At anchor in Wreck Bay, Isla San Cristobal. Puerto Baquerizo Moreno is the name of the town.  Looks like any other seaside holiday town.  Boats for pleasure trips, boats for fishing trips and fishing boats.  Wild life is tame.  Sea lions playing in the water and on the boats.  They enjoy the game of sneaking up the stern steps on the catamaran ahead and having the owner shoo them off.  A Turtle has been around several times to inspect us.
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I asked a local lady in St Lucia what her favourite meal was, her reply accompanied by a large grin was pig tails. She was almost drooling by the time she told me how to make it.
Now I haven’t had time to try this, so I am hoping someone will and send me feedback.

Pigs Tails
Dumplings
Red Beans
Stock

Method
Sock tails overnight or at least for a few hours, changing the water a few times.
Put in pot with beans; and stock, boil up for about an hour or so.
Add in dumplings and cook until dumplings are done and you are ready to eat!

This was in her opinion the best meal you could have, so looking for your comments.

Manoeuvring around the islands.  Will send an “at anchor” soon.

david

Long wooden skewer
Melon Pineapple Banana
Butter syrup cocoa powder

Cut the fruit into even sized pieces.
Thread onto skewer, mixing fruit.
For the chocolate sauce, Butter, syrup and cocoa powder in a pan. Heat and boil just a little. Nice to add some brown sugar, vanilla perhaps a hint of instant coffee. Mix well serve warm – worth testing it will be the correct runniness at eating temperature. Adjust with water if required.

Finally reaching after 6 days close hauled.  Wind now 45 degrees apparent off the port bow.  Great to have the extra speed and better action.  Heading south of the course to Galapagos to give some room for the wind to come back to west of south.  I spoke too soon yesterday about shaking out the reef, it stayed in all day and we had to roll off a good bit of the genoa late afternoon when the wind got into the 20 knots.  I had expected to use a lot of fuel getting to Galapagos but to date we have motored just 16 hours which includes the watermaker sessions.

The sky isn’t clear all night but we have long enough breaks to identify the new constellations.  We are seeing the southern cross just after sunset and Virgo.  Later into the night we loose the Southern Cross but get Scorpio, Libra and Bootes and the planet Jupiter in the south east.   Before sunrise we get Venus and Mars in the south east.  Making good use of the computer programme “Stellarium” to get the names.  I think it only runs on linux though. Don’t see the north star any more.

Edit [Andrew]: Stellarium works on Linux, Windoze and Mac see here. [Read more →]

We have been going to windward now since midnight on Saturday night.  Windpilot steering has been spot on.  Wind has now come just east of south so we are making the islands.  Slightly stronger winds (15-20) has meant we have been reefed since lunch time yesterday.  Just easing now so soon we will shake out.

Panama fuel was high is sulphur so we had the floor boards up yesterday tracing the small fuel leak we get with full tanks.  Turns out to be the fill pipes.  Hopefully now sorted if not we have put enough nappies around the bilges to make sure the fuel stays in sensible places to be easily disposed off.

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Position: 2.317,-84.415 at 07:00 local, 13:00 BST
24hr run: 95.1 miles by GPS, 107.1 miles through wqter.
ETA Galapagos at 5 knots: 11:20 local 24th May
Wind: South 13 knots Sea: slight with SW swell 1.5m

No chat today other things on my mind.

David

Now that you have your yoghurt, making cheese is easy.

Yoghurt
Garlic
Sunflower seeds optional
You will need some sort of muslin or jelly bag for straining

• Pour the yoghurt into the bag, suspend to let the whey run out.
• Leave overnight.
• Put the contents of the bag into a bowl.
• Peel the garlic clove either chop fine or put though a press.
• Mix the two together, put into small container top with chopped sunflower seeds.
• Store in fridge

The amount of garlic depends on your taste, you can also little patties of cheese completely covered with sun flower seeds. Makes a good little gift.

Position: 3.043,-83.007 at 07:00 local, 13:00 BST
24hr run: 106 miles by GPS, 113 miles through water.
ETA Galapagos at 5 knots: 10:01 local Sun 24th May
Wind: South west 9 knots Sea: smooth with SW swell 1m

Great days sailing yesterday.  All to windward and virtually all nearly straight at Galapagos.  Wind has now just gone lighter and more into the west so we have tacked and going south.  This should get us to better current and the true trade winds.  Had a squid jump onto the deck last night – ink made a bit of a mess to clear up.  When the wind was higher at 15-18knots in the night we had two birds flying close to leeward using the wind shadow to make flying easier.  They were there for a hour or so.

David

Position: 3.363,-81.269 at 07:00 local, 13:00 BST
24hr run: 72.1 miles by GPS, 107.7 miles by log.
ETA Galapagos at 5 knots: 15:29 local 24th May
Wind: South West 12 knots Sea: slight with no swell
Skye:  20% cloud cover

Quietly tacking to windward.  Egret away to Columbia.  Time for books, concertinas, French on the ipod and chatting on the Panama Pacific Net.

David