So.......we finally have a data connection via the SSB HF radio. Many hours of trying things have finally borne fruit. I think it's possible some of these have already been sent but at least they are all together here from Day 2 onwards. A couple of days and we should be in the Galapagos.
Date: 20th February 2023 (Day 2)
Distance Travelled in Last 24 Hours: 23.5 miles
This morning we took out an expensive SatPhone subscription just in case the SSB continues to play up. Gill emptied the entire contents of the fridge that no longer works (refrigerant problem?), started up the freezer that we have never run and reloaded it full of the old fridge stuff. And we continued the awkward dialogue with our Panamanian agent. Gill donned her swimsuit and braved the cold water and strong current to see just how bad the hull was. It turned out to be not as bad as we had feared so we decided to leave.
A shame in some ways as Contadora beach is beautiful. Meanwhile Kevin on Mareki 2 had made a permanent temporary repair to his main furling gear, so off we went at 11.00am.
Motoring to start with and then sailing in gentle breezes alongside Meraki. We sorted out communications with them and generally started to get into the swing of passage making. They caught a nice 8lb Spanish Mackerel and we didn't. Currents were strong and variable as we weaved our way through the islands. The wind then strengthened during the afternoon. We reefed the main then the yankee then furled the yankee as the downwind apparent wind approached 20 knots. 7 knots of boat speed and all was good. Now of course it has dropped and we wonder whether to shake out the reef.
Food of course is important. Sally made lunch at breakfast time. An excellent decision.
Now we are preparing for our first night. Watches have been set, evening meal will soon be prepared. It's 16.30 and time to send this message off.
Date: 21st February 2023 (Day 3)
Distance travelled in last 24 Hours: 116 miles
It always happens on the first night. First of all I still couldn't get the SSB to work and the sat phone was not set up yet so no blog to our subscribers.
Anyway shortly after 8pm we decided to gybe and somehow after a nice gybe the wind steering went crazy, we lost steering and the wheel almost came off. No idea how! The wind strengthened and all hell broke loose for a while, 20 plus knots apparent downwind and the autopilot couldn't hold it either. Very hard hand steering on a lumpy course. Gill and Sally bore the brunt of it and were ready for their watches to end. It eased a bit for Peter's watch and as I came on we gybed again to avoid the traffic separation zone and the autopilot did its job. Later we discovered a batten had come out of the sail and was lost. No damage to the sail though.
The wind stayed lower at around 15 knots for most of the day as we slowly adapted to the broken sleep regime. 3 hours in the day, 2 at night. The current was with us and by evening time we had 2.4 knots of current to whisk us along at 5.5-6.0 knots.
Books were read, chats were had, plans were made and we started to learn more about each other's family. Tom, Peter and Sally's son, sails very fast foiling boats for Team Canada and sadly we heard his boat had been destroyed in Australia whilst being lifted out of the water in a squall. He has rope burns on his hands but is otherwise OK.
Fish? No. Birds? No. Whales? No [no whales, no whales, no whales].
We have managed to contact Kevin and Shawna on Meraki 2. Two boats? It's a race. And they are winning at present having taken a straighter course across the traffic separation zone where we opted to gybe our way past it.
We all seem to be getting on with each other well and Gill and I are learning more sailing techniques from P&S.
So after a hectic first night things are settling down nicely. We have less than 700 miles to go now.
Date: Wed 22nd February 2023 (Day 4).
Distance covered in last 24 hours: 132 miles.
Settling into passage life now. The Pacific Ocean which up to now has seemed devoid of life is waking up. As the waves built this morning the dolphins came to play. A single "plop" alerted us, then other and another. Soon they were everywhere. Big dolphins, maybe 30 of them, zooming and splashing, flipping and jumping. Eyeing us up they played in the bow wave as we stood at the bow oohing and aahing. Big dolphins these, possibly Pacific Striped with one blunt nosed whale(?) possibly a Pygmy Killer Whale. Later in the day we spotted a chunky, largish white bird we had never seen before. Jenny and Emma's "Birds of Central America" soon identified it as a Royal Tern. And then what should land on the side deck but a booby with a nice white breast and yellow feet soon identified as a common Brown Booby. A bit scruffy he preened for over an hour before being shooed off leaving his calling card on the deck. Off he went with another female. They swooped away just above the waves before returning half an hour later to perch on the bow. I think they are still there now at 3am.
Shortly before dusk the starboard reel suddenly screamed. The lure I made with a small pill container, a lead weight, two muppets and two hooks in series. I was fishing a long way back and he sped off, leaping out of the water, blue green and gold. A large mahi mahi that I couldn't stop. Eventually I lost him and reeling in the back hook had been straightened. Shame that would have fed us for several meals.
We have had a good current of 1.5 to 2.0 knots most of the way so far. That's particularly good tonight as the wind has dropped and we've switched the engine on for the first time this passage. On tickover we are still making 5.1 knots in just the right direction. With the SSB radio out of commission for the time being and the SatPhone refusing to send files our communication is limited to twice daily Position Reports and SatPhone SMS messages. Kevin and Shawna on Meraki 2 are 30 miles away from us at the moment and I see no ships on the AIS.
Later today I'm going to make some bread and maybe try some more things to get the SSB working. We are well over a third of the way to the Galapagos Islands now and we have started to think about arrival and what we want to do there. Climbing a volcano seems high on everyone's list. But for now my 2.00am-4.00am watch is coming to its end so I'll finish here.
Date: Thurs February 23rd 2023 (Day 5) - daughter Emma's birthday.
Distance covered in last 24 hours: 110? miles.
Beware, Technical Alert!
If Wednesday was a wildlife day Thursday was most definitely the Parasailor day. The Parasailor is the massive sail that we bargained into the sale of Mehalah but have only flown a couple of times and never really understood. One of the things we had hoped Peter and Sally would do was to help us learn to use it confidently. It is triangular and flies out in front of the boat attached to the top of the mast and with two flying lower corners each with two ropes attached to control it. It is like a spinnaker but has a horizontal slot across it about two thirds of the way up to make it easier to control. It also has a sleeve that you pull over it to make it easier to bring down. It is also very beautiful. So having motored at idling speed all night we were keen to try it out. It took the best part of an hour just to sort out and run the lines. We read the manual and watched a video and soon it was ready for hoisting. Up it went. Amazing. 5 knots of wind behind us and a current pushing us at around two knots and there we are sailing at 6-7 knots almost dead downwind. A great success and as we learned how to manage it we were pleased no one had answered our ad in Shelter Bay when we tried to sell it. It will be ideal for the upcoming long passage to French Polynesia.
It wasn't all Parasailor though. Around lunchtime the same reel screamed again and another mahi mahi was jumping out of the water. Smaller than yesterday's I bought it close to the boat before this one too slipped the hook. Much frustration as they are not only beautiful fish but very good to eat.
We also saw a new bird species. A Red Billed Tropic Bird. Like its Atlantic cousin the White Tropic bird it is almost pure white with a long forked tail. This one though has a prominent red bill hence the name.
Dinner tonight, always important, were delicious buritos. They are like a Mexican rolled pancake filled with a mix of onions, peppers, black beans and spicy sauce all dry fried before being rolled up in wraps. Peter and Sally's boat is currently in Mexico so Sally was able to make very authentic buritos.
So now the wind has dropped completely again. It's 10.30 at night. and we have decided not to run the engine tonight but to drop our sails and drift slowly on the two knot current as it pushes us slowly towards the Galapagos Islands. We are almost halfway now. It is quiet apart from the familiar creaking boat noises and the occasional splash of a fish. It's a new moon that has already set so the stars are bright with cloud cover slowly increasing. Everyone else is asleep and it's a lovely balmy night.
Date: Fri February 24th 2023 (Day 6).
Distance covered in last 24 hours: 95? miles.
This report might be a bit disjointed. It's my first night watch with the parasailor flying. We only have about 5 knots of wind and it's a bit far forward of the beam 3for this big lightweight sail so I have to keep adjusting it.
The wind stayed light all night last night. Too light for the parasail so we decided to drift with the current. No sails. We discovered that in that situation Mehalah drifts stern first! It was quiet but slow so eventually the engine was back on and we continued out gentle progress south west.
The morning started for me with bread making. I don't do much cooking (except omelettes) but bread making is my domain. Weighing out ingredients was tricky today as the electric scales kept saying "Unstb" or unstable as we gently rocked around. That resulted in too much dough for the tin. However, today was "halfway day" so Gilly had a celebration meal planned and the extra dough turned into four small individual rolls, one for each of us. [These small details become interesting, at least to us in our little isolated world].
But before lunch the wind crept up so it was time to launch the parasail again. This time Gill and I were supposed to drive things but the carefully packed sail twisted as it came out of its bag so we all spent a considerable time sorting it out. But since then it has flown continually on a port reach in 5-7 knots of wind at around 4-5 knots over the ground.
Lunch then indeed was excellent. Wraps filled with capers, ham, cheese, peppers rolled up and cut into pinwheels. A small roll each, delicious goats cheese, apple and olives. All washed down with a small tot of halfway rum with a few drops also reserved for Neptune.
This afternoon the wind dropped further and we started to see branches floating in the water. We had arrived in the ITCZ, the doldrums and we appeared to be in a gyre or circulating area of water. Rubbish gathers here and for the first time the sea was filled of it. Pieces of plastic waste in our normally clean sea. Not nice. And then two things happened. A ship crossed just ahead of us, close enough for us to call the Indian captain to check he had seen us. And then at the same time Gill said "look a whale dead ahead". Indeed there was a large object but not a whale rather the prow of a half sunken boat sticking up a couple of metres out from the sea. We sounded the horn but no sign of life. What tragic story had unfolded there? Very sobering.
During the day Peter and Sally's InReach finally died. This is a small device that sends positions and texts to the outside world. Theirs had been operational for many years and it's demise meant our SSB radio, our SatPhone and their InReach had all lost the ability to communicate optimally. Our InReach and SMS SatPhone texts are our only links to the outside world and for some reason Meraki have stopped sending us their position updates too. It feels like a long way from nowhere.
And so our thoughts start to turn to our arrival in the Galapagos Islands. Monday or Tuesday should see our arrival there and yet another new country to explore. Our agent, Javier, will have organised the ten inspectors and divers who will meet us. We just hope our hull will be clean enough to allow us in.
Date: 25th February 2023 (Day 7).
Distance covered in last 24 hours: 102 miles?
I woke up this morning determined to make a second fishing lure similar to the one that has had both bites. We troll [drag behind us] two rods and one always seems to get more bites than the other. That new lure has still not been made.
First up, the wind which had just about held for the night, dropped completely again. So down came the parasail. This time the process was driven by Gill and me with consultancy from Peter. A lot smoother than yesterday. It's great to have such experienced and fun sailors with us. Yet another brilliant crew.
It was dead flat and we wanted to check the cleanliness of the hull in case we needed to alert Javier our agent in Galapagos in advance. But there were too many small stinging jellyfish to make it viable. So we motored on south west for a few more miles. Eventually we stopped the engine. By this time Gill had completed her Mk 2 boarding ladder and she "volunteered" to go and investigate the hull. Fully covered and equipped with various kitchen utensils in she went. Not good news. There is STILL slime and a bit of growth on the hull and rudder. What to do? We need to contact Javier by email and both our SSB and SatPhone are not sending data. We decide I will try to get one or the other working before resorting to texting someone back home to send a message. No luck with the SatPhone which seems to have developed a hardware fault since we last used it so time to work on the SSB. I remade the antenna connection which was corroded and finally created a new earth using one of the through hull bonding wires. And eventually it worked. Emails and weather updates poured in. Success. We sent Javier a message.
Meanwhile the dolphins came and went and finally a large whale showed itself maybe 400m away. First its back and so much later its dorsal fin emerged. The fin was so far back Gill thought at first it was being chased by a dolphin. It blew a spout a couple of times before sinking back into the depths. A Fin Whale, one of the largest animals on earth. Followed later by half a dozen smaller whales much closer to us.
Of course there was another fishy story. This time only a brief encounter (same rod) and it got away before I even got to the rod. The wildlife encounters didn't end there though. As it began to get dark two Red Footed Boobies (like small gannets) landed on the top of the mast, and are still there. One of them is sitting on our wind indicator rotating through 180 and sometimes 360 degrees as Mehalah rocks back and forth. I started up the mast to scare them off with a fly swat but it got too dark and I found myself slipping out of my bosun's chair so we left them up there and hope they don't break it.
Dinner tonight was delicious, a Sally special. The last of the mushroom ravioli with a mix of olives, melted cheese, sultanas and capers.
We've been motoring a lot in the last couple of days so we also checked the fuel situation and pumped 60 litres from the mended bottom tank (thank you Harry) to the top tank. This trip has convinced Peter and Sally that they will venture across the Pacific too in the not too distant future. And they will be buying a parasail for Milly. Meraki 2 are now well ahead of us having motored during the nights that we drifted and sailed. Shame because we were hoping to meet up with them on the equator. They are only stopping in the Galapagos for fuel so will probably have left by the time we get there. I wonder if we'll ever see them again.
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