Departing Panama we passed by Taboguilla Island, and had a brief visit from dolphins
Within a few hours, cat's paws appeared on the water's surface. Our sails filled and we slowly accelerated away from the mainland. After another half day or so, we were surfing along in almost thirty knot tailwinds at eight to nine knots boat speed under reefed jib. At one point, I think Maryanne recorded hitting sixteen knots. Our ETA in the Galapagos optimistically said we would be there the day after tomorrow, maybe early the day after that.
That was not to last. The tongue of Gulf of Panama winds tends to peter out after reaching about three hundred miles into the open Pacific. Sure enough, late on Day Three, we were slowed back down to almost nothing again. We would occasionally get a few hours of wind from a passing squall, but mostly, there was barely enough to feel.
This made our wind turbine just so much more deadweight. That and thick, heavy clouds made it so that our solar panels could not keep up with our consumption. It was our last passage through here that made us more than double our solar generation capacity afterwards, but even they are no match for a dark, gloomy day.
This meant that, prompted by our low battery level, we ended up having to motor a lot. That was fine, because all our forecasts indicated that our other choice was to be drifted around in circles by the currents for a week. Ugh! I hate motoring, but it did feel nice to be going in the right direction, at least part time. That, and the forward motion generated a little breeze to counter the equatorial heat.
We were entertained on passage with visits from birds, dolphins and even the odd leaping game fish. It's not so easy getting photos though!
On Day Four, we passed through a giant pod of dozens of playful dolphins. They happened by during one of our "sailing" spells, so there was no fun bow wave for them to enjoy. I also spotted a Booby flying around, casing the joint. Sure enough, at sunset, it landed on our sensitive masthead wind speed transducer, clearly with a view of making that perch its new home. This was unacceptable not just because of the expensive and hard-to-install instrument, but also because the guano scatter zone included our helm seat. I enjoy opening our bimini cover to look at the stars, but not now.
The passage involved a LOT of calm seas - it's quite incredible given the scale of the ocean, and rather frustrating when we'd rather be sailing
Usually, I have found that a good shake of one of the shrouds will jiggle the mast enough to deter such birds. This one, however, was holding fast, looking at me like some curious flailing ape as I shook myself to exhaustion, CrossFit-style. It stalked us for two days, causing both Maryanne and I to devote way too much of our time to unplanned workouts.
Thus, it was with great relief on Day Six, when a one-legged Booby decided to perch for the night nice and low down on one of our bow pulpits. She looked tired, her tail was hanging off the edge, and we hardly go that far forward anyway. The next night, she was joined by another, who sat on the very tip of the pointy deck. That was just fine by us and I think we both liked the added task of checking on them during our night watches.
Day Seven was a pretty incredible day. Just before I went off-watch for the evening, a giant pod of short-finned pilot whales appeared that stretched from horizon to horizon. Once news got out about us, most of them came over to have a look at us. As they got closer, we saw that they were accompanied by about half as many dolphins. They left just as the light started to fade.
on Day 8 Short-Finned Pilot whales were seen to all horizons and were readily seen from the boat. We stopped for a while as many were clearly getting close, and several pods came by to check us out. Maryanne was equally curious about them and insisted on getting into the water (while staying VERY close to the boat) - what a magical time.
In the place of whales came the Boobies. We were getting further from land and suitable dry perches for the night were getting rare. This time, we ended up with ten of them staying aboard for the night, including the rare Red-Footed Boobies. This is when we realized that Boobies really like to be right next to each other. They squabble like crazy when a stranger tries to perch too close to them, but they all seem to want to occupy the same real estate. This meant that having the first Booby land on the bow pulpit was always a good thing, because after that, subsequent ones never even considered the masthead. Even ones on the unoccupied, essentially equivalent, unused pulpit would go to great lengths to cross the boat to get to the overcrowded side with the others. It didn't take me long to realize that what Maryanne and I needed was a decent Booby decoy to demonstrate the approved landing zone for overnighters.
Then things got out of hand. A couple days later, as I retired for my night off-watch, there were twenty-two of them, covering both pulpits as well as the full length of the Martingale (the wire over the beam between hulls). Wow!
The word was out and for serveral days the number of Red-Footed Booby's hitching a ride just grew! Things got a little out of hand I'd say.
But they made for great company and we spent hours watching them preen and bicker as new arrivals demanded access
When Maryanne woke me up, she told me there were now forty-four of them. New ones were on both sets of lifelines forward of the mast. The birds weighed as much as another human crew member.
Forty-four birds is just too many. No matter how cute, docile, tame, and well-behaved, that many birds spread out over that much area is going to make a mess, particularly where the wind is not blowing droppings away from the boat. We evicted them after morning coffee, which they all took pretty well, and then spent the next hour or so blasting our deck clean with our 18V battery-powered power washer.
We expected more of the same the next evening, but ended up with not a single avian visitor. By now, we were closing in on the Galapagos and they may have all figured it was a better deal to spend the night in their home roosts.
Before approaching Galapagos we stopped the boat for one last clean (any single barnacle will have the authorities sending us back out to sea). The blue suit is to protect Kyle from the stinging critters (and give us all something to laugh about)
Our 5th crossing of the equator was recorded with a screenshot
We had enough squalls over the next couple days to actually sail the whole time, even if it was mostly at walking speed. We made it across the equator in the last few minutes of Maryanne's Day Ten night watch. Then the wind died on me and I spent the rest of my night watch trying to sail at least fast enough for the north-going current to not drag us back into the hemisphere was had just left. By the time I went to bed for my day off-watch, the visible horizon was as far north of the equator as we were south – about a mile and a half. Maryanne fixed it, and by noon we were comfortable that we were well across for the foreseeable future. It was now officially our first day of Summer. That explains why it is so bloody hot all the time.
We got lucky and had a squall parallel us, which gave us a pretty good wind for the next hundred miles or so, with only an occasional welcome sprinkle as we skirted the edge. On our last night at sea, I was even making plans to slow down so as not to arrive too early the next morning, when the wind died down to less than a knot. We coasted to a stop. I waited as long as I could until the distance remaining divided by our speed under power equaled the time left to sunrise and then mashed the engine start button once again.
The Galapagos Archipelago has many amazing attributes, of which there will be more later. Meteorologically speaking, though, it can be a bit frustrating, at least during the time of year that we would want to sail through. It straddles the equator right in the dead zone between the northern and southern trade wind belts. Five knots of wind is uncommonly brisk here, with a more usual number being two. Old square-riggers would often spend a week getting between islands that are within sight of each other. Modern boats, like ours, that don't want to spend our whole allotment of time sailing between the four islands allowed to foreign boats, have no choice but to motor the WHOLE way if we want to have any chance of making it to port by nightfall.
The passage was one of our favourites to date (aside from the painfully slow bits)
Thus, our entry into the Galapagos at the island of Santa Cruz was over a slowly heaving sea that looked like mercury. The World ARC Rally was still in town (they were scheduled to leave tomorrow), so we found a spot way out in the boonies and dropped anchor. We contacted our agent, who told us he would come out to meet us in two hours. That gave us just enough time to tidy up.
Two hours later, a water taxi arrived that was full to capacity. It pulled alongside and everyone stepped off and filled Begonia's cockpit. There were eight officials, plus our agent. They were all very nice, wishing us, "Buenos Dias" and, "Good Morning". Then the various officers went about their jobs. They wanted to see the engines, the heads, where we put our garbage, plus three different types of recycling in clearly marked containers. They checked that we had all of the requisite ‘Do Not Discharge' placards. They even inspected our dish soap to verify that it is phosphate free. Then there were a whole lot of forms being passed back and forth for stamps and signatures. Maryanne was all ready for this, with everything in neat piles. I just tried to stay out of the way between times when someone would hand me a pen and tell me to sign something. While they were doing all of this, someone was inspecting the bottom of the boat with an underwater camera on a pole.
After about forty very busy minutes, it was declared that everything was in good order and we were now officially cleared into the archipelago. As the officials left, they each welcomed us and wished us a good stay. We were pretty sure we had done everything properly, but you never really know until you know. It was a big relief to trade our quarantine flag for courtesy flags (Ecuador and Galapagos), signifying that we free to start our explorations.
... And we made it!
Anchorage location >> On google maps
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