner (great stir-fry Tina) and we spent most of the night motoring. Nothing to report from the nights watch other than optimistic and disappointed seagulls following us in the hope that we were a fishing boat. We’ll try organising the lures by colour tomorrow.

The weather forecast told of no wind and lots of motoring so we were pleasantly surprised to be able to sail for the majority of the day. Albeit a bit slow and not really in the right direction, but if you do this crossing in May rather than March you should be happy to take what you get.

Jon focused on beefing up his fishing game by tidying his lure and hooks up, now they are nicely organised inside a bag we’re sure to have more luck. Tina started the day with a spot of Yoga on the aft-deck which shows you how calm the sea was on day three. Mia and Teo approached the day with a similar sleepy style, Teo coming out of the back cabin laying down on the sofa and promptly falling asleep again for an hour. Thankfully the coffee perked everyone up.

There was some renegotiating who was making lunch and dinner, I’m not sure what was traded but somehow Mia got out of making lunch and Tina make lovely cheese and onion toasted sandwiches. Teo, not being a fan of onion that can be identified by eye (he’s happy with the flavour so long as he doesn’t know they are there) managed to get himself honey on toast – there are clearly some benefits to flirting with Tina and being so cute.

Sometime in the afternoon Teo came scampering up to Jon exclaiming that “the toilet is leaking, it’s all over the floor!” He wasn’t wrong. Thankfully the entire bathroom (heads) floor in Itchy Foot is really a giant plastic shower tray so any spills, drips, slashes and overflows are caught and easily pumped out (now that Mia stripped and fixed the shower pump in Panama) into the sea. But, yes the toilet was leaking. Basically it was back flowing from the sea into the bowel and because we are leaning over so much it has sloshed onto the floor. So, Jon has the dubious honour of stripping the toilet at sea and replacing the Joker (I wish I was) Valve which had failed. Then a big clean-up and we’re back in business. The only collateral damage was to a bag full of cans which Mia had sneakily squirrelled away under the grated floor in the bathroom (she has an amazing ability to find places to store things) and so she had the pleasure of sitting on the back of the boat and cleaning them too.

The whole event was musically narrated by Jon and Tina singing alternating verses of ‘There is poo on my screwdriver / hands / toothbrush / feet etc.’ until Teo demanded then begged us to stop.

Living the dream.

As ff that excitement wasn’t enough for the day then Tina ran the first Itchy Foot quiz, involving question about Panama, a music round and even a poetry round. It was neck and neck until the final poetry rendition when Jon and Teo snuck the win from out of Mia’s hands and were proclaimed Champions by Freddy Mercury. Jon claims poetic genius, but the safe money is that Tina is just sweet on Teo.

Finally before dinner Jon read a couple of stories from ‘100 greatest solved mysteries’ which was given to us by Interlude Mike in the marina. In the cruising world it is common to refer to people by boat name followed by first name – for example Itchy Jon – no we didn’t think about that before hand. We started with the mystery of Big Foot and finished with Sea Monsters!

Unfortunately the wind died after dinner (great stir-fry Tina) and we spent most of the night motoring. Nothing to report from the nights watch other than optimistic and disappointed seagulls following us in the hope that we were a fishing boat. We’ll try organising the lures by colour tomorrow.

The log book for this day was a little schizophrenic. Engine on; engine off; engine on; engine off. In the end we only motored about 6 hours in the 24 hours of our Day 2 but it was very on off as the wind died and recovered. Most of the day was actually quite nice sailing.

It was a quiet day as everyone hadn’t slept well, it usually takes 3 days to get into the rhythm on a passage so days two and three usually happen in slow motion through a fog of sleep. Breakfast happened naturally as people got up and sorted themselves out, coffee flowed in large quantities. Lunch was prepared by Jon, frying up the Dorado fillets he caught the previous night (pro-tip – coat the fish in mayonnaise before frying for juicy goodness – thanks to Marta in Break Away for that one). We still had some potatoes from the first passage which needed to be used so they became a potato salad; wolfed down by all including Teo.

In the afternoon there was a torrential rain shower to prove we are clearly in the rainy season now but not a great deal of wind to go with it. This seemed like the perfect opportunity to put on a movie for those not on watch and given it was May the 4th (be with you) we rolled out Star Wars. Tina it turns out wasn’t sure if she had seen it before and Teo was more than happy to share the experience with her.

Dinner was a nice refreshing pasta salad prepared by Mia and as it got dark people retreated to their bunks to catch snippets of sleep before the night watches started again.

For those of you interested in finding our where we are, in near real time you can follow the link below.

http://forecast.predictwind.com/tracking/display/ItchyFoot