Passage to Marquesas: Day 1

31. Mar. 2015
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Passages
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3 Comments

Author: Pete

Location: 02°10.579S’ 92°14.572W’

Date: 11:00 March 30 to 11:00 March 31

Day 1 at sea.

Left the harbor Villamil on Isla Isabela in the Galapagos at 10:30 am. Skirted around the south side of the island heading southwest ~220 degrees. The wind is lower than predicted, so we motorsailed, rather uninspiringly starting our trip. Looking at the Grib files that show wind, it appears that we’ll have inconsistent and light winds for about 300 miles from Galapagos. So we are aiming at 0500S’ 9500W’, likely 3 days of intermittent sailing and motoring. But THEN we should have good wind, 10-15 knots east to west.

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A few hours into the trip I caught a nice yellow fin tuna! I heard the line zip out when we were all finishing up lunch. I hand lined him in while Felix reeled. He was about 2 feet long and 8 or nine pounds. No monster certainly, but really great colors, blue, yellow, and silver. We filleted him and he should give us about 3 meals! It’s a good start to the trip.

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Already got in contact with the other boats on our daily ‘net’ today. Wavelength and Centime left at dawn and are out ahead of us. Our connections were clear, and we all relay position, speed, and weather conditions. They aren’t sailing the same path as each other, so it’ll give us a good idea of which one to follow to find the most favorable winds! Several of the other boats aren’t leaving for 2 more days, so we’ll have a couple of them behind us as well.

Watched the island of Isabela inch out of sight, brooding under rain clouds until nightfall. It’ll be the last we see of terra firma for some time.

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More rolling than expected with the light winds. Our sea legs aren’t ready yet! We’ve been spoiled by a calm anchorage. I think the rolling anchorage in Panama City prepared us for our trip to Galapagos. We all felt a little nauseous this evening as the seas built. Except Miranda. She feels no pain. She made spicy fish coconut curry with potatoes, onions, and fresh peas over rice with our tuna!

Dodged squalls in the area in the night. Dull lightning flashes from far away light up the clouds in the distance briefly. We steer clear of them visually, but can also see them pretty well on radar up to 20 miles out. As Martha Stewart says, “It’s a good thing.”

Woke in the morning to overcast skies but no rain, calm seas, and still no wind. Quack. Motoring on.

More from the deck of the Tayrona to come.

Making Ready for the Marquesas

30. Mar. 2015
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Galapagos
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1 Comment

Author: Pete

Location: Isabela, Galapagos

Date: March 29, 2015

Spent the last couple of days mostly prepping for the push to the Marquesas. It’s a long way, some 3000 miles, but should be fairly comfortable at this time of year. We just need to provision up!

I put in a new thermostat on the port engine. Its fuel consumption is a little higher than the starboard. Wendy is always running in Belinda’s shadow. I know it runs a lot cooler than it should, so it sounded like a thermostat problem. We’ll see how it performs. In our 85 hours of motoring since our last tank top up, the port tank used 20 gallons of diesel and the starboard only 13. Maybe we were just going in circles.

I also got the gas generator up and running. It’s been a saga, starting with tearing it apart in the Bahamas, bringing it to a mechanic in Cartagena, and then several hours wiring and rewiring the output through a German battery charger. Finally got all the systems to cooperate and we can charge at ~13 amps. There’s only been a few times where we really needed it to charge batteries instead of running the diesels. We may need it more on this passage as the following winds won’t run the wind generator as efficiently. Felix also opened up the towing generator and cleaned up the guts. I rewired its inputs and maybe we’ll get some juice out of him as well.

We were invited by friends to join a loose group of boats that were heading out about the same time we are interested in leaving. We got together on Wavelength, our friends Mark and Eileen’s boat to discuss plans with the other captains and crew. So we will be one boat out of five leaving within a few days of each other. We have a radio net set up, so we’ll be in contact with each other every day via SSB radio. We’ll also be emailing our position updates to the blog as we go via the radio as well. It’s too slow for pictures, so you’ll have to use your imagination.

Our flotilla consists of:

Tayrona – Midwest – Pete, Miranda, Liza, Felix

Wavelength – Vancouver – Mark and Eileen

Talula Ruby – England – Paul, Andi, Pedro, Scott, Carl

Centime – Maine – Dennis and Heidi

Endorphine – Scotland – Colin, Izi, and Terry

We’re the only cat in the bunch, but the sailors on the other boats have oceans of experience and really nice boats, so I’m sure we’ll be the ones trying to keep up! So we’re pretty excited about that. It’s nice to have safety in numbers. We will also try to be in contact via radio with the Pacific Puddle Jump, an organization that keeps track of the boats crossing the Pacific every year.

Our friends Dirk and Gretchen pulled in a few days ago from their Panama to Galapagos crossing. They’re legit sailors on a gorgeous wooden ketch, no refrigeration, rowing dinghy. They’re the real deal. They waited in Las Perlas off Panama for a week for good wind and made it across in six days, albeit they did have a day’s head start leaving from the islands and not Panama City. We got together on our boat for dinner and drinks and related stories of our crossings and the goings on of the Galapagos. They’ll be following us to the Marquesas, just not for a few weeks.

We took on 50 gallons of diesel and 5 of gasoline in our jerry jugs. It’s not straight forward on the Galapagos. Diesel at the gas station is subsidized and costs about $2/gallon, which is illegal for non-Ecuadoreans to purchase. Thus, you have to send if paperwork with an agent (ours is J.C. Desoto), wait four days, and then get your fuel, at $4/gallon. Not the end of the world, but definitely a rigamarole.

Fresh produce is flown in on Saturdays at noon to the Galapagos. It only hits the market on Isabela at 5:00. So in we went to pick out our haul of fruit and veggies for the push. We didn’t find pineapples in the prolific abundance that we did in the Panama City market. We still made out alright though.

In all the preparatory steps to get out of here and back onto the high seas we did sneak in some time to do some more snorkeling. Had a pass by a white tipped reef shark, played with a sea lion, swooping and spinning underwater. I couldn’t keep up with him, but it was sure fun to play. Then we chased a penguin down with the dinghy on the way home!

Now just a few odds and ends to wrap up before we head out! Sounds like tomorrow (Monday) we’ll be shoving off in the morning. We will likely be in the Marquesas anywhere from April 17th to April 30th! We’ll keep you posted!

Cartagena, Colombia

28. Jan. 2015
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Colombia
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4 Comments

Author: Pete

Location: Cartagena, Colombia

Our first morning in the city we met up with our customs ‘agent’, an person who organizes the four different entities dealing with admission into the country. It’s apparently voluntary to employ an agent, but difficult to do without. Their fees are negotiable, but ours cost about 100USD. It’s worth it too. Five people showed up in the late morning after talking to our agent earlier in the day. It seemed like something out of a joke set up: “A navy guy, an immigrations guy, a health inspector, a customs agent, and his son all walk into a marina.” After some pleasantries that ask to see the boat. I asked them if the five of them, and Miranda and Liza and I, were to all hop in my tiny dinghy to be driven out to the boat. They looked around sheepishly and asked if we could see the boat from land. After some neck craning on the dock they stood in a circle for a few minutes winking and lip-pointing in a language unknown to me. Something was decided by someone in the group, and the requisite papers were all pulled out and signed without anymore fanfare and we were free to explore our city.

Hoisted the Colombian flag in our new port.

We feasted on fresh, cut up fruit. I wanted to rub it on my face after the months of meager offerings in the Bahamas. Walked the streets eating fried goodies and drinking really cold, really light Aguila, and generally rekindling our spark with this beautiful place.

Had a celebratory dinner with our friends Nico and Erin Leigh, who live in this delicious city. Nico was our officiant at our wedding right here in Cartagena, and Erin Leigh was the matchmaker who orchestrated our initial chemistry. They have been such a big part of our lives here and afar and a good deal of our interest in sailing to Colombia was to see them.

Took Nico, Erin Leigh, and their two beautiful little daughters out for a little sailing day. The weather was a little rough, but we anchored off Tierra Bomba, and spent some time playing in the waves and the sand.

Collected more crew at the airport. My dad came in to sail the Panama push with us! We are spending a few days working on the boat, provisioning, exorcising electrical demons on the boat, and also enjoying Cartagena de Indias.