Galapagos Trip - Welcome to the ITCZ

The ITCZ is a band of water between the North and South Pacific waters where God has not decided which way he wants His waters to flow. Yesterday, we found it. If anybody is listening.It's right Damn HERE. We had about a knot of current slowing us down so that we could savor the experience. This band waffles north and south and the forecasters don't do a good job and predicting it. By the time they say where it is now, it may have moved 100 miles north or south. The weather GRIB files did not show any of the 20 knot winds that we had or the 8 foot seas that moved us around like we were all in a washing machine. The crew gave no quarter when the captain showed the forecasts for less than 10 knots of wind and seas less than 5 feet. No siree Bob! All I got was a peanut butter jar thrust at me with a spoon.enjoy your lunch; the galley is closed!
Things are a little better this morning. Winds have dropped to 13 knots and the washing machine is on the gentile cycle although still rocking us pretty good.

The crew of Emily Grace are well and still pushing southwest. Our current position is 2º 16.661' N, 84º 32.3' W and we moved about 130 more miles towards the Galapagos during the last 24 hours. We still have almost 363 miles more to go.

The ship is holding together. The engine is purring away and the stabilizers continue to work the hardest of all the crew. We heard that Imagine fixed their autopilot by replacing the drive motor. It sure helps to have the spare parts aboard. (and yes I do have a spare drive motor too).

The Pacific continues to reveal new treats. We passed a small island and the water was covered with Nazca (formerly masked) Booby birds feeding. It was funny seeing them try to take off from the water to avoid getting run over. They beat their wings like mad, and slap their webbed feet on the water trying to get airborne. Sometimes they don't make it and trip beak first into the water. In the sky, however, they are graceful and also effective as they dive on the water. Several of these birds stayed with us all through the night and hunted on the small fish that scurried away from our boat. They used our navigation lights to help see their quarry.

We also saw several areas where tuna were feeding. These 3 to 4 feet long bullet shaped fish would leap clear of the water by 5 or 6 feet while they were hunting. It wasn't until we were through the action that I discovered another of my lures had been bitten off. No sushi tonight!

We saw this sea bird far at sea.  It had a long streaming tail.  Anybody know what he is?

Posted Via SSB
Tom