From the Panama Canal to the Las Perlas Islands

We motored out of Balboa Yacht Club this morning at 0730 and headed for the Las Perlas Islands. What an exciting day! First we deployed a trolling line for fisheses. The line was several hundred feet from the boat and had a lure plus some meaty fish skin strips from yesterday's Snapper catch. We attached our end of the line to a cleat on the mizzen mast via an elastic bungee. Within 30 minutes we had a strike! We caught our first ocean fish as opposed to a yacht-club fish. We laboriously wound our line back in across a mizzen winch and found we had a tuna, just over 2 feet long. By 1030 we had tuna lunch and still have enough for another pair of meals.

Around 1100 Annette spotted a whale, several hundred feet off our port side. I also spotted him just in time to see a large thing diving. About twenty minutes later I spotted two whale spouts a little further off.
We dropped anchor at 1440 between Isletta de Don Bernardo and another small islet with a white cross on it. Our position right now is N 08 deg 24.0' W 079 deg 05.0'.

We are anchored off a white sand beach lined with tall coconut palms. There are about 4 or 5 families with scads of children, dogs etc. living in shanties and lean to's back in the coconut trees. There is also a small sail-boat with one hairy individual aboard. I have only seen his back but he looks like he left town shortly after the Tet offensive. It was too hot when we got in to mess around inflating the dinghy, so we napped all afternoon instead. Now the wind has swung and has picked up a little. If it gets any worse, we may have to leave, as we are too close to the beach and the direction the wind has swung may put us on a lee shore.

Supper is fish head soup with a white wine and bouillon base with fresh coconut shavings. Attila got the eyeballs in with her dog food and is thrilled.

We are Galapagos bound! The ride is sorta bouncy, so I won't be writing a lot. We sailed from Panama to Las Perlas islands on Sunday, got in at 1430 to a pretty little anchorage and then had to abandon it 7 hours later. The wind shifted and I didn't like the risk of trying to remain where we were.

At 2130 hours we recovered our anchor and set off in the dark to maneuver our way out of the anchorage and then between the various islands, reefs and rocks to the open water.

The weather forecast was for light winds dying away. Instead we have had winds from the Northeast in the 15 to 25 knot range and fairly big seas.

Noon today found us at N 03 deg 59.5' W 081 deg 56.1' under full sail and heading for Galapagos at 7 or 8 knots.

The wind has not died down but the waves have got a little higher and since we are on a broad reach, every five or so seconds, the boat will be overtaken by a large wave at an angle to the stern. Attila is not liking this and I am having to brace to stay on my stool typing.

Several folks have taken over 3 weeks to sail from Panama to Galapagos in very light winds. At the rate we are currently going, we are three days out (560 miles at 1630 on 2/17/04).

It has been beautiful sailing but not what we expected. I am carrying an extra 100 gallons of fuel because common wisdom says that many boats have to motor the entire distance. The last weather forecast we were able to hear, talked about folks heading for Galapagos needing a good motor and lots of fuel. Not much wind before three days time.

Not a whole lot else to report. We decided it was too bouncy to fish. Not actually to fish of course but too bouncy to try and get the sucker back on the boat if we caught anything.

We are motoring this morning with light winds but a 3 foot high roller coming in from behind. We are doing the morning chores, laundry, checking diesel levels, micro-waving "baked" potatoes for breakfast. I will let you guess who does what.

The Las Perlas were pretty but not as advertised. There were people living on the "deserted" beach where we planned to let Attila run,

together with multiple dogs. The guide book indicated that the little anchorage we were in was protected. I could see from the map that it was, unless the wind went to the Northeast. It went to the Northeast. Our "neighbor" on the beach came down from his hut and

moved his boat that was anchored nearby. That is called "local knowledge." We could have hung around all night in the channel between the islands relying upon the GPS navigation to keep us off the reefs but it wasn't too attractive. Anyway, we are running down on the Galapagos and are about 480 miles away as I write this.

There is a huge storm just north of us. I think we caught the southern edge of it yesterday morning. For us this was not a "storm" but we had over 25 knots of wind and the waves were over 12 feet. When we crested them, it looked a huge drop into the "valleys." We kept our course and our speed up and basically outran the storm effects down into the "doldrums" near the equator.

Right now I think we will be in Galapagos in 3 or 4 days and will stay there around 3 weeks. Then it is a three week (or more) run to the Marquesas.

We are on our way through the doldrums. As of this morning (2/19) we are one and a half degrees above the equator ( about 100 miles). Our noon position yesterday was N 02 deg 35.2' W 083 deg 20.8'.

It was a very pleasant day. Little wind so we were motoring, although this morning the wind has picked up and we will go to close hauled shortly. Annette was extremely disappointed that she did not get a fish. She caught the others after about 30 minutes each and now expects that to be the norm. The temperature was in the mid 80's most of the day and felt pretty good. Last night we passed the first vessel since the Las Perlas Islands.

The layered cloud formations are very pretty at sunrise and sunset and then at night the stars compete with the luminescence in the water as we pass. Sometimes it is as though we are plowing through a sea of diamonds. 300 miles to go.

We are 4 miles north of the equator and should cross it in less than 2 hours at our current course. The sailing has been pleasant. Hot in the direct sun but with a gentle roll to the boat and a coolish breeze if you find a shady spot. The winds are light and we are only sailing at about 4 or 5 knots but if we go any faster we will arrive at night. Bad idea!

Yesterday we "lost" the generator. I tore the water pump down this morning and confirmed that the sea water impeller was shot. The impeller looks like it had exploded into about 40 pieces. I dismantled the heat exchanger on the generator and have found 20 of the 40. Where are the other pieces? We have six spare impellers, so two hours later we are back in business. We can now make pop-corn again in the microwave.

Something ripped off Annette's fishing line this morning. One second it was there and the next it was gone completely. Her 80 pound test line was snapped in two. No, we haven't gone swimming yet. Saw a huge splash a couple of hundred yards away. That was all though. Meteorite or whale? Right now it is looking more like meteorite.

1230 on 2/20 we were at N 00 deg 04.8' W 088 deg 03.4'. We should be at Wreck Bay, Galapagos around dawn tomorrow.

We crossed the equator at 1508 - two and a half hours later! We are officially in the South Pacific! We celebrated by wearing silly hats (including Attila) and drinking most of a bottle of champagne. We got out the manual and figured out the instructions for operating the remote control on Annette's camera and so we now have proof of our debauchery. I tried resampling the pictures but they are still too big to send via sat phone, so you will just have to wait for another CD via snail-mail.

Today was pleasant sailing. We had light winds with small waves but maybe a long period 6 foot high swell. The swell isn't too noticeable when you are sailing along at 5 knots or so and also being pushed another couple of knots by the current. We looked hard for whales all day but all we saw were large splashes, several hundred yard away. Too big for dolphins etc. Annette gave up fishing this morning after something ate her 80 pound test fishing line. She doesn't have a frying pan that big.

As I write this, we are slowly motoring at night down the coast of Isla San Cristobal in the Galapagos. There are no lights visible but we can "see" the island on our radar. We are going slowly in order to arrive at the anchorage on the island by daybreak. These Islands have always been considered dangerous in pre-GPS days 'cos there are no navigation markers (i.e. lighthouses, flashing buoys), the visibility is often poor because of fog and haze and then you have this swift current ~ 2 knots carrying you down onto the rocks. In the past, many boats were lost doing exactly what we are doing now but we have GPS navigation and radar!

approaching_Cristobal.jpg (112639 bytes)

Predictably our GPS just "crashed" just after I wrote the above and froze our navigation system. BUT, I now have a super whiz-bang modification that I installed in Panama before we left. It is a Radio Shack on / off switch, to power off the GPS unit when it behaves thus. You then power it back on and all of the chart-plotter, cockpit repeaters, auto-pilot computers etc. can be left in peace. I have used it about 3 times on this trip and although the installation is currently "temporary" - it is hanging on a piece of wire - it has proven its worth. At Galapagos, I will mount the switch into its own little hole in the instrument panel!