The Galapagos Islands (and Isla Isabela specifically) are an incredible place.  They’re a tropical island paradise.  They’re an enormous open-air-zoo, overflowing with all sorts of exotic creatures.  They’re a little nook of Ecuadorian food, culture, and hospitality.  The last couple of weeks have been absolutely delightful.

Sights and Scenes
The second I dropped my anchor, a pair of penguins began circling around the boat.  You literally can’t walk five feet without seeing some sort of new animal ambling along.  Some are prehistoric looking, some are cute and cuddly, and none of them seem to pay humans much mind. 

Every morning there are a couple of young sea lion pups that circle around the boat, eating little baitfish, and peeking up at me while I peek down at them.  I got into the water with them at one point and they were very playful, swimming circles around such a clumsy creature as myself and blinking at me with their long whiskers.

One morning, a huge school of rays swept past, and a number of baby black tip sharks have been doing the rounds through the anchorage as well.

There are vast quantities birds that hang around the volcanic islets surrounding the anchorage and at times, they feed with reckless abandon on the schools of baitfish that also call the anchorage home.  

The second you step on shore, an entirely new set of land creatures greets you.  The iguanas are constantly lazing around the shore in vast quantities and they never seem to be doing much of anything but sunning themselves.  

Several swampy, wetlandy, saltmarshy areas surround the town and there are boardwalks that make it easy to explore around them.  A few of them have resident flocks of flamingos that you can observe from afar.  

The famous giant tortoises of the Galapagos were once close to extinction (I’ve been unable to find turtle soup on any menus around town), but thanks to a breeding center here on the island, they’re making quite a comeback.  In fact, in my ramblings around the island I even ran across a handful out in the wild, perambulating around and nibbling on various leafy plants.

I’ve made a couple of excursions to explore away from town and each of them was really unique and exciting.  The first trip was to an area called Los Tuneles or “The Tunnels” which is an expansive set of lava tunnels, caves, and weird rock formations that’re west of town.   Some friends from another sailboat (the charming Chris and Paul from S/V Georgia), and a handful of tourists jumped into a big motorboat and we tore out of the bay with a couple of huge outboards thundering behind us.  The water was glassy-smooth in the early morning hours and it felt totally bizarre to be moving so fast in a boat after spending day after day not exceeding 5kts during the previous passage.  Between the noise and the speed it felt totally unnatural, but we soon slowed up when someone spotted wingtips sticking out of the water.  They were the wingtips of an enormous manta ray, much like what I had seen a couple days before, except much bigger.  

The captain cut the engines as we got close and the rays swam right underneath the boat.  I had never seen any rays bigger than 6-8 feet across before, but these were all easily bigger than 12 with some as big as 18 or 20 feet, which seemed astoundingly large to me.  The water was calm and clear and you could watch them effortlessly glide along just below the surface.  It was apparently manta breeding season, so there were groups of 2 or 3 of them cruising along together nose to tail.  I stuck my gopro in the water and managed to get a few pictures of them as they passed.

After a few of these incredible manta performances, we soon came to the lava tunnels and the captain proceeded to thread the boat into an intricate maze of passageways and channels, some with just a few inches of space to spare on either side of the boat.  His maneuvering was masterful and the rocks all around us were abounding with sea life.  

We did a little bit of walking around on land, and eventually everyone got in the water and snorkeled through the tunnels for an hour or two.  We saw everything from sharks to sea turtles, and all sorts of birds like finches and penguins.  The coral wasn’t super interesting or colorful, but all the animals and fish more than made up for it.  We even saw a few small sea horses hanging out in lava rocks on the bottom.

I also made a trip up to the top of one of the five volcanoes that formed Isla Isabela.  Volcán Sierra Negra had been shrouded in clouds for about 80% of the time I’d been in the anchorage, so I figured the chances of good visibility would be something of a crapshoot.  I hopped in a little truck with a handful of other tourists and we proceeded to climb up into the hills.  The land was all quite dry and barren for the first few miles, but as we gained elevation, there was more and more rainfall and the surrounding countryside grew quite lush.  There were a handful of farms and ranches that persistent Equadorians had hacked out of the jungle and the land looked very productive.  

We eventually found ourselves at the trailhead, buried in the clouds.  I haven’t been more than a few miles from the boat for months, and it felt weird to be back in the sort of mountainous terrain that I’ve called home for so many years before this voyage.  It was much cooler at elevation and as I started hiking upwards towards the caldera, there was a light rain falling and it felt like a million bucks.  It brought me back to fall hikes in the White Mountains and it made me very eager to get down to Chile where I’ll be able to be amongst the mountains every day. 

As I cruised along, I struck up a conversation with a couple of Argentines that I ended up hiking with for the rest of the day.  They had grown up in Patagonia and moved to Buenos Aires and had all sorts of interesting tips and advice for me.  They also really built up my stoke to get down to that part of the world and I spent much of the hike day dreaming about all of the mountains and sunsets I have ahead of me.  A large part of me wonders if I’ll ever be able to leave that part of the world so renowned for its wine, steak, beautiful women, and fearsome mountains.  I suppose time will tell.  

We hiked along the edge of the caldera (which was absolutely massive! 10km across) and eventually the clouds parted enough for us to see down inside.  Sierra Negra most recently erupted in 2005 and you could see where the fresh rock covered up previous eruptions.  The trail continued down the side to a smaller caldera that was attached to the mountain and as we looked out across this bizarre lunar landscape, the clouds eventually parted, revealing views of the rest of the island and the sea beyond.  The vistas reminded me of the time I’d spent in Hawaii, but these volcanoes definitely had their own character.  

Culture
I’ve been anchored in the town of Puerto Villamil on the south end of Isabela Island, which is the largest island of the Galapagos archipelago.  Authorization to anchor in the Galapagos is quite expensive, and thus I’m limited to just one island for a period of twenty days.  My timing was perfect, however, and I arrived at the very start of Carnival!  It was a five day extravaganza of eating, drinking, singing, dancing, and mischief.  

On an island with only a few thousand people, many of the Carnival activities were geared towards the kids, and there were rugrats running around everywhere hurling water balloons, spraying each other with colored shaving cream, and generally having a grand time.  There were lots of musicians belting out their Carnival best (which wasn’t really that good) and the sounds of celebration echoed out across the anchorage late into the night.  There seemed to be several beauty pageants going on, and it was clear that the competition to be named Ms. Isla Isabela was quite stiff.  I had a grand time drinking beer, eating little grilled snacks, and watching the festivities unfold.  

There are only two types of beer in Ecuador, and they’re both quite delicious.  They’re both quite similar to Mexican beer and they’re always cold and refreshing.  “Pilsener” is cheaper, more drinkable, and sold in large bottles.  “Club” is slightly more flavorful and a bit more expensive.  Food and drink prices are on par with or slightly higher than in the states, and after all my time in Mexico, prices in the Galapagos are pretty painful to endure.  

The people of Ecuador have been very friendly and outgoing and I’ve had a great time getting to know folks around town.  People in Mexico were more reserved, but I’ve had several old Ecuadorian men sit down on a park bench next to me to strike up a conversation.  Nearly everyone in The Galapagos works in the tourist industry to one degree or another, but they don’t seem quite so jaded towards foreigners as some folks can be.  Perhaps visitors to the Galapagos are a slightly more conscientious lot than most Americans that bumble their way through Mexico.

The food here has been delicious, and certainly a nice change of pace from cooking on the boat.  Plantains (which look like bananas, but are often eaten green when they’re starchy like a potato) feature prominently in a lot of dishes and much of the food harkens back to the time I spent in Costa Rica.  Seafood is plentiful everywhere and ceviche is a staple much like it was in Mexico.  Soups are also quite ubiquitous and I’ve had a number that really knocked my socks off.  Even the beef has been quite good, and the cows that’re raised on the island have a really distinct flavor to them, somewhat like grass-fed beef in the states.  Fruit is everywhere and always seems to be exquisite and fresh.

One typical breakfast is called a “Bolon” and involves a mashed up plantain ball that is filled with cheese and steak or chicharron, that subsequently gets deep fried.  They’re filling and delicious.  I’ve had a couple of fish soups as well as one with a bunch of little chunks of Ecuadorian cheese that was quite tasty.  

Engine Repairs
When I first diagnosed my engine issue (and before I started disassembling it), I figured I could resolder or tape over the leaky connection, put it all back together, and be on my way.  It didn’t end up being quite so easy.

The crack I noticed while I was sailing south was in one of the lines going into the heat exchanger (the engine is cooled by fresh water, which in turn has to be cooled off by sea water and all of this happens in the heat exchanger).  I’ve spent some time around engines in my day, but on the boat, I’ve only ever had to do basic engine maintenance (oil changes, filter cleaning, etc).  The previous owners must’ve decided at one point that they wanted a larger alternator, and when they were fitting it, they were forced to reroute some cooling lines to accommodate its bulk.

It was one of these re-routed cooling line connections that cracked.  The Swedish engineers that designed my engine elected to place all of these cooling connections right on top of and behind the starter and alternator (the only two parts of the engine that would be vulnerable to water) and you’ve got to bend over the engine at an awkward angle in order to access it, which I would have occasion to do for 25-30 hrs in the following few days.  The below diagram from the shop manual shows just how simple and elegant the cooling system is.

In order to remove the heat exchanger, you first need to remove some electrical connections, dismount the alternator and belt, disconnect a half dozen cooling lines, and also remove the bracket that holds the heat exchanger in place.  Once I got this accomplished, I was faced with a corroded, tired looking heat-exchanger, which upon further inspection, revealed more than just one crack.

It was Carnival, so naturally nobody would be working for the next five days, and on the sixth day, I wound my way through the labyrinth of streets to the much-lauded expert welder of Puerto Villamil.  Upon arriving to his shop, I wasn’t sure if I had the right character, as his shop bore a striking resemblance to a bike graveyard, but he assured me he was the man for the job.

He and his shop helper (who was in his seventies, without many remaining teeth) fired up the oxy torch and dove into the job with reckless abandon and in a matter of minutes he had breathed new life into my heat exchanger.  He did a great job, charged me just 20 bucks, and even gave me a ride to his favorite lunch spot on the back of his dirt bike.

It was in reassembling the heat exchanger to the engine that the true challenge began.  It has an inlet and outlet for both sea water and fresh water (four connections) and these four tubes, in turn, connect with four other items (pumps, thermostats, etc) to create eight total junctions.  Because of the way the previous owners changed these connections, it meant that I had to get six out of these eight connections just right all at the same time.  Unfortunately, I was only gifted with two hands, and because of the cramped confines of the engine compartment, I’m not sure an extra four hands would’ve been helpful anyway.  None of this would’ve been too bad if it weren’t for the nature of the connections themselves.

These cooling lines are all thin copper tubes that slide into their respective parts with a little rubber grommet and are sealed with nothing but a little soapy water according to the shop manual.  This is somewhat akin to sliding a straw into a coke bottle and expecting it to hold pressure.  Once I truly grasped this truth, I was somewhat baffled that I hadn’t had any major failures of this system up until this point.  Indeed the engine has given me hundreds of hours of trouble-free service without a single instance of overheating.

Thus I spent the better part of three days wrestling with these components, lubricating connections, contorting myself around the engine compartment, and generally cursing the bastards that designed this system.  Paul from S/V Georgia had spent a few years doing battle with a similarly cursed Volvo diesel and he had some sage advice that helped me along, but the unique modifications to my specific engine made things increasingly challenging.  There were many hours of despair, a few dubious modifications of my own, and no matter what I tried, one of the connections leaked as soon as I began filling the system with water.  Eventually, one afternoon, by the grace of god, all the tumblers fell into place and the secret to perfect alignment fell into my lap.  I fired the engine up and she purred like a kitten.  I rewarded myself with a gin-piña and some rock and roll music.  I was finally at peace with the world once again.  

It was then that I noticed the alternator was no longer charging the batteries.  “Shit,” I thought to myself.  “Probably all the water finally got to it,” I reasoned.  The universe seemed to be conspiring against me at that point.  After a couple hours of troubleshooting with the multimeter and a couple of re-spliced connections, I was relieved to find that the alternator wasn’t shot after all and the Rascal was once again fully operational. 

The Next Step
My time in paradise is slowly coming to a close.  I’ve met a lot of awesome people here (both other cruisers as well as tourists).  Folks from all over the world travel to the Galapagos and it has been fascinating to strike up conversations with them.  It is always interesting to hear other peoples’ stories and everyone has been friendly and generous.  My Spanish has definitely been improving over time and I’ve added a few, choice words of Argentine slang to my lexicon.  

Often times, the southeast trade winds will extend all the way up to the Galapagos, but unfortunately right now and for the next few days there is a period of prevailing calm that might mean I’ll need to motor for a while at the outset.  All along, my intention has been to sail out to Easter Island, and then back east to the Chilean coast with eventual landfall at Puerto Montt.  I’ve heard, however, that some boats stay close hauled due south for a while and make a direct course for Puerto Montt instead.  This would mean that I could complete the entire sail in one passage of roughly 3000 miles and 4-6 weeks instead of two passages of 2000 miles and 3-4 weeks each.  The alternate route would potentially cut a thousand miles and a couple weeks off of the overall trip, but I also would miss out on exploring Easter Island. 

The course for the first week will be effectively identical for either route, so I’m going to make the decision between the two options after I’ve been at sea for about a week, once the prevailing weather patterns in the southern ocean are more clear and I can gauge how much I’m pushed westward in the first few days. 

The next few days will be spent topping up tanks, buying food and supplies, and enjoying the comforts of land while I still can.  I’ll check back in once I make landfall again (in a month or two!), and until then, you can track my progress here.

The distance from Huatulco to the Galapagos is 1050 miles as the crow flies and I ended up completing the sail in 12 days.  I crossed the equator for the first time in my life and managed to weather a stout storm, navigate some tricky currents, and make friends with a booby named Icabod.  Other than a broken-down diesel, there were no major mishaps and I made it to the Galapagos quickly and in good style.  

After a fun week of exploring, eating, and relaxing with my family, it was time to get back down to business.  The weather was my main concern, and I knew the high winds of the Gulf of Tehuantepec would give me a very narrow window for departure.  The forecast looked abysmal for the next week, so I knew I would have plenty of time to prep the boat and buy provisions.  

I accomplished a lot of preventative maintenance over the course of the week and, with the weather window fast approaching, I started to go through the motions of checking out of Mexico, which involves visiting a couple of offices around town, paying various bills, and notifying the officialdom of your intentions.  On the final day, I went to the ice factory to buy a couple huge blocks of their coldest, hardest ice, and bought as much cheese and meat as my ice box could possibly contain.  That afternoon, once I was all squared away, the lovely ladies of immigration came to officially "check me out".

I had examined and downloaded all of the long-range weather forecasts and it looked like the prime time to leave would be the following morning, so I anchored up just outside the marina and did cooked a couple of big meals so that I wouldn't have to do it while the boat was rocking around.  The next morning, I jumped into the water to scrub all the barnacles and growth off of the bottom of the boat (so that she would be as fast as possible, with no extra drag), gave my parents one last "goodbye" call via skype, weighed anchor,  and sailed off into the vast blue ocean amid a pod of friendly, exuberant dolphins.  

I had a light wind, but a strong following current, and I was making good time, but to ensure I'd get across the Tehuantepec before any storms brewed, I ran the engine as well.  This pushed me along at about 6 knots for most of the day, which is about as good as the Rascal is ever going to do.  That afternoon, just as I was losing sight of shore, I noticed some yellowish residue in the cockpit and I wasn't sure where it was coming from.  I suspected that it was from the anti-siphon vent on the exhaust elbow, which will occasionally spit out a little bit of salt water, but it wouldn't make any sense for coolant to have gotten in that line.  I cut the engine and checked the expansion tank and noticed it was low.  Shit.

Its obviously quite troubling to have problems with your engine at the start of a long passage, and I spent an hour or two debating a return to Huatulco to troubleshoot the issue.  It would mean missing my weather window, having to check back in and out of Mexico, and a bunch of hassle, delay, and cost.  The engine was still sounded great, wasn't overheating, and didn't have any water in the oil, so I decided to press on.  That evening, a fairly stout breeze sprang up and I cut the engine and sailed through the night, reaching 7-8 kts at times with the current's help.

After the excitement of departure slowly melted away, I slowly fell into rhythm of life at sea.  For the first two or three nights, I was still fairly close to shore and shipping routes, and I kept a fairly good watch, poking my head up every half hour throughout the night and making sure the Rascal was on course.  During the day, I read and listened to all sorts of books and occasionally, I'd fire up the stove and cook something.  

About four or five days in, I fell into a funk for a while where I really questioned what I was doing.  Did I truly enjoy being all on my own out here in the middle of the ocean?  Was this huge investment of time really worth it?  Should I just sail back to the coast and keep hopping from port to port instead?  I was still had more than 4500 miles of long, solo passages ahead of me before getting to Chile.  A wave of loneliness and doubt washed over me and for a few hours I felt totally smothered by it.

After hemming and hawing back and forth for a few hours and emptying all of my thoughts and motivations and fears into my journal, I decided to stick my head up and have a look around the horizon.  I was blown away by an absolutely stupendous, awe-inspiring sunset.  I cranked on some music, gazed across the vast, empty ocean and my soul was back at peace again.  

It is tough for me to convey with words the feeling I get when I'm looking out across the open ocean, but I would liken it most closely to standing atop a mountain.  It makes you feel really small and insignificant, but its also a feeling of hope and possibility and majesty.  All at once, you can feel the strength and power of a place, but also the vacuum of space and outrageous scale of the earth.  It is a truly awesome feeling.

And it was exactly that feeling that brought me back to my senses that afternoon.  I was sailing to the goddamn Galapagos Islands after all!  I had great weather, plenty of food and water, and enough good books to last me for months.  Sometimes there is no substitute for a great sunset and I'm grateful that this one was able to set me straight.

I made steady progress as time marched on and I sent my brother an updated location a couple of times a day.  Each morning, he would send me a short weather forecast of what to expect for the following 24 and 72 hours in terms of wind and waves as well as special mention of any nasty fronts or storms that were brewing.  It gave me something to look forward to each day and it was like opening a little present each morning - the gift of contact from the outside world.  

I was far enough out to sea that the wind was fairly consistent throughout the day and I could plan to make more easting or westing according to what was expected in the future.  In this way, I hoped to avoid any strong headwinds.  For the vast majority of the trip, the wind was either from the side or the back, which is exactly what the Rascal prefers.  

After the first few days, I didn't see much of anything.  There weren't any ships (not even a light on the horizon at night).  I didn't see any dolphins.  I didn't even see any whales (though I did hear one blow quite close to me during the night and his exhale sounded like the deflation of some super-sized zeppelin exploding in the night).  Most of the time I didn't even see any clouds.  What I did see, however, was boobies.  

There were brown boobies and white boobies and blue boobies and yellow boobies.  There were big boobies and small boobies and sometimes there were more boobies than I could count.  Sometimes there were no boobies which made me sad.  

One booby in particular must've been very tired after flying for so long and he decided to land on the back of the boat.  I expected him to be a bit afraid of me when I walked around in the cockpit, but he paid me no mind and decided to just hang out on his lifeline perch.  As the day went on, he did some preening and decided to spend the night, hitchhiking on the Rascal and making an easy 50 miles while he slept.  It was during the night that he earned his nickname which was "Icabod" on account of his tucking his head under his wing as he slept (which made him look quite headless).  Eventually some of his friends attempted to join him, but they were entirely less adept at landing on a boat that was pitching around in a swell with a gusty 15 knot breeze.  

My enormous ice blocks held out for the first 9 or 10 days and I ate like a king for much of the passage.  Some of my personal favorites were smoked pork chop sandwiches, steak and oaxaca filled poblano chile rellenos, as well as some bacon egg and cheese breakfast burritos with a chipotle crema sauce.  There was also a good supply of cured meat snacks and other tidbits to keep me satiated between meals.  Beyond that, I've got enough canned and prepacked foods to last for several months.  

My first serious weather of the passage happened about 8 days into the sail.  It started benignly enough with a wind shift to the south east (it had been out of the northeast for the majority of the passage).  It wasn't forecast to be anything too stout, but as the night wore on, the skies opened up and the winds started howling.  

I threw a reef in the main and changed down to the working jib.  A half hour later, I put a second reef in the main.  I procrastinated a while, because the forecast pointed to nothing serious, but eventually I went up on the heaving foredeck and switched down to the "jiblet".  I hadn't used any of these sails since I got to Mexico and it felt like I was getting back into real sailing again.  The boat heeled over and charged through the building waves and I could tell the Rascal was enjoying it.  By this point, it was dark out and there was an absolute deluge of rain falling.  Every time I poked my head into the cockpit, I came back totally soaked.  As the night wore on, it became clear that I was probably over-canvassed, but I decided to ride it out and by the time dawn arrived it things started to die down and clear up a bit.  The waves never grew past 10 or 12 feet, but the wind got up to at least 30 knots and was some of the strongest I've yet seen on this voyage.

As the day wore on, the winds continued to abate and I fell back into my routine of reading, navigating, and gazing across the horizon.  

On day nine, I started seeing some floating garbage in the water and it slowly continued to build and build until it was everywhere.  It would seem that I found a little corner of the Great Pacific Garbage Gyre.  After seeing not so much as a floating bottle for more than a week, it was pretty shocking and somewhat appalling to see just how densely packed the trash was.  These pictures don't really do it justice, but it was really quite phenomenal.  There was not a single square meter of ocean that didn't have a piece of trash floating in it and this continued for at least a dozen miles.  

I even saw a massive uprooted tree that I passed within 20 or 30 feet of that would've probably done some damage if I ran into it the previous night.  As always, I'm glad the Rascal is a sturdy old girl.  I would imagine this dense patch of debris can be attributed to the currents that converge and turn along the equator.  These same currents and weather patterns are also responsible for inconsistent winds and frequent squalls that occur near the equator and over the course of the next few days, I got up close-and personal with several of them.  

Finally, on the 10th morning of the passage, I spotted one of the northernmost islands of the Galapagos and bellowed out a triumphant "LAND HO!" 

It felt absolutely surreal to have finally made it to land after being away for so long.  The sight of that volcano popping out of the water took my breath away and I stared at it for almost an hour.  Somehow it felt incredible that this island could be out here in the middle of the Pacific, hundreds of miles away everything.  It was like no feeling I've ever had before.  

The wind clocked around to the south during that day and I had a light to moderate south wind for the rest of my sail, which was unfortunate, because I was sailing due south from then on out.  The south wind, combined with currents pushing to the west, no engine, and some narrow passages between islands made for some tricky sailing and i did a lot of tacking back and forth for the last few days.  

That night, as I was threading my way between the different islands in the dark, I crossed over the magical imaginary line of the equator.  In all my wanderings around the globe, I'd never been to the Southern Hemisphere and I decided this was a major cause for celebration, so I cracked open a bottle of wine, fired up some raucous tunes, and had a little party out there all by myself.  Luckily, I managed to stay sober enough to drive the boat through the night and I ended up dodging a few boats that were transiting between islands in the dark.  

I made good distance that day, and I was hoping to make it all the way to Puerto Villamil that night, but the wind fell off that afternoon and I came up short.  The current combined with the lack of wind made for a tenuous night, using every little puff as much as I could to claw my way off of a lee shore without the use of the engine.  I eventually gained some offing from the shore in the wee hours of the morning, but it was in the wrong direction from my anchorage, so I had to retrace my steps the next morning. 

The wind was still quite light the next morning, and it was really frustrating to be so close, but making no progress.  I decided for safety's sake it would be a good idea to see if I could use the Superhighway to move the boat around.  At first, I tried towing it with a long line from the bow, but the Rascal kept veering from side to side without anyone to steer her.  Eventually I decided to lash the Superhighway alongside, fire it up, and then get back onto the Rascal to steer with the tiller.  This sounds a bit sketchy, but I was careful about safety lanyards and kill switches and it actually worked quite well.  With the 4ph outboards just above idle, it moved the Rascal along at almost 3 knots.  Eventually as I was getting close, the wind finally sprung up and I decided to kill the superhighway and come into Puerto Villamil under sail.  I could see a handful of boats and a little ship in the anchorage already, so it took some fairly precise sailing to get to a good spot and drop the anchor.  Luckily I'd honed my quick-tacking skills during the night and it worked out alright.  

After a couple days and nights of constant, vigilant sailing, it felt like a million bucks to finally be at anchor again.  There was a nice light breeze blowing, seal lions and baby sharks swimming around the boat, and a beautiful blue sky.  I had finally made it!

I ended up averaging better than 100 miles per day on the passage, which is really good for the Rascal.  I only used about 5 gallons of gas to cover the 1254 miles to the Galapagos, which averages out to about 250mpg (better than your average Prius).  Overall, I'm really pleased with the way this first big open-ocean passage went and I'm charged up for the next leg of the voyage.  I'm going to spend the next few weeks exploring the Galapagos, fixing my diesel, and drinking cold beers while I still can.  Cheers!