The forecast said light winds and lots of motoring, so of course we had perfect sailing conditions all day. We’re down by the equator now, on the west side of Galapagos and making great progress. Not only are we making good speed and course, but the sailing has actually been really enjoyable for much of the day. The waves were very low and the only sign we are in the ocean rather than around the coast is a very long slow ocean swell coming from some distance storm far to the south. The swell is long, about 15 second from the peak to peak and beautiful to watch roll towards you, almost like rolling farm land.

Life onboard was slow and easy like the sea today. Teo wasn’t in the best mood so boat school wasn’t super productive, but it happened. Jon spent a little time making Italian Herb Focaccia bread for lunch tomorrow. And Tina read and relaxed before making a delicious lunch with some leftovers and fish we caught yesterday.

In the afternoon the tempo of the day increased, with Tina running her ‘Saturday Quiz’. Once again Tina pulled out all the stops to provide a fun and challenging quiz for the afternoon. The same format as last time, Teo and Jon (The Black Pearl) were up against Mia (Mamma Mia) in several rounds of questions, interspersed with music rounds and finished off with ‘write a poem’ challenge. As you would expect, Teo carried Jon through the Harry Potter questions and Mia cleaned up on the music round. So going into the final poetry section Mia had a commanding lead. In the end, the following poem from Teo and Jon pulled it back to a draw.

Mia’s Bunting
so nice and new.
Will flit and flutter
in the blue.

All hand crafted
with such great care.
Will look so pretty
in the air.

And Itchy Foot
dressed in flags,
that once were just
friends old rags.

Will look so fine
and so snazzy,
by far the coolest
Hallberg Rassy.

Thanks to Teo for providing the phrase, flit and flutter. So with the high stakes stress of the quiz behind us the relaxing could return and the afternoon pottered away. Mia and Teo spent a good hour making Teo’s 7 year old crown which he gets to wear as part of our equator crossing celebrations tomorrow, before offering in to poseidon and/or neptune. It looks great!

While Tina was on watch and the crown was being prepared, Jon prepared a dinner of…

‘Shallow fried line caught Dorado, in wild garlic and provincial herb breadcrumbs. On a bed of pureed potatoes, awash with melted New Zealand butter and sea salt. Topped with Dijon Mayonnaise and crushed black pepper.’

Or…

‘Fish and mash please pappa!’

Speaking of fish, today was an exciting and yet disappointing day on the fishing front. We had the reels go spinning over five times today and each time the blighter got away. The first couple of times, we think the error was slowing down the boat too much allowing said fish to get ahead of the lure and spit it out. The last couple of times we’re just not sure, but on pulling in the lures at the end of the day we noticed that one of them had broken the tip and the barb was missing, making it much easier to spit. So tomorrow we’ll change the hooks and try again – but at least we successfully sailed over a bunch of fish today!

And now, as the sun is about to start on day eleven we prepare for crossing the equator and sailing into the southern hemisphere for the first time. More about that tomorrow…