We were up early on Wednesday morning, ready to set sail for Panama only to find the navigation screens were not working! The technician had to come back on board, twice, and believes there is a problem with the Furuno black box. After hours of tinkering Robin managed to get the screens on deck displaying the chart and our position but nothing else is working. We were finally ready to leave just after 2pm. Light winds necessitated the huge spinnaker (480 sq m!) being raised and remaining up until half way through day two of our passage.
We have agreed our watch system, 3 hours on, 9 hours off. Nic has 09:00-12:00, 21:00-00:00 and I have 03:00-06:00, 15:00-18:00. At night we wear lifejackets and safety harnesses. The vast aft deck of Spiip is fantastic for boogieing to music on our Ipod to keep awake. Our days are spent reading and chatting in the cockpit. The fishing rod is always out in the hopes of catching a fish and we’ve hooked a couple of bonito but thrown them back in the hopes of getting something that’s better eating.
