Yuch! I trod on some of this evening's hors d'heuvres. The squid have
been jumping on the deck during the night and we have collected them
for very tasty starters before supper but they do not make a firm
footing to stand on. It was 2.30 am and Harmonica was on a broad reach
with twin headsails set wing on wing. There were rain clouds about
& the breeze had just got up over 20 knots so I was on the foredeck
wrapping one arm round the mast and trying to pull down some mainsail
with the other.
Harmonica is under way again after 16 days in the anchorage in
Villamil, Isabella, Galapagos. The faulty pump is replaced; the
frig is packed with food; the V-berth is full of fruit & veg;
hull & propeller are scraped fairly clean from weed &
barnacles; the kayak & dinghy are stowed on deck; and we are off.
We made water while the engine was running on the way out, then hoisted
sails, changed from autopilot to wind vane, and have averaged 7 knots
or more under sail - starting at over 170 miles for our first day, we
steadily increased to over 200 miles yesterday with the SE Trade Winds
and the South Equatorial Current behind us. Cruisers sometimes say
"Gentlemen sail down wind". This is down-wind cruising. At nearly 3,000
miles it may be our longest ocean passage, but hopefully will not be a
hard one.
3 other sailing boats left Villamil the same afternoon, but soon the
waters around us looked empty to glance at, during our regular watch
keeping scans. However, they are full of life. We saw
several whales blowing in the distance as we sailed south of Isabella.
They were too far away to identify, but we sailed close to some pigmy
sperm whales on the way to Galapagos with their characteristic
bottle-shaped Moby Dick heads. We are inside one of the areas where
many 19th century whaling fleets hunted sperm whales. These feed on
squid and each morning we collect small squid from the deck for a
calamari. Flying fish leap out in front of us giving the impression
that just out of our sight the water is teeming with life. Petrels are
constant companions, darting over the waves. Masked boobies accompanied
us at first but are getting fewer. Other larger birds visit in 1s or
2s. To our delight, we have seen 2 red billed tropic birds with long
white tails out at sea. We are visited by porpoises. In the first
afternoon, a large school swimming east and too busy to stop, but
several jumped high as they went past and span on their sides clearly
looking at us. Often porpoise or dolphins visit in the night leaving
their traces of green phosphor as they play around the boat. Sometimes
they are talkative with squeaks & grunts. Some nights there is a
fine trail of phosphorescence 100 to 200ft behind our rudder.
Many boats leaving the Galapagos have been fishing. Some friends had 2
lines out - one had a tuna which was missing its back half and tail,
the other line had lost its hook and tackle completely. As they cleaned
the remaining half tuna, they watched the sharks taking the offal. We
are not generally successful
fishers, but we had two lines out and were settling to afternoon tea in
the cockpit when one length of nylon line catapulted back on top of me
without anything on its end. As I thought through what had happened, I
watched the other line tug and jostle. It had a small dorado (Mahi-mahi
or dolphin fish) which was filleted, cooked, and on our supper plates 2
hours later. We would love to know what took the other hook!
Before leaving Ecuador, we were given a recipe for dried pork
tenderloin. Marinaded and hung in the sun, it makes a lovely salami
which seems to keep longer than we can leave it uneaten.
We keep radio schedules twice each day and send e-mail by radio, but we
have seen signs of humanity only once in 6 days: a distant glow for 30
minutes one night showed the presence of some ship over the horizon.
Nothing more.
We have both been reading; have retrieved the CDs of French lessons;
have done some minor repairs to the outboard engine; but spend most of
our time just pottering around getting our sea-legs and going through
the routines of eating sleeping cleaning and watch-keeping. We play
scrabble occasionally.
Our one major breakage was the whisker pole: Our windward headsail has
been held out by an aluminium pole nearly 20 ft long. This gives us
more sail area to the wind and helps to prevent the bow from rounding
up to windward in the gusts. However, in one gust it bent and snapped.
We lashed the pieces to the foredeck hoping to recover the end-fittings
but the pole is a right-off.
Janet & David took 3 days to get back into the routines of
passage-making, but are both well.
Our position reports should be on both the winlink.org web site and
pangolin.co.nz. There should be links to both these sites from our web
page www.techco.ab.ca/harmonica.
Note our e-mail is Do not use the reply button to this letter.