I know it’s been a while since I posted a blog.  But it’s hardly surprising that the wifi in Galapagos is erratic at best. There are power cuts every day and in one of the Internet cafes the electricity junction box exploded sending us all running out into the street under a hail of sparks.

But, I am getting ahead of myself.  First we had to actually get there…..

On the 6^th Feb, we set off from Las Perlas on what was expected to be a 6 night crossing over the equator to San Cristobal in the Galapagos.  While the Arc is a rally and not a race, there is still quite a bit of competition to be first across the start line of each leg.  We weren’t first – but we were fifth.  We screwed up at the start putting up this new Parasailor sail.  However, once we got it up and trimmed correctly we flew into the lead and there we stayed until we reached the Galapagos.

Creeping up after the start - that´s us in the middle flying the infamous Parasailor sail

The rest of the fleet behind us

Its not all about sunning myself. There is work too.

The shift rota was set up. 3 hours on at night and 3 during the day. Patricia and I were paired up for the night shifts as were Gavin and Scott.  John did one on his own. The pairing was done in order to give Gavin and me a chance to get to know the boat and all it’s electronics before the longer legs when we will have to do night shifts on our own. We soon settled into a routine.  Patricia and I were on from midnight to 3am. We passed the time by playing Scrabble on the iPhone.  It is the perfect game for sailing because while one person is planning their next move the other is on lookout and making sure the Parasailor is full of wind – but not too much!! We also allowed ourselves a 1am snack – usually coffee and chocolate. We came close-ish to a few ships the first night. They were heading towards the Panama Canal.  After that we saw nothing else until we reached the Galapagos.  We did have lightening one night which frightened the life out of me.  I am usually tethered on at night, via a metal clamp attached to a metal D ring on the boat at one end, and to my life jacket containing a metal inflation tank, at the other. When the lightening started I unclipped myself and hid under the bimini which I’m pretty sure now would not have saved me. 

Break time

Filling in the log on nightshift. (Aidan - note the lifejacket)

The daytime shifts we did on our own.  I loved these few hours where everyone was in bed and I had the boat and the ocean all to myself.  There is nothing more calming than being at sea and out of contact with the rest of the world (apart from the VHF radio should you need it). The Pacific is full of wildlife.  We came across whales, lots of dolphin, sharks, sting rays jumping out of the water trying to escape the sharks, massive turtles, and a variety of birds diving for fish or just sitting on the water, minding their own business hundreds of miles from anywhere. The wind was behind us and that leads to a slow sideways roll  – left, right, left.  I found this really annoying at first and have many cuts and bruises from knocking into things trying to move around the boat. However I became expert at showering, rocking from one foot to the other. I gave washing my hair a miss though as I thought that might be over ambitious. After a couple of days you don’t really notice the rolling anymore and automatically move around compensating for it.  I did take to sleeping sideways in the bed though as I prefer to rock from head to foot rather than being rolled from one side to the other.  Luckily I have a double bed in a luxurious cabin.

After 2 days and nights of favourable winds, we hit the Doldrums and came to a standstill.  Not for long though because we quickly decided we’d rather be in the Galapagos than sitting out at sea hoping for a puff of wind. So we motored the rest of the way.  On the 13^th Feb we crossed the equator.  This happened on John’s shift.  He kindly slowed the boat down so that we crossed at about 9am – a decent hour for us all to be out of bed. There are some traditions around crossing the equator.  I don’t know all of them.  We gave Neptune a small bit of champagne, by pouring it into the sea. We dressed one of the crew up as Neptune but drew the line at smearing him with smelly grease and oil, which is a tradition. It was really weird to see the position reading at zero degrees, zero minutes north (and south presumably). And from then on to be writing the position in the log entries as S and W, rather than N and W.  Brings it home that we are indeed in the Southern Hemisphere.

Right on the Equator

Neptune

Not quite Neptune

 

Celebrating crossing the equator

 

Traditional swim on the Equator. No way I was letting go of a moving boat. Seen too many movies!!

 

Breakfast on the equator

 

After only 4 nights at sea, during my watch on the fifth day, I spotted land.  And there stood San Cristobal island.  I just couldn’t get my head around the fact that I was looking at one of the Galapagos islands. We were still about 5 hours away at this stage.  When we eventually got close enough to see land properly, we couldn’t believe how green it was.  The green land slopes straight into the sea with a backdrop of volcanic rocks. We nearly ran over 2 Minke whales that swam right in front of our bow while we were distracted by the beauty on land. We sailed past Kicker Rock – a famous landmark.  (We were later to snorkel through the channel between the 2 parts of the rock – but that’s another story). We were treated to a beautiful sunset and finally reached our anchorage long after dark.  We could see, hear and smell the sea-lions all around us. But here we had to stay until we got both customs and environmental clearance the next day.  As luck would have it, the next day was Valentine’s day so I was able to make contact Aidan  – after several abortive attempts. Having terrible trouble contacting David though.

First sight of land - San Cristobal (somewhere in the middle of the photo)

Much greener than we expected - but it is the wet season.

The famous Kicker Rock

Checking for signal as we approach land

Sunset far out in the ocean

And so the next blog will be all about San Cristobal island.  We have permission to go ashore on 4 of the 13 islands.  I’ll try to do a blog from each one.  Bear with me….

Before leaving for Las Perlas we had one last shopping chore to do.  Fresh fruit and veg. Patricia and I set off from the hotel to the markets in the city centre only to find that due to some civil unrest no fresh deliveries had arrived.  As far as I can gather some of the roads into the city have been blocked due to protests.  So we had to make do with supermarket produce.  The reason we were avoiding this is because the supermarket produce is pre-chilled and therefore not as long lasting in this hot weather.  Once back at the boat we had to remove all packaging, especially cardboard and paper as this can contain cockroach eggs that might hatch along the way. I do not fancy sharing the boat with cockroaches.  I have enough trouble with the mozzies.  For similar egg reasons all fruit and veg had to be washed and put into nets for hanging.

We finally set off at about12pm.  The Las Perlas islands are only 25 miles from the bay at Panama City– roughly a 4 hour trip for us.  We motored all the way as there was not a whiff of wind, but this also gave us the opportunity to practice using the various electronic instruments such as AIS, radar and chart plotter.  (I am more used to doing chart work by hand rather than by electronics and using my eyes to spot vessels and decide if we are on a collision course.) We also got a brief fishing lesson from Scott on the off chance we might catch something.

It turned out to be quite an exciting trip.  First we had 2 dolphin playing in our bow waves for about 15 minutes.  We were doing 8 knots and they raced together inches from the bow.  It was fantastic to watch.  I took photos but they are very poor quality so not attaching any.  I’m sure there’ll be plenty more opportunities.

While we were in the marina John and Scott bought 2 new finishing rods and a pile of lures.  Scott has a theory about using different colour lures.  Yellow and green for dawn and dusk, and blue and purple for daytime use.  So to prove his theory he set the 2 lines up each with the different lures.  About 2 hours into the trip we spotted a cluster of about 200 pelicans on our port side about ¼ mile off.  Suddenly they all rose up and flew over us to another spot on our starboard side – also about ¼ mile off.  We could see they were diving so we altered course to go and have a closer look. Nobody was even thinking about the fishing lines because we were so overawed by the sight of the pelicans.

Hundreds of pelicans - feeding frenzy

When the fishing line started screeching, at first we didn’t know what the noise was. Our first instruction was to put the boat into neutral so that we didn’t snap the line.  We just about remembered to do this in all the excitement.  Then Gavin took the rod from its holder and started to slowly reel in, then let the fish pull on the line, then reel in some more.  After about 10 minutes of this he had a nice sized tuna on board.  The murder of the fish sounded like a floppy and messy affair.  I couldn’t look.  Gavin set the line again and literally 5 seconds later we were off again.  This time Gavin had quite a struggle before landing a 10kg tuna.  We took the lines in then as we had more than enough for 2 dinners for all 6 of us.  The first fish we caught had a squid in its mouth and second sardines.  So this must be what the pelicans were after too. By the way, Scott’s theory proved correct.  The line that had the dawn and dusk lures attached, attracted nothing.

All this fishing delayed us by an hour and so we arrived in Las Perlas long after night fall. However, there is a full moon at the moment, which gave us more than enough light to safely find a good anchorage.  It is hard to believe just how much light you get from the moon when at sea.  It is like a giant spotlight and glistens beautifully in a wide beam across the water. Magic.

Gavin's first time fishing - looks like a pro

First catch

The prize - after a quite a battle

BBQ at the back of the boat

mmmm - delicious!

We had 4 trolley loads of goods stacked as high as this one

This is how it looked when we finally got the water on board. Where is it going to be stowed? And this wasn't even all of the drinking water.

By Thursday we were finally given a berth in the marina.  We celebrated by having the crew of Trompeta, our former rafting partners, on board for a night of merriment.  Stereo blaring, dancing on the deck, I did serious damage to a beautiful bottle of 12 year old rum and the others demolished countless bottles of wine.  The youngsters on board made themselves scarce, probably wondering if they were going to end up like us in 30 years time!!  They should be so lucky.

Patricia and Alison dancing a jig I believe.

On Friday, the 4 O’Connor’s booked into a really nice hotel in the city centre, for the weekend. It’s hard to know what to say about Panama City.  I wish I had more time so that I could put a bit more thought into describing it.  The population of Panama is 4 million, 2 million of whom live in the city.  The city itself is quite compact but is expanding rapidly.  There are many skyscrapers under construction, both for office space and apartments.  A subway is being built also. So parts of the city are like a building site with unfinished pavements and road works everywhere. In the middle of all this you still have a fruit market and fish market that haven’t moved over to progress – thankfully. There are beautiful middle-class looking streets neighbouring  streets where people live in the most extreme poverty.  I wonder (and hope) that the old adage “a rising tide lifts all boats” holds true for these people.

Panama City

With Patricia - in my "Panama hat". (I got the real thing for Dermot though.)

Casco Viejo

For me - the essense of the city. Nice apartments, skyscraper in the distance and building under construction.

An example of bad housing. People are jammed into concrete jungles in tropical heat.

Nice neighbourhood

Panama City is famous for the colourful public buses, converted from US school buses. However, these are being phased out and will be off the roads by the end of next year.  There are 2 old towns.  The first was razed by Henry Morgan the pirate.  Only the ruins remain.  The 2^nd is called Casco Viejo and was built by the Spanish in the late 1600’s.  This old town is currently being restored on a public/private partnership basis.  I loved this part of the city.  It is full of tiny bars, really good restaurants and is safe to walk around – mainly due to the abundance of tourist police.

The buses are known and the Red Devils

We stayed in the city for 3 nights and could have easily stayed 3 more.  On Sunday, we hired an English speaking driver for 4 hours who gave us a fantastic tour of the city.

Goethals was the American who took over the canal construction and completed it. Each shelf represents the 3 locks. If you zoomk you might be able to read.

Interesting for us to see the Miraflores lock from land. Notice how the first ship is much lower than those still in the lock.

Overall, I’ll be sad to leave Panama. The people are friendly and helpful. The city has quite a cosmopolitan feel to it but I found the poverty hard to take, particularly in the rural areas. However, having described this to David today on Skype, he feels that the poor living conditions I’ve witnessed are nothing compared to how he sees people living in Cambodia.  I suppose I’ve just led a sheltered and privileged life.

Out for a fancy dinner in the city. Lots of great places to eat.

Vulcher

Tomorrow, Monday 7^th Feb, we up anchor (yes, we are back at anchor) and head for the Las Perlas islands.  Tonight is my last night on land until we reach Tahiti, sometime around the end of April. We spent the evening in the Balboa Yacht Club watching the Superbowl. Thank God the Giants won!!.

There will be wifi on one or two of the Galapagos islands so I’ll probably get one more blog out.  In the meantime, you can always read John’s daily logs on the ARC website and you can track us through the ocean using the fleet viewer.  The viewer will start up again on 9^th Feb when we leave Las Perlas for Galapagos.

For those of you who didn’t get my email about this I’m adding the details from that mail now.

The link you need is http://www.worldcruising.com/WORLDARC2012/index.aspx

To read the daily logs:-

In the red banner, near the top of the screen, click on Daily Logs. In the All Boats dropdown list, select Sapphire II.

To track the boat….

Click on Fleet Viewer Click Here on the righthand side of the screen.

Yet again I am writing this ahead of having any wifi, so I’m not sure how much information John has provided in the ARC daily log. We may overlap.  I type the blog in Word and then cut and paste to the website whenever possible. Anyway, here goes – as best I can.

We arrived at the Shelter Bay Marina just outside of Colon, on the Atlantic side, on the 26^th Jan – just in time for me to be able to speak to Aidan on his birthday. (I was delighted with the timing.) The canal authorities inspected the boat there.  The transit is charged per foot and they physically measure the boats, including bowsprits, davits and anything else that sticks out. You must have at least 4 good mooring lines, 38 meters minimum, without knots or splices.  They inspect each of these. You must have 4 experienced crew as linehandlers along with an experienced helmsman. The anchor, fenders and toilet facilities are also checked. We used 10 fenders – 5 on each side because we were the middle boat.  But I think you need a fender for every 4 feet of boat length. The 2 boats outside us were provided with tyres. One boat needed them on the port side – the other on starboard.  This is as protection against the canal walls. A canal pilot is allocated to each boat and you are expected to provide dinner the first evening and lunch the next day.

Just as a non-nautical aside – it was great to be in a marina after 2 weeks at various anchorages. We made full use of the bar, restaurant and laundry facilities. I indulged in my favourite cocktails and Gavin and I won the ARC table quiz. We were a good combination because Gavin could answer the US based questions and I the European ones.  Also the age mix of young and somewhat older worked well too.

We were allocated an evening transit time and about 3 hours ahead of this we set off – out past the mouth of the Chagres river to a point about 5 miles in front of the canal entrance called the Flats anchorage.  Here we dropped an anchor and waited for the pilots to arrive.  There were supposed to be 11 ARC boats doing the transit but 2 boats had to drop out.  One, because he lost so many sails in the storm coming from St. Lucia to San Blas and the other because the skipper broke his leg when he tripped over his bow line while on the marina in St. Lucia.

Ships waiting to go through the canal

Trompeta & Matilda - our raft partners for the crossing - lining up to come alongside

Once the pilots were dropped off on each of the 9 boats we moved forward to within half a mile of the Gatun Lock gates. There we rafted up in 3 groups of 3 – not as easy as it sounds as there was quite a big swell and wind blowing at about 26 kts. It was all done with the usual shouting and semi-hysteria that seems to go with all berthing and rafting activities in the boating community!! Once that was done the outside boats put the engines on but in neutral and the middle boat did all the driving and steering.  We were the middle boat of our 3. The helmsman is allowed to steer but must follow directions from the pilot. After about 10 minutes we arrived in front of the closed gates.  By now it was dark so you’ll have to excuse the quality of the photos.  Also, it was hard for us to be taking photos and handling the lines etc at the same time. I used the phone, mainly.

Sapphire, rafted to Matilda and Trompeta waiting for the first gates to open

Lock opening

John, Gavin and me

Having a quick break from the work

Lock gate opens, we go into the chamber the gates at the far end can just about be seen

Lock almost filled. Train run along the wall pulling the ships through

Normally the 2 outside boats handle both the bow and stern lines, but since we were so much heavier than the others, we took the 2 stern lines. The canal authorities provide 4 men per raft; 2 took bow lines from the outside boats and 2 took our stern lines. The men on shore were on the canal banks about 15 meters above us. They threw down monkey fists with thin lines to which we attached the heavy mooring lines. These are then pulled up to the canal embankments and as we move into the chamber of the lock the men above walk the lines forward. Once all the boats are secured to large bollards the lock gates are closed and the water swirls in, raising us up about 10 meters.

Line-handler walking the wall dragging bow line using thin line. (Dave drinking tea while holding the line - well he is English!)

Water flooding in in swirls.

It was an amazing experience.  The lock gates are enormous and the water rises incredibly fast. All the crews were both excited and nervous and because we were rafted together it became quite the social occasion.

Once the water was at the correct level the gates opened on the other side of the lock.  We all separated and anchored overnight while the nightshift pilots were collected and new ones arrived early next morning,

With our new pilot on board, we sailed for 3 hours across the Gatun lake. Unfortunately, we were held up for 3 hours on front of the Pedro Miquel lock.  Because we weren’t moving we nearly fried in the heat. On the plus side we spent most of the time learning about Panama from Maria, our pilot. She had excellent English and was delighted to talk politics, history of the canal, where she thinks Panamais going in the short-term, environmental issues etc.

Crossing Gatun Lake

Pau - up the mast of Beatoo - to get better photos

Prison where Noriega is being held (also, palm trees in bloom. See the fluffy tops).

ship being guided across the lake by pilot boat

Pedro Miguel lock.

Eventually we got the go-ahead and repeated the procedures of the night before. Rafting up, handling the lines….This time it all went really smoothly.

The last lock, Miraflores, was just 30 minutes past Pedro Miguel. As the Pacific is lower than the Atlantic, this time we went into locks when full and dropped while the water emptied out.  There was frenetic texting and calling home on all the boats as we had been told arrangements had been made for the lock webcams to point at each boat so we could wave to loved ones. I don’t think it worked out that way.

Screen shot of Miraflores webcam photo - that's us in the middle

Miraflores lock

Spectators

Nearly finished – I’m bored myself at this stage.  Once through Miraflores, we parted from our rafted boats, headed under the Bridge of the Americas and out into the Pacific.  We anchored in the bay in Panama City– exhausted and delighted.

At last - out into the Pacific. My first time.

Bridge of the Americas - Panama City in the background

We left the San Blas islands on the 25^th of Jan, heading for Colon, in preparation for our transit of the Panama Canal.  (That will be the next blog.) On the way we stopped off at Portobello for a couple of nights.  The bay was “discovered” by Christopher Columbus in 1502 and as the name suggests is a beautiful port/bay. In colonial times, all the goodies the Spanish plundered from S. America passed through this port.  At one point, one third of the world’s gold passed through here.  While passing through, however, the dreaded taxman took his share and the customs house built for this purpose is almost the only building of note left in the town.

Since such an amount of precious goods were passing this way, forts were built around the bay to protect it.  However, the British still managed to level the place in the early 1700s and the forts that are still there today were actually rebuilt in the 1800s and never used.  By this time, ship building had improved and the goods were being sailed around Cape Horn rather than being transported overland to Portobello.

John & Patricia

Our Sunday hillwalks are paying off. I was first up the hill. Catriona would be proud of me!

That’s the history lesson over.  Today, Portobello is a hugely deprived town.  People live in a small area squashed between the surrounding hills and the water.  There appears to be no farming or industry. It isn’t geared up for tourists or passing yachts.  It has 1 restaurant, 2 bars and 2 supermarkets.  That’s it!! Nonetheless, they have satellite dishes and the bars have wifi. We spent the evening in Captain Jack’s Bar – which is also a hostel. Most people in the bar were backpackers stopping off on the way to Columbia by ferry. (Can’t drive from Panama to Columbia anymore).  This was great for Gavin as he finally got to spend a night with people his own age.  So did I because there was also an Irishman from Tipp and his friend, an Englishman from London, propping up the bar.  They reminded me of the 2 guys in Waiting for Godot (sorry the names escape me).  These 2 guys have been in this bay, living on their boats, for about 2 years.  They are each single-handed sailors in their 50s and seem to be stuck there for one reason or another. They are doing odd-jobs on boats, supposedly saving up for the trip back to Europe.  I don’t think it will ever happen for them.  Anyway, I had a great laugh with the pair of them while the rest of the crew watched a re-run of some Giants game. Spare me!!!!

View of Portobello from the boat

Note the satellite dish!

Gavin - looks like he is running up the hill!

The magnificent Portobello bay

Did I say this was going to be a short blog? The only other thing of note from Portobello is that on the sail down there we passed a Spanish boat, Beatoo, also taking part in the Arc.  We contacted them on the VHF to tell them where we were headed and they decided to follow us in to Portobello.  They anchored beside us for a night and we have become good friends since.  They have what I feel is the typical ARC configuration of 2 men in their 50s and 2 youngsters in their 20’s. (More company for Gavin). After Portobello, next stop was Colon where we needed to be measured and assessed for the Canal transit.  3 nights in a marina – a welcome change after 2 weeks at anchor. I’m not complaining – Sapphire has hot showers, flush toilets and air conditioning so we’re not exactly slumming it.

After a couple of days sailing around various of the San Blas islands, we are back in Corazon de Jesus. As this is where the only airport in the region is. We will be in and out of here a few times while crew changes are being made. Jerry, a Corkman living inFlorida, joined Sapphire inSt. Luciaand leaves tomorrow. In honour of his departure we decided to do a trip up the Rio Diablo river, on the mainland, to where John had read about a 3 mile long trail through the jungle leading to a lake and waterfall. So, in good Irish fashion, we packed some sambos and the 6 of us set off in the RIB.

Trying to find the mouth of the river Diablo

Entrance to a Kuna graveyard. The canoe is left to bring the deceased to meet their ancestors.

Fetching pails of water

The trip up river (after we eventually found the mouth) took 45 minutes.  It looked like a cross between Deliverance and Apocalypse Now. It is a busy spot too as this river is the only source of fresh water for many of the islanders.  They paddle up in their canoes and fill enough containers to do them a couple of days. Eventually, we came to a dam across the river and were unable to go any further. So we figured this must be the start of the trail.

Baobab tree - distinguishable by its roots being above ground

The path here was promising looking - it wasn't to last !

Yes, I did cross without incident but thought Alex made a better picture !!

It was an amazing trip. We followed a Wavin-style pipe that was bringing water from the lake down to some small towns on the mainland. The trail started out fine but soon deteriorated. We crossed a number of ravines that were bridged by small tree trunks and all the while there were scurrying sounds in the undergrowth and screeching noises coming from the trees. But apart from a few iguanas and a million ants we couldn’t make out the wildlife. I was just as happy not to know too much of what was around us.  The trek to the lake was supposed to be 3 miles but after 1.5hrs of uphill struggle there was still sign of it.  We met some Kuna Indians on their way down and they told us it was 2 more hours to get to the lake.  Of course we assumed they, or we, had misunderstood and on we went.  However, having read lots of books on Everest and the importance of turning back, I managed to get a consensus on a give-up time.  So, after 2 hours walking we had our picnic and headed back down. Which was just as well because when we got back to the boat and re-read the book it turned out the trek up to the lake was 3 hours, not 3 miles!!

Heron - shot taken from the RIB so not great

I don’t know how John found his way by boat to the airport at Corazon de Jesus. It is on a tiny island just off the coast of Panama in the eastern Caribbean Sea. The only tell-tale sign is a bright orange windsock waving among the palm trees. Gavin, my nephew, and I arrived in the smallest plane I’ve ever been in – a 6 seater island hopper. My head kept hitting off the ceiling and there was a mist of rain blowing in on top of me through the edge of the door.  It was almost as bad as flying to Inis Mean – but at least here there is a sort of concrete runway.  The good thing is that the dinghy (from now on I’ll refer to it as the RIB ‘cause its easier to spell), was able to pull in at the end of the runway so no trekking through the jungle – yet.

The San Blas islands are home to the Kuna Yala Indians. There are over 300 islands but only around 40 of them are inhabited. Some of the inhabited islands are completely overcrowded but most appear to have only 1 family living on them.  They live in cane huts with thatched roofs and use dugout canoes for transport. The main diet seems to be coconuts, plantains and seafood. Tourists are not allowed to remove coconuts from any of the islands, whether inhabited or not.  However, we were given some in exchange for bottles of water one day while anchored off an island.  They were promptly made into Pina Coladas by Scott, the skipper.

All the islands we’ve seen so far are extremely flat with amazingly white sandy beaches – the only vegetation being palm trees. Some are so small they just have a circular beach with 2 or 3 palm trees in the middle. Reminiscent of an old screen saver from the 80’s where the guy was stranded on a desert island. All are much smaller than Tom Hanks’ Castaway island.

The day after we arrived, World Arc had organised a beach party on one of the islands, so that the crews from the various boats could get to know each other before the long passages start. Understandably the group seems to fall into 2 age groups. Boat owners being over 50, retired or running their own businesses and crew members in their 20s and early 30s who have not yet settled down.  The common denominator being a sense of adventure, a free spirit and in a lot of cases – ample funds.

We are due to stay around these islands for about a week while the crew changes and training take place. Surprisingly, there is mobile phone coverage near inhabited islands, but it seems that only US mobiles work here.  O2 don’t have provider agreements with the Kuna Yala – imagine!! So I’ll be posting this after I arrive in Colon at the mouth of the Panama Canal.