Our position as at 23.00 GMT, Monday 20th May:
05 degrees 58 minutes south, 113 degrees 48 minutes west
Distance run in last 24 hours: 182nm
Another important milestone has been passed – we are over halfway there! Yesterday's mileage increased as we found some slightly more favourable wind and we regained the Equatorial Current. We celebrated with a small beer with our lunch in the cockpit on a brilliantly sunny day.
We've also moved time zones so put the ship's clock back an hour yesterday; we are now 8 hours behind British Summer Time and, by the time we get to the Marquesas, we'll be 10.5 hours behind.
Passing half-way marked a change in our daily vhf conversation with Stormvogel (currently half a mile ahead of us) as we started to look forward, talking about our options for anchorages in the islands and possible timings for our next moves. We all agreed that we'll want a decent few days to unwind after the passage and we're really looking forward to the landfall.
The sailing's been pretty special over the past 24 hours, though, so we're enjoying the experience. The night sky is becoming more familiar to us – we see the Southern Cross clearly to port (it's shaped like an old-fashioned kite) but now the moon is growing so from about 23.00 until 03.00 its light drowns out the smaller stars. We should have a nearly full moon when we arrive so that should make navigation a bit easier if we arrive at night.
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