Captain Ken and the Reluctant Sailor

Las Perlas to the Galapagos

Or – from peace to pieces

Ken’s report

Eileen’s take on Ken’s report

We motored the first hour and half out of La Playita, Panama City… it’s good to have an engine again. The wind picked up and we had a wonderful quick sail for the last 35 miles to Contadora Island. I was underwhelmed by the Las Perlas Islands in Panama Bay. Even though there are some very expensive high end houses, there is a lack of commensurate accompanying accoutrements like nice restaurants and shops, at least we did not find them and we walked most of the island. Yup it is a small island – about 2 miles by 1 mile. I guess I expected better than San Blas. Even though the Las Perlas islands are famous for their pearls and pearl divers, neither to be found nor seen anywhere. The water was clean but filled with algae so you could only see about 6 feet underwater; not enough to bother snorkeling. We took the dinghy about 2 miles across to the deserted island where they shot the first 3 seasons of Survivor… we found one of their sets but those episodes were over 10 years ago so the jungle has reclaimed the rest. After 4 days there we were ready to leave.

Maybe we have been spoiled by islands but Las Perlas Islands were pretty but just not equal to San Blas (Guna Yala). Still we did enjoy the company of the ARC folk and had a wonderful meal on board SANDVITA with Captain Lars, Anne, Bjorn, Carl and Lars. They had drinks on board AURORA. A good time

ARC leg 3 started 11:00 Friday February 10^th. 2 boats missed the start and 2 more had to turn back all due to broken stuff. There was plenty of wind at 30 gusting to 35 knots. After screwing around trying to get the sails set right (main with one reef and the 130 Genoa reefed in about 4 feet and poled out for dead down wind sailing) we crossed the starting line 3 minutes late. AURORA was flying along at 8.5 – 9 knots and we blew by most of the pack in the first 4 hours. We had plenty of wind the first night and the next day so we were doing great but then the wind dropped to 10 knots and many of the boats, who had big bags on board - spinnakers and the like (we left ours at home so as to avoid that method of killing ourselves – death by spinnaker), caught up in less than 24 hours. Most of the time we could see none of the 25 boats on the horizon – that’s about 1256 square miles of ocean to ourselves. Well, the 3rd night out Eilo was on watch and I was sound asleep. Around 23:00 I get a fairly frantic wake-up call and I heard a scrambled VHF radio transmission of someone asking what our intensions were. So up I go, half asleep, no cloths on and I see a big Cat with a huge spinnaker up (in 9 knots of wind) heading directly at us and closing fast from about 300 yards away. My first thought was I could not believe with 1256 miles of visible ocean and no other boats in sight, why this guy has chosen to mow us down because with all the modern tricks he has on-board such as radar and AIS – each with GPS driven collision warning and avoidance systems, why did he not avoid us. My second thought was that I should put some cloths on so I shot below, donned some cloth, and shot up to deck. He was now about 100 yards away, closing fast, heading straight for our port side so I decide not to cut across his bow so I turned to starboard and lost what little wind we had and almost instantly came to a standstill. Well, the on-coming cat had at the same time turned starboard – now I’m getting pissed – as they are getting real close. I start our engine and at full throttle turn hard to port and avoid pending disaster, my pulse starts to drop a few minutes later.

We are well aware of the rules as they apply to sail boats and they claimed (on the radio) that we were windward of them…actually not so….but we go by the rule that we should just avoid other boats. Anyway, everyone has their perspective and we all survived!

We crossed the equator at 88 degrees 32 minutes west. Here’s Ken & Barbie crossing (photo courtesy of Eilo pics).

As we close on San Cristobal about 176 miles from the leg 3 finish line and harbor, it’s blowing 6 to 11 knots and we are going along at an average of 7.2 miles per hour (as we had a 1.2 knot following current giving us a little kick above our 4.5 knot boat speed – sorry for the mixed units- for those of you who care)… so we decide we needed to get in during day light and to guarantee that we turned on our engine and ran AURORA into the harbor that way. It was a good 23 hour test for the engine which checked AOK… not like the 2^nd alternator which worked for about 1 minute after starting the engine before the drive belt started smoking – so I did what all good mechanics do and cut the belt. I obviously ended up on the south side of that 50:50 fix the 2^nd alternator bet (for the 4^th time)… so that gives me another thing to potentially fix in the future. Around 3:30 AM a red footed booby landed on our spinnaker pole, confirming we were getting close to the Galapagos, and he balanced there until 7:30, hitch hiking a 40 mile ride back to his island.

We got into the harbor after 5 days and moon-lit nights and dropped anchor. Aside from a large number of black flies which came out to greet us (lucky not the biting kind – just the visually distasteful kind) there are a lot of sea lions around and a few came over and eyed up AURORA as a good sleeping platform

so we let the dinghy down and turned it upside down and pulled it up from the transom frame

to protect the stern steps to our deck which were obviously looking good to the first set of fly-by sea lions. Invaders and pirates are one thing but sea lions smell and I’m not saying they smell good.

And if they poop…

The anchorage which looked good for about 2 hours until the wing changed and we swung close to another rally boat so we pulled up and dropped in a “safer” place until the wind changed again and we started to swing on some moored tour boats, so we dropped the dinghy in and set a stern anchor which worked good until the wind changed again but blowing less than 2 knots which was enough to move the tour boats but not enough to move our bow anchor chain so the tour boats started drifting onto us so we pulled up both anchors and were just about to drop them in another “safe” place but some locals coming by in a large rib dinghy told us to tie up to a close by unoccupied mooring. As we struggled to do that a water taxi came by and offered to tie us to the mooring. Great!... but a huge mistake (Eilo did not like the knots he tied but I guessed they were plenty and enough). Here’s why. I threw a second lasso onto the mooring which covered the first and we sucked both lines in and cleated them off close enough so the large mooring float did not hit the bow. Nice - and then we ordered a take away pizza, from the water taxi guy (Danny) who tied us up, and it came, we ate late, and went to sleep. Eilo woke me up around 3:00 in the morning saying what’s that noise (something hitting our hull). So up I go and to my surprise were were drifting by those tour boats I mentioned earlier and just touching one – enough to make a noise. So I called Eilo and urgently requested she get dressed and come visit me on deck. I started the engine and eased AURORA away from the nest of tour boats and then we motored around the harbor for an hour debating where to started to drop in one place but as the wind swings 360 we decided that spot to be no good so back we go to our mooring and I tie her up good-O and we go to sleep, after downing a glass on Glenmorangie single malt, at 4 AM and listened to the sea lions talking for the rest of the night – no doubt having a good laugh about us.

None of this really amused me…I was looking forward to the first good nights sleep and reanchoring/mooring was not fun! I have never been overly fond of the old anchoring routine! Every day we see other boats reanchoring as this is a tight anchorage with changing winds and so is a challenge!

So to cap off a “perfect” first 24 hours in Galapagos we were listening to the daily morning ARC radio net Thursday morning we heard, that due to the local elections coming up on Monday) that ALL of the restaurants and bars will not be serving ALCOHOL Friday, Saturday, or Sunday – PERFECT. Lara and Christian arrive on Saturday to a dry town – lucky our liquor locker is full… might be some drinking on board – first time that happened! It’s quite the Opposite from the States, Europe and much of the rest of the world where heavy consumption of liquor before, during and mostly after the elections is the norm.

Customs, immigration, coast guard, navy , police, bureau of tourism, divers, general inspectors, specific inspectors, about 15 people in all came to inspect, question, dissect, detect, reflect, reject and select us to ensure we were good to visit their nature paradise. They were all extremely nice, friendly, hospitable and very funny and we were cleared in.

I confess that I was a bag of nerves…I did not want to fail this test! Now you say..she worries too much. Well…three other ARC boats were sent back to sea to reclean their hulls. They had to go 40 miles out in the ocean, then dive and clean their boats (or hire a diver) then 40 miles back for reinspection. Yep…I had reason to fear.

Then in we go and are greeted at the town landing by a stairway clogged with sea lions doing what they do best ‘hanging out in the sun’.

Further in on the wharf I spot a sea iguana with youngster – cool creatures and great swimmers – I guess, as Darwin must have surmised (???ha) swimming is a handy attribute if you live on an island.

Some spectacular red crabs hung out their too making it quite the scene!

So we had lunch and a few drinks and made a quick survey of town and sampled a few more bars, picked up some provisions, supported the tourist trade, and headed back to AURORA to deposit the day’s booty. Then back to town for ARC happy hours which turned into a mighty session. We were invited to join the MISTO crew for dinner so over we stagger and have a very tasty meal and more drink and finally head back to the wharf except we take a detour for coffee and internet and finally make it to the water taxi pier around 23:00 and are greeted by a dock full of sea lions so Eilo, fearless from a nights imbibing, heads down to shoo them away. Eilo gets about 4 feet away from this big male who turns, sticks his head up, growls and shows Eilo his nice large set of chompers. Well, I’m standing there, minding my own business, and felt this wind go by… had Eilo traveled any faster by me she risked exceeding the speed of light and, as Einstein predicted she would have been converted to energy and sadly I would have had to single hand the rest of the circumnavigation.

A couple of thoughts on the Galapagos so far. The people are absolutely wonderful…very friendly and you feel utterly safe and have no concern about prices as they treat visitors like locals. As for the natural life…they really protect their environment and educate their own citizens. It is incredible and there is so much to see and appreciate.

I like their concept of bike riding in the Galapagos. Stick a bunch of bikes in a bunch of pickup trucks and ride to the top of a 2,000 foot mountain and glide down to the sea.