Galapagos and Leg 4

Bye Bye Galapagos and On to Crossing the Pacific:

A few parting thoughts on the Galapagos.  For one the islanders who inhabit the Galapagos are proud to tell you they are not Ecuadorians.  Rather they are islanders, but not ordinary islanders, they are Pacific islanders.  Lets say closer to Rapa Nui or Tonga or Bora Bora as opposed to Tortola, Jamaica, Ascension island or Trinidad.  There is no crime as far as we can tell.  The folks are impeccably honest and straight forward –for instance there is no dual standard for tourists vs locals and they are very happy to share their special form of paradise with the rest of us as long as we treat it with respect.  There is zero, and I mean zero garbage beside the roads or on the streets of the towns.  Everyone, locals and tourists alike, do not screw around with the animals and respect the 6 foot rule – thou shall not come closer than 6 feet to any creature.  Sometimes the creatures do not respect that rule.  For instance I was scrubbing the bottom of Aurora getting her ready as possible for the passage to the Marquesas  (a clean bottom is a fast bottom) and I sensed there was something watching me and I turned and there was a sea lion staring into my mask just checking me out from about 2 feet away… then a few minutes later a huge sea turtle almost brushed me as he cruised by.  Eilo almost got run (a slight exaggeration as they do not run) over by a 400 pound Galapagos tortoise

as she was looking another direction watching another formidable slow moving beast.  And check out the blue heron patiently waiting for his order of fish at the local fish market in town on Santa Cruz Island. 

The Galapagos is like living in a zoo as the animals are not afraid of the humans and they tolerate us.  The creatures are quite content – check out this guy:

One of the more dramatic volcanic landscapes we have ever seen is on Isabela Island, an area called Las Tunneles, but to us it’s closer to a natural Venice.  We approached land in a 45 foot beat up converted fishing boat/tourist transport vessel

and I was concerned about the reefs and breaking Pacific rollers as we got close to shore but the captain picked his way through the breakers into a big lagoon which you could not see from sea.  The Lagoon was probably a half mile long and was as wide.  It was between 15 and 6 foot deep and the water was crystal clear and as it was sheltered by the reefs the surface was quiet and it was easy to see straight to the bottom.  There were many small and large channels leading from the lagoon in every direction… a guess is these extended at least a mile inland although our captain only navigated about 2 miles through a series of these natural canals which took us, an estimated half a mile inland.  Apparently this is a many square mile flat lava field next to the ocean which is in the process of carving the canals, leaving many natural bridges as well – making us think – hum – Venice.

As we walked over the bridges we saw a few large turtles and a bunch of different kinds of fish and one 5 foot black tip shark cruise by. 

Our favorite birds, of which there were many (Finches, Frigate birds and different Boobies, to name a few) was the Blue Footed Booby.  They are hilarious looking and bring a smile to your face.  We admired the Red Footed (one spent a night on our boat at sea) and the Green Footed but the Blue Footed were most striking.

Then we proceeded to snorkel through about a mile of various canals

And were picked up by the boat on the other side.  Very, very cool.  I’ve never seen anything like it.  Now that we’re onto the volcanoes topic we were glad we skipped the hike up to the crater of an active volcano – it was apparently a 10 hour hike in and out but if there was live lava I would have been tempted.  We heard there was only a massive boiling mud pit in the cone… we’ve seen enough mud in our lives already.  We did check out a lava tube with Christian and Lara which was a worthy mission.  After a volcano erupts and if there is a big enough, thick enough, river of lava and the downhill slope is sufficient enough sometimes the outer surfaces of the lava cools and hardens but the inner portion remains molten and continues to flow downhill leaving a lava tube. Rather then spend 400 bucks to go on a guided tour and follow some local with a pink umbrella, who does not want to be followed, we found a taxi driver who took us to the tube entrance and picked us at the exit for 50 bucks; and threw in a visit to an amazing G-tortoise preserve – sporting the largest torts we had seen in G-land.

We were the only folks in the lava tube which was not only cool but it was ‘cool’ as well, being a good ways underground.

So we navigated the half kilometer long tunnel and hit a pinch point but slithered through

and made it out with yet more wonder jammin’ our grey matter.  Like all good things, and all things – if you haven’t noticed – must end… so the WARC fleet reluctantly heads to the starting line for leg 4

and the longest leg to the Marquesas some 3400 statute miles distant – probably 20 days sailing (more if you don’t get wind! omg here we go).  And over the line we go.  Check out these fast boats…  guess who took the picture and where that boat was positioned (AURORA finished 3rd on leg 4 - we guess that is because we had very low engine hours).

Rather than bore you with notes on our Pacific ocean passage we’ve distilled it down to top ten lists - in both directions.  Here goes, our dislikes about this trip across the big blue first.  In no particular order:

Japanese fishing boats:  These are large floating factories with little or no regard for anything except combing the seas for everything.  They mostly hang right outside or inside the territorial Galapagean waters (but we ran into one over 1000 miles away) and they rip all they can as fast as they can from the sea.  They do not use AIS or any other system where by they could be detected by other vessels so they are a navigation nightmare at night because when they are changing position they run dark – no lights.  When you try to radio them to seek their navigation intent they never respond… which is a very unhealthy and inconsiderate practice amongst seamen.  Luckily when they are working their nets they do have bright stern lights.  Unfortunately they do not have marker lights for their nets under tow which could hang a mile or could be 3 miles or more behind them so you never want to cross their stern – assuming you can see them as well as judge which direction they are heading.  The ARC fleet ran into much of this sea scum.  We had our own encounter and it was no fun!

Doldrums:  It’s fun for the first 15 minutes but after 3 days of no wind and a glass like sea surface it gets too repetitive and old.  Add to that the unbearable heat as there is no wind to soften it.  Movies have shown this but can’t capture it adequately!  Here's what it looked like to us for 4 days.

Flying Fish:  For some reason flying fish just love to commit suicide on the deck of AURORA.  They don’t do this during the day when you could deal with them and perhaps save a life or 2.  No… they do it under the veil of darkness.  Eilo refuses to deal with the bodies and if I did not deal with them I feel we would have been knee deep and probably not smellin’ too good either.  One morning I picked 101 of them off the deck, early, before the sun baked them onto the deck leaving little deck tattoos.  The least number of squirmy little bodies I picked up was 26.  We were thinking of changing AURORA’s name again; this time to the Flying Fish Armageddon Machine.

Things that break – always piss me off.  We won’t bore you with the details.

Motoring:  They call it a sail boat because that is what it does – it is powered by sails.  Motors are noisy, they burn diesel, which smells like Mexico City, they cause cabin heat (in a hot climate – not so good), and they break.  When there is no wind you have 2 choices.  You can bob or you can motor.  We chose to motor for only 40 hours.  Most of the boats did much more than that, one did bob, and I think only one other boat had less than 40 hours.  For sake of conservation we ran the engine at low RPMs (1450 which pushed us at 4 knots) and I was surprised how little fuel we used.  The whole passage we burned less than 21 gallons including the generator time (that’s the only happy thing in our sad items column).

We choose not to drink any alcohol on a passage   – I’m thinkin’ that possibly, that was not the best idea we ever had – enough said.

Lack of Wind & Lousy weather predictions.  Same as on land, the weather forecasts are correct about 50% of the time, but unlike on land, lousy predictions can really hurt you at sea.  For instance, we love to chase wind when at sea so you can download wind direction and speed data (GRIBs) using the sat phone and a lap top, so off we went 150 miles off course to pick up another 8 knots of wind but when you get there not only is there no 8 knot additional but a 5 knot decrease from what we had and the direction has changed against us so there we were 150 miles off course and better yet no wind to get us back to course.  Another phenomenal decision by the Ken & Eilo team.  I know what happened – the bozo weather soothsayers are all looking at the same weather models but the models were wrong that day because they forgot to account for a sparrow that farted 2 miles west of Quito which rippled across the globe.

Wind:  When the wind is low, or from the wrong direction, or both… life loses it’s luster.  Squalls.. for example… the unpredictable winds they carry can also ruin a perfectly delightful day by causing instant chaos.  And lightening storms are worse.  We got hit by a particularly bad one our last night before Hiva Oha.  Took one huge bolt about ¼ mile behind us – load and bright.  We were lucky considering we were sitting in a large lightening rod.

Chafing:  This grinding phenomena can cause anything to wear out when 2 surfaces touch one and other and also move by one and other such as on a rolling and forever moving sail boat when under sail.  Lines chafe, metal grinds, fiberglass turns to powder, dinghy Kevlar turns out not to be too bullet proof.  It all wears down and that in turn wears us down.  For example March 19^th around O’ dark thirty in the morning I was on watch, the moon was not up yet, so it was dark but still a little star lit, the wind was up and oops - the preventer chafed through.  The preventer is a bullet proof (Kevlar) very expensive line – not meant to chafe.  It attaches the end of the boom to a forward mounted winch and prevents the main sail boom from swinging aft when the wind collapses, as it does once every other minute, so when the wind picks up again, in the next milli-micro second, the boom is prevented from swinging forward fast and powerfully which crashes when stopped by the main sheet blocks, making a huge noise, shaking the boom in a horrific way and stressing the mast and entire rig, and for that matter the entire boat.  So I’m minding my own business and notice the boom swinging freely, as the wind had collapsed, and I think to myself, well that’s funny our bullet proof preventer should stop that from happening.  So I shine the beam on the end of the boom, and there, hanging from the end of the boom is one half of the preventer line with a gnawed off (chafed through) end.  So I jump up and out of the cockpit and try to grab the end so I could tie it down before a back wind grabbed the main sheet and forced the boom to swing around, but was too late.  I was fast enough to grab the gnawed end but not fast enough to tie it down.  The main boom was way out on one side, so the main sheet (the line that adjusts the boom position relative to the center line of the boat) was way out and the boom swung around with a furry, all the way to the opposite side of AURORA.  It swung at about Mach 1 as I heard the sonic boom as it went by my head and then came to a sudden and very load crash/stop.  My next though was this is going to be expensive.  But as I surveyed the damage all that happened is one of the deck fittings that holds the Bimini to the boat got ripped off the deck, the large stainless steel screws, which seconds before secured it to the deck, were bent like pipe cleaners.  Yes – chafing is bad.

Wing on Wing sailing:  Wing on wing (poling the Genoa out to one side and sticking the main sail out as far as possible on the other) is great for direct down wind (DDW) sailing when there is over 16 knots of wind and ALL the waves are directly behind you.  But that hardly ever happens so the result is the boat rolls from side to side continuously and that happens about every 2 seconds with the boat listing as much as 25 degrees to the right followed by up to 25 degrees to the left – try that for hours on end.  Try cooking, walking, sleeping or doing anything (like standing up) under those conditions – it sucks.  Also if IT is on board and not tied down it will be tossed around or broken under these rolling conditions so you either become an expert in safely stowing everything away or you suffer the consequences.

Eventually you run out of fresh non-frozen food and even run out of frozen croissants – and you think - life could be better.

Some additional thoughts from the Reluctant Sailor that apply to all passages…

We all have to use the bathroom at some time…or “the head” as it is known on the boat. Well when the boat is rolling it is incredibly difficult to adjust one’s clothing to avail of this necessity.  I can’t tell you how many bruises I have from being thrown against the wall!

On a long passage you don’t get to exercise in the normal ways.  No walking or running!  You do however get to practice balance…all the time!  And every time you adjust the sails you are winching and that works out the arms!  Also you are constantly going below or up on decks and you had better hold on or you will be thrown to the deck! 

Long night watches can be difficult.  You have to stay alert to watch the sails in variable winds and keep a look out for other vessels.

When Ken persuaded me to do this he told me that downwind sailing was  a breeze (forgive the pun) and that we would set the sails and never have to adjust them in the Trade Winds.  Yeah….that worked out for us!

Here are the best things (actually more than 10 – e.g. more good than bad which is why we do this thing) we like about our passage across this really big pond.  In no particular order they are:

It’s our ocean.  When you can see no other boats and there is no one else around is not the ocean ours?  Like an ocean view?  We’ve got a good one.  The various seascapes from the mercurial ocean surface in the doldrums to the sexy long Pacific swells are unique and are mesmerizing.

The third mate Alice.  She steered us through thick and thin for 20 days except for the 1 hour Captain Ken hand steered AURORA to avoid a Japanese fishing factory.  It would be hard to do this mission without Alice.

The ARC Fleet:  Radio communications keeps us in touch with the whole fleet twice daily and it’s healthy to communicate with other humans on a regular basis.  When boats have problems (a daily occurrence) there is a huge body of knowledge in the fleet amongst the 100 or so sailors on the 26 boats. To put that in perspective that is about 5000 years of knowledge with over 1,500,000 miles of collective ocean passage experience and there are very few problems this group has not been able to solve to date.  Next time you see us ask about one of the favorite fixes of this passage –Nick Named the LEXINGTON Blow Job.  And yes – there is the old safety in numbers adage – believe it.  And it’s always great fun to run into old friends.  We ran into our friends from Turkey, Melike and Nejat, on NORTH in the middle of the South Pacific and what else can you do but break out the camera.  Here they are at least a 1,000  miles from no-where…

And here we are in the same place (buried behind a swell):

The big sky:  The stars at night are unbelievable as there is zero light pollution.  The sun rises and sunsets, moon rises and moon sets are often spectacular.  Even saw one green flash as the sun went down unobscured one evening.  We hit the full moon cycle this trip so most nights we had great moon lit visibility which is always a comfort.

Whales: Better and much less common than dolphins it’s always exciting to see a whale.  I saw one about 400 feet blow off our bow the first day.  The second day one big guy (about 55 to 60 feet long) crossed our bow about 100 feet in front of us then turned and came up our port side about 60 feet away (obviously checking us out – which is something dolphins do most of the time but whales seldom do), then turned toward the boat – I was getting very concerned he was going to ram us, then he turned again about 15 to 20 feet away and ran with us up off the port side and he/she was longer than AURORA.  Then she was gone.  The things you see when you don’t have a camera at hand.  The third night we were in the doldrums and it was blowing only about 5 to 6 knots (right on our beam) so we were sailing at about 3 knots and it was quiet.  Next thing Eilo hears 2 maybe more whales blowing in very close proximity to AURORA.  When they blow the noise is unmistakable for anything else other than whales so Eilo runs below to grab “the beam” (our big bright hand held spot light) but they were gone so we don’t know how many or how big.  The fleet spotted many whales and many more dolphins but mostly with-in about 500 miles of the Galapagos.  Eilo had one dolphin escort at sunset about 2 weeks out.  Half a dozen of the creatures jousted with the bow of AURORA for almost a half hour.  On our ay into Harbor this morning in Hiva Oa about 15 dophins escorted us in – a nice welcoming committee.

This one passage represents almost 19% of the entire circumnavigation.  YeaHaaaa!!!

No noise or tell tale painted sky from jets or planes.

Wind:  When it is blowing right life is good.  But let us not forget – winds are variable.

Fresh water making:  Water is real important.  Just wait and see; We predict 100 years from now it’s not going to be about oil, it will be all about water – everywhere (it’s already all about water in many places on Terra Firma).  Having the ability to generate fresh water from sea water using molecular sieve technology removes the need for us to carry many many gallons worth of fresh drinking water and the space to store all that water (we do carry about 15 gallons of emergency drinking water – just in case).  Having the ability to power our reverse osmosis system from solar really puts a smile on my face.  As it is very sunny here we usually turn the RO system on at 11:JJ AM and turn it off at 1:JJ PM and generate about 12 gallons each day – which is about what we use.  In port, as we use less electricity (not having to power Alice or the Nav systems, or the radios) we can generate water up to 6 hours per day by solar – if we need to).  But our 200 gallon fresh water tank is almost always full – a fresh water shower is always a good thing.  Kudos to Ken who installed our water maker and thanks to Brown who helped him test it out when Ken ripped his Achilles!

Chocolate chip cookies are a crowd pleaser and I could not stand the midnight to 5 AM watch every night without dark Dove chocolate bites.  Also Ecuadorian dark chocolate is the best in the world (according to them) but it is very good.  Don’t tell Eilo – but sometimes I dive into our huge bag of Giordelli Dark choco morsels for my choco fix.  Don’t tell Ken but I can’t bake his cookies if he eats the chips!!!

Self Sufficiency:  Either you are or you are not.  If you are not you probably are not or soon to be not.  It’s a challenge to be self-sufficient and is exhilarating to achieve that.   Now that we are in equatorial land and thus powerful sun our solar panel system is supplying 97% of our electrical power needs (if we did not crave our coffee fix each morning it would be 98% as the electric coffee pot used 98 amps for 5 minutes so we have to run the generator each morning or punish the house bank of batteries which are at a low in the morning having discharged all night.  Ah, all this wonderful stuff you have to think about while at sea which passes us by when on land.

It gets us to French Polynesia – a mystical magical place that has always held a high position on our bucket list.  If it was good enough for Gauguin…

Flying fish:  It is amazing and very entertaining to watch flying fish navigate the waves flying inches to 4 feet above the water and riding up and over waves as high as 6 feet, sometimes flying for 200 yards.  And when 20 or 30 break the surface at the same time and fly and turn in tight formation it is very cool.  It’s as thought they are air force trained.  Now here is an age old question you can ponder… when a school of flying fish take to the air do they become a flock?  A few of the dead fish I picked up on deck were less than an inch long – more like flying sea insects.  They were obviously too young to have attended flight training so what were they doing on our deck anyway?  Just goes to show renegades come in all sizes and shapes.