Passage to Marquesas: Day 2

01. Apr. 2015
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Passages
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1 Comment

Author: Pete

Location: 03°17.889S 93°04.842W

Date: 11:00 March 31 to 11:00 April 1

Day 2 at sea.

A giant marine iguana, some 150 feet long has been chasing us since Galapagos. It’s spitting fire, wrestling with other massive creatures, and plowing over audio-dubbed Japanese folks. It appears that we’re being followed by Godzilla!

Kidding, kidding. It’s April 1st. Couldn’t help but throw in an April Fool’s joke. All fact from here on out.

Today we got some wind, despite a rainy, cloudy day. We had several hours during the day of 15-18 knots of wind. We put out all our sails and cooked along at 6 or 7 knots. It’s always difficult to get used to the odd habit of waking up for a few hours in the middle of the night for watch, so we all had a nice, rainy afternoon nap at some point in the day. Although the seas are similar to yesterday, just big rollers, everyone is feeling better and getting accustomed again to the motion of the ocean. It’s disheartening that your sea legs come so slowly and go away without notice once you’re ashore for a while.

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Got the towing generator up and running when we were sailing. We were getting 0.5 amps from the solar when it was really overcast and cloudy, and the wind generator was shadowed by the mainsail, so we were discharging 2.5A – 4A. Threw the towing generator’s 3kg ‘fish’ in the water, and plugged it into the power inlet I installed in Panama City. Viola! Power! Okay, not that much moving at 4 knots, some 0.5A, but when the wind kicked up and we started making 5.5-6 knots the generator put out 2.5-3.5 amps, even saw some ‘charge’ on our battery monitor. I almost threw the thing overboard earlier on the trip since it takes up a lot of space and we don’t use it going upwind when the wind gen really shines. Now doing some downwind when the wind gen isn’t putting out much I predict it will be more useful than it has been as extra ballast in the starboard bilge.

Ate more of the tuna we caught for lunch. And also for dinner. We even have some broth we made from the extra parts. Liza threw in some onion and fresh herbs. Time to get creative!

We have a bright, nearly full moon tonight, no clouds, no rain, no waves. It’s gorgeous! The bright silver ribbon of moonlight waving from the horizon up to our boat stretches off to the west.

If we only had some wind! Connected with our buddy boats out here; they’re having similar conditions. Sounds like that’s the general operation, motor southwest from Galapagos three days until you find the trade winds. If you get some wind along the way, great! We even saw one of them tonight, a single tricolor light on the horizon. Couldn’t tell who it was, but definitely a solitary sailboat like us.

All good on Tayrona this night.

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.

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.