Sailing around the world

Galapagos – 900 miles as the crow flies

Pity we could not fly with the crows. We did a bit extra. We decided to sail rather than motor the distance. This was against the perceived wisdom of most of the cruisers who tanked up with diesel and took even more on board in plastic drums for this journey. You could be stuck for days in little or no wind and against currents which could make you lose your hard fought gain.

Left form the Las Perlas islands after helping Lloyd scrape some barnacles off the hull of his leopard. Should’ve left when there was wind early that morning but after coffee with the Parker’s, we left in almost no wind. Lloyd and Ngaire just motored past and other than a brief meeting a few hours later, (when a piece of king fish wrapped in plastic landed with a thud on our deck) we did not see them again as they motored into the distance. We lost the VHF radio contact that night as they went out of range.

We did all to coax every fraction of a knot out of our boat and had the spinnaker up in wind barley enough to fill it out, let alone drive the boat forward. Early that first night Lloyd radioed that we need to be aware of fishing activity in the area he was then in. We did not want to get caught up in their nets. We passed the fishermen just before dawn. A very slow sail ensued the next day with the boat sometimes hardly moving at all. We exited the Gulf of Panama early that evening to be met with 20 knots of wind and we flew along on a close reach. This trip would not take long after all.

Then came the lighting and the thunder to liven things up a bit. We instinctively ducked our heads as the thunder clapped and lighting struck around us, although if the lightning struck us ducking certainly would not be much good. All this fun could not last and it started to blow over 25 knots so we put in 2 reefs. It was pouring with rain and we got soaked. We made good progress until Lorna’s watch at about midnight when the wind came up to 30 knots so decided to just drop the main and continue under jib until the morning. Lorna released the main halyard as I pulled in the luff reefing lines at the mast, helping the main down. Then disaster! The mast track gate slipped out of place, fortunately all the mast cars fixed to the full length battens were already down else we would have had ball bearings bouncing all over the deck and blown into the sea. Unfortunately the head board attachment slipped out of the track. When I tried to put it back, to my dismay I saw that the sliders that form a lining between the mast track and head board fitting were missing. Lorna came to the mast in the lashing rain and howling wind where I was busy to see what was going on. I told her what had happened and she returned with a torch and luckily found one slider lying at the foot of the mast. We could not find the other as it had more than likely found the sea. We lashed the mast gate in place and also the main head board and fitting onto the boom around the lazy bag so we did not lose those. We were cold, wet and despondent. I got my wet gear off and had a troublesome sleep, worrying about how I was going to sort this problem out. Lorna stayed up all night to watch the illuminations and made sure we stayed clear of ships in this very busy waterway.

Next morning I tried to deal with the problem. We were in a real predicament; we cannot continue this journey unless we could resolve this problem thru some manner or means. A temporary fix for a 1000 mile journey would be a real pain and thereafter where there is some support it is in the Marquesas 2500 miles away. I could not use the main without the sliders. Even if I could hoist the main it could damage the mast track to the extent that the rest of the mast cars would jam going up or worse still, coming down and obviously the same applied to the mast head board fitting itself.

Next morning, the only thing that exceeded the foulness of my mood was the weather. Right the first step is to wait for the rain to ease and enough light to remove and examine the damaged gear. It was a real gloomy morning, grey, low visibility with wind and rain. I removed the mast gate track and the main head board fitting from the main. A retaining bolt on the mast gate track had broken and that fix I could deal with easily but the mast slider was a problem. Before I started trying to find something that I could use as a replacement I would thoroughly search the deck, the lazy bag and main sail folds just in case it was by some miracle still on the boat. Well nothing on the deck anywhere, nothing in the lazy bag and nothing in the one side of the main sail. But, low and behold, there is a God. In the last fold of the main, there it was. It was like finding the holy grail and I said a silent prayer of thanks. We are back in business. Well we got under way again but now the wind had dropped and we made painfully slow progress for the rest of that day except for the few rain squalls.

That night we had the rain, thunder and illuminations show again but without much wind. The sail continued uneventfully other than being frustrating and at times down right unpleasant. Frustrating - for the lack for wind, then in the wrong direction to use the currents in our carefully planned and plotted route. There were times that we were sailing at 4-5 knots in conditions that we would normally, without current against, be doing 7-8.
Unpleasant due to the bumpiness of the waves as when we did have wind it was 20 to 25 and bang on the nose. We could not use the current as we had to tack backwards and forwards across it.

That reminds me, what is tacking? Tacking is going to a place that you do not want to go and then going to another place where you do not want to go and repeating it until you get to a place where you do want to go. But, enough of the negative. We were joined one evening by a least a dozen whales, escorted by a few big dolphins. While the dolphins did their usual, playing the pressure of the bow waves, the whales swam around the transoms and in between the hulls. Some were almost a touch away. An amazing sight, one which we will always remember. They were with us for the best part of an hour and left us just before sunset.

It seems we are always on a high or a low with not too much in between and our crisis just vary in intensity. We have blown our spinnaker yet again. Lorna will have a go at repairing it but it is a really big job and one that would take several days if possible at all.
It blew on our last day out as approaching Galapagos. In 11 knots of wind, can you believe it! Anyway we arrived safely, took us 8 days and went the scenic route, 1066 miles sailed and 1.5 days behind Te Harinui (Lloyd and Ngaire) who used their engines and a more direct route.

We are about to leave for the last of this island chain and meet up with L & G there before continuing to the Marquesas, some 3000 miles away. Lorna has been writing up some notes for news events that will be passed on but I do not know when.

The first set of Galapagos photos can be found here.

James