Galapagos to Nuku Hiva: Day 3 - Whale sighting!

Friday, April 12, 2013

It's funny how weekends have no meaning out here. Monday is just as special as Friday. It's sad that most people spend two or three days a week just wishing those days were over. There will come a time in our lives when we wish we had all those Mondays and Tuesdays back.

We lost our wind last night and had to run the engine all night. We have used 1/10 of our fuel supply, but have not yet achieved 1/10 of the distance. So we must start being a little more prudent with fuel. We did, however to spend more fuel than average for the first 300 miles as the doldrums are reputed to have long periods of dead calm.

We have done all the southing we want for now (we are at 3 degrees south and 94 degrees west) as there is a huge rectangular area that seasoned sailors say are prone to sudden squalls, and therefore to avoid (3 - 8 degrees south and 95 - 108 degrees west). We are pretty close to the north-eastern corner of this zone and figure we would just ride the north end of it until we can safely head south again.

Now that we are heading west, we have the wind at our stern, which means a nice and smooth ride for the next 840 miles (ignoring squalls). We put the whisker pole up this morning (which we have no mastered) to catch some of this aft-wind and are getting some 5.3 knots with just the Genoa. We'll try going wing-on-wing later this morning (both main and genoa up, on opposite sides of the boat).

****9:00AM****

We finally saw our first whale! We saw this large turquoise mass in the water moving against the current. At first we we unsure what the heck it was, it looked like a moving shoal. Then we saw it pop up and shoot its blow hole. I couldn't determine what kind of whale it was, but it was HUGE. It came right across the bow of our boat, we almost hit the damn thing.

The GoPro is absolutely terrible at taking shots of things that aren't within 15 feet of you, but here it is (post-zoomed):

This shot was only 50 feet from the boat too. By eye, we saw it perfectly. I'll try next time for an underwater shot. This camera seems to be pretty good at those.

****2:00PM****

Woo! I had a second whale sighting in the same day! I saw two medium-sized whales off our stern, about 50 metres away, heading south like the last one. These whales looked very similar to Orcas, with the big dorsal fin, but were more light-grey in colour and had a patch over their eye.

****

It started to rain in the evening. We decided to bring the whisker pole down before dark.

Galapagos to Nuku Hiva: Day 2 - Dolphins and Eagles

Thursday, April 11, 2013

I was on watch last night from 2:00am until around 9:00am this morning. I had trouble staying awake, so I set my watch alarm to beep every 20 minutes so at no point would the boat be unwatched for more than that. I would fall asleep for no more than 10-15 minutes at a time, but would have nearly full-length dreams, which made each of those short pieces of time seem like hours. It felt like I was on watch for days!

I saw a bat flying around our boat at one point last night, making his bat-noises. Soon after that I saw a second, and then a third, and so on until there were about 20 bats circling the boat. I got a little nervous as I wasn't sure where it would end. They were dive-bombing the boat, I guess going for squid or moths. Gary and I have a theory they are living in the boom. I might tape my GoPro and a flashlight to a pole and stick it in there to see the chaos that ensues.

We actually found some wind today, put up full sail and shut off the engine. The wind is pushing us more westerly than we'd like (not enough southing), but you have to take whatever wind you can get when you have 3,000 miles to go.

****

What a great day of sailing! We had 15 knots of wind for majority of the day and were hitting 8-9 knots at full sail and no motor. We had covered 200 miles by sundown already. Let's hope the wind is so gracious for the rest of the trip!

We finished the day off by blasting The Best of the Eagles CD and having a few beers. A big pod of dolphins started doing an amazing acrobatic show (best one yet!) off our starboard as the sun went down. I guess they are Eagles fans!

Galapagos to Nuku Hiva: Day 1 - Departure/Friggin stern anchor

Wednesday, April 10, 2013

Sailing Across the Pacific Ocean 2013 (Part 11) - 3,000 Miles to the Marquesas

We almost lost our stern anchor again today. We let out minimal scope yesterday so there was no risk of chafing on the rocky (what they call "sandy") bottom, but there was still significant chafing on our double-braided anchor rode when we pulled it in. The outer braid was even sliding off! We have no windlass at the back, so carefully pulling up a 50 pound anchor attached to 25 feet of chain without scratching the boat (and without the outer braid sliding off) was a real chore.

I had to dive in the water a total of three times today. Once to see if our swinging boat (the stern anchor was dragging all night) bent our propeller with the bow anchor chain, then again to clean the barnacles off the propeller,

and then finally, when we went to pull up the stern anchor (moments before we were going to depart), we found the anchor rode had tangled itself in our rudder.

We finally departed at 3:00pm and were on our way to Nuku Hiva!

This is a 3,000 nautical mile passage, with no land in sight for 25-30 days. This will be an extremely challenging passage, both mentally and physically, especially since it is just the two of us on the boat. Sleep will be minimal and we must learn to minimize our consumption of food, fuel, and water.

I will try to write in this blog everyday so I can keep track of time as even on our 7-day passages, when you are not sleeping at regular intervals, it is difficult keeping track of time after a few days.

****Haha, as I was typing that last paragraph, a little squid flew into the boat and hit Gary. That was so friggin weird!

Galapagos: Day 10 - Getting ready to goooooo

Tuesday, April 9, 2013

We woke up to find we had lost our stern anchor at some point in the night. I guess the "sand bottom" here at Admiralty Bay is a little more rocky as our anchor rode had been torn in two. We must have been swinging around all night, but luckily didn't hit any other boats. I tried snorkelling down to get the anchor, but there was no way I could go down over 20 feet. We had to pay a snorkeler to go down and get it.

Today was spent doing some more provisioning and some work around the boat again. Jan flew out around 11:00am, and it was just Gary and I after that.

I did some laundry in the morning, "Adrian style".

Gary and I spent the afternoon fiddling with the damn genneker again. Here is what this beast looks like as of now:

The plastic ring around the mouth of the sock was ready to go, so we repaired it by securing a really rigid piece of nylon line around its circumference. We actually did a pretty decent job and it worked quite well!

Galapagos: Day 9 - Lava Tunnels

Monday, April 8, 2013

After spending the morning working on the boat a bit and trying to untangle that friggin genneker (see: Panama to Galapagos: Day 3 - Genneker), Jan and I went for a quick tour of Los Tuneladas de Bella Vista (The Lava Tunnels of Bella Vista).

We weren't going to go, but these tunnels were labelled "do not miss" by Lonely Planet, so we figured we'd squeeze them in our schedule.

It was a pretty standard tunnel. Supposedly the second largest lava tunnel in South America (2.25 km long). There was a string of lights running through the tunnel, but only a few bulbs were working (about every 100m). So it was a really good thing I had my trusty sailing flashlight with me. They gave us a crappy flashlight that barely worked, but my light shines like the Eye of Sauron, you might as well be carrying the sun with you through the tunnel.

The entrance.

The middle.

The end.

I don't know what Lonely Planet was talking about, but I would put the tunnel last on your list of things to do if you visit Galapagos.

We did a quick provisioning run before heading back to the boat. Since you have to take water taxis to and from your anchored boat, we have to bring food and water back in small runs rather than one big run.

Galapagos: Day 8 - Back to Santa Cruz

Sunday, April 7, 2013

I had to take a really early water taxi back to Santa Cruz this morning (6:00am). Minnie decided to stay in Isabel for another night and just blitz for her plane Monday morning. I saw Veroníca at the docks, she is heading back home to Guayaquil on the mainland for another school semester. (The only airport in Galapagos is in Santa Cruz.)

We just did some much needed work around the boat today as Gary and I are looking to leave Wednesday (hopefully) for our big adventure across the Pacific!

Galapagos: Day 7 - Surfing

Saturday, April 6, 2013

Veroníca had a few surf boards at her house, so we took those to the local surf spot and I tried surfing for the first time. The locals got a good laugh at the gringo repeatedly falling off the surf board, But I WAS able to get up and stay up after an hour or so.

I went to see a free Ecuadorian movie at night with Veroníca, which was supposed to have english subtitles, but we couldn't get them to work. So I had no idea what was going on in the movie. I googled the name of the movie afterward and found out it was about two brothers who mysteriously went missing 20 years ago and this was their sister's documentary to bring light to the situation and possibly find some answers. They never found the bodies, but they were able to determine the boys were abducted by police officers, beaten and killed, and the bodies dumped in the river Jumba. The movie was called "With My Heart in Jumba", and was actually pretty good now that I understand it, haha.