Dougal Robertson

And, you know, we knew what the yacht was capable of.

She was a strong yacht.

She was an oak frame, pitch pine planks, copper fastenings, lead keel.

She had a long lead keel, so she was ideal for cruising.

especially through heavy seas, and, you know, we were very confident in our craft.

And so we sort of planned a route through all those islands in the Galapagos according to what other people had already been to them.

And then came the time for us to leave.

And we went to Fernandino and then across to Isabella Island and waited the night out.

in a bay, a quiet bay, just to make sure that we set sail in daylight because the boat had to be completely ready to go to sea for such a long voyage.

And so we set sail on the 13th and of course my mother was very upset about that.

She said we shouldn't go on the 13th, it was bad luck.

But Dougal, being the sort of scientist, said, only Friday the 13th is unlucky.

So my mother acquiesced, and we set sail on the 13th.

And the weather was, first of all, it was very quiet, and then it got to be quite rough, because I say rough, it was about force 5, force 6, the wind conditions.

But we only covered 200 miles in that time from the 13th in the early morning.

Let's just say we got sailed by 11 o'clock.

And then, so two days later, we were only 200 miles away from Galapagos Islands heading out west.

So we'd had a slow passage to start with.

We would normally expect to cover that 200 miles per day, you know.

But we'd made about half that speed.