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!

Galapagos Gallivanting

26. Mar. 2015
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Galapagos
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1 Comment

Author: Pete

Location: Isla Isabela, Galapagos

Date: March 26, 2015

Spent the last days on a big empty boat. Liza and Felix took off for Isla Santa Cruz to surf and check out a little of the island’s fauna. While they were out gallivanting Miranda and I worked on the boat!

The mounting cup for our heat exchanger cap cracked off during our last motorfest. We patched it temporarily at sea with epoxy putty, which seemed to hold pretty darn well. I have to stock up on that stuff! We wanted a real fix, however so we chased down a welder that J.C. knew, Sr. Pedro Pachai. It took some time to find him, and even showing him the offending part and pictures of the heat exchanger it was still time consuming to reach an understanding of what needed to be done. Thus, I waited around his shop for a while until he was finished with a job then a friend of his drove us back to the docks and I brought him out to the boat.

The big question was, do we have to dismantle the heat exchanger to bring it in to his shop? This would entail removing about 6 tubes, draining the coolant and sea water, and also pulling the heat exchanger away from the diesel head, which would likely destroy a gasket that I didn’t have a replacement for. Quack. Much better if he could fix it on site. He poked around the engine for a bit, we cleaned up the metals and he said he could bring his tools to the boat tomorrow. We then offered him a cup of coffee and talked for about an hour. He ended up giving us unsolicited marriage advice for half of it. He was like the Mr. Miagi of welding. It reminded me of the book Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. Pretty funny.

The next day Sr. Pachai was back with his gear. He soldered the brass piece back on with a beefy soldering gun. Did a pretty nice job. He also brought us a book, What All Wives Wished Their Husbands Knew About Women. It’s in Spanish, but man, I’ve been looking for that book since I was sixteen! Anyway, that settled our most recent engine failure fun.

Changed the oil and oil filters on both engines and sail drives the following day. It now takes me about three hours in total. There’s a hot, thankless job. I also changed the pre-filter on the water maker. Seems like an eight minute process, right? Nope! Hour and a half! An hour and a half to replace a filter, and a lot of sea water in the boat.

In the afternoon we went body surfing on the long beach on the other side of town. Great sunset over the west side of the island. Also had some beers at a nice local watering hole, The Boobie Trap!

Yesterday I racked the diesel from the jerry jugs into the onboard tanks. We take about 25 gallons per tank, and hold about another 50 in the jerry jugs. Ready to fill up for the next push. Also, a favorite past time has become shooing the resident sea lions off our transoms! They flop their drippy bodies around the deck leaving fur, grime, and poop all over! A boat hook to their flabby ribs gets them over the gunnels with a splash.

Went snorkeling in the tintoreras nearby. They’re enormous basins that collect water during high tide, and are mostly closed from the ocean at low tide. They’re usually pretty clear. It’s a little stroll down a mangrove-encrusted boardwalk where you need to duck outstretched branches and dodge sunbathing iguanas and sea lions. There was some pretty good wildlife when we went out. We saw three big turtles sleeping underwater, a massive stingray, and some great sea urchins. No, we’re not talking about pirates.

Also, as the tide comes in the marine iguanas from the outer rocks start swimming to shore as their lounging areas become awash. So there were dozens of black swimming lizards cruising by. They’re pretty ugly little guys, but endearing at the same time with the white salty stalagmites on their faces. When they lay on shore they blow seawater out of their nostrils which accumulates on their heads in white nubs. This wards off the sun and gives them a snotty face only a mother lizard could love. Pretty neat.

Had some quiet evenings aboard, taking advantage of an empty boat. But now the crew is back and maybe some of the prep work will go faster with eight hands before we head off in the next week to the Marquesas.