Departure -

Well the time has come to say goodbye to the Galapagos, and make the jump to the Marquesas.  So my guess is that it takes us 23 days.  It is 3000 miles, and mostly downwind.  The other 58' catamaran is averaging just about 200 mile days, so they should do it in less then 20 days.  I guess it is pretty sloppy out there, so we are planning on dragging our departure feet until tomorrow. But who knows, they may just send us out of here sooner.

Diesel is $1.05 and gas is $1.46 per gallon at the gas station.  But there is a small mafia problem here.  If a cruiser wants to get fuel they charge you $5/gallon and deliver it after sunset.  So the trick is to find a taxi driver who does not know about overcharging boaters, give him your fuel tanks to fill and pay him $2 per gallon.  The trick is then only to smuggle it from the taxi, out the dock, and into your dingy.

All was going smoothly for us, until my partner in crime (who shall remain nameless), saw some friends of hers at the beach, and being a social butterfly went over to chat while I waited for the taxi to arrive.  When the gas arrived she was nowhere to be found, so I had to run the fuel out on the dock, grab the dingy, then with a herculean effort lift the gas over the fence and carefully drop it into the dingy.  Now for some reason gas in the Galapagos is colored a deep blue.  Making it extremely obvious what is in your clear plastic fuel jugs.   (Could not use the red fuel jug, as it is not big enough.)  So as we motored past the "cops" Shannon just laid over the fuel tanks as casual as could be so that they could not be seen.

It is off to Volleyball this morning, and then we are ready to go!!

Courage