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The Enchanted Islands


For those of you who aren’t sailors, imagine trying to walk forward while someone is pushing you sideways. That's kind of what we're dealing with. Since turning the corner off the coast of Ecuador, we’ve been battling a combination of strong current and headwinds. The current is pushing us directly away from the Galapagos, while the wind is coming from slightly further south.

Sailing directly into the wind isn’t an option, so we have to tack back and forth every 12 hrs or so. Normally, we’d tack around 100 degrees as we would be sailing 45 degrees from the wind and allowing a little bit for some current, but the current is so strong and pushing us so far sideways that we're tacking through about 155 degrees. This means that on one tack, we're actually sailing away from our destination, while on the other, we make some progress but at a snail's pace – around 100 nautical miles a day. And if we keep going in the "good" direction, that 100 miles quickly becomes less and less. To make matters worse, the wind loves to shift, meaning we can end up sailing even faster away from our goal when we tack back.

Yesterday, the sky started to clear, and I was hopeful for a change in conditions. But of course, this is the equator, where weather is as fickle as a teenager. We tacked last night to position ourselves for a better tack when the wind shifted. And then, the wind did shift! For a glorious 45 minutes, we were heading directly towards our destination. But then, like a cruel joke, the wind swung back, and we were back to square one.

We’ve been sailing with the main and headsail, and if you could remove the current from the equation, we'd be making pretty good time. To give ourselves a little extra push, we’ve also been using the engine at times at low RPM sometimes. It doesn’t make a huge difference, but every little bit helps.
Both weather models are still predicting a couple of days of light winds or even calms. While this might sound frustrating, it could be a blessing in disguise. It will give us a chance to make some serious headway by motoring directly towards the Galapagos. Fingers crossed!

I just found out that the Galapagos used to be a favorite hangout for pirates and were called the "Enchanted islands." First charted by English buccaneer William Cowley in 1680. I have no idea how they found them. It's hard enough with state-of-the-art GPS, chart plotter, and autopilot, so I can't imagine what it was like with a hand-drawn chart, drunken sailors steering, and not being able to see the sun for a week. Maybe that explains why I've never found any pirate treasure - it's all at the bottom of the sea after they got lost and eventually sank!

This picture shows where the wind shifted and we gradually started to turn, tacked and went exactly the right way - and then had huge wind shift and back to square one.
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