Date First Posted: March 16, 2006
Log Entry Start Date - March 8, 2006
Log Entry End Date - March 16, 2006
Locations Covered - Enroute to Galapagos and Santa Cruz Island, Galapagos
Present Location: Academy Bay, Santa Cruz Island
Latitude: 0 44.7N Longitude: 90 18.4 W
Weather: Mostly sunny, dry and hot
Distance covered since last entry: 571 nautical miles
Total distance traveled since departure from Antigua: 2482 nautical miles
Commentary:
Enroute to the Galapagos
We
left La Libertad just after 9 AM on March 8th, with fair skies
and reasonable wind for sailing. Leaving shortly later was Carpe Diem, a
62’ Oyster, and Halekai, a 52’ Alden. Both are very nice boats but
different in crew and style. Carpe Diem looks new and appears to have two
full time (paid) crew aboard to take care of the boat when the owners fly
home every 6-8 weeks to visit family. Big and beamy, Carpe Diem is likely
to be more comfortable, but also more apt to motor to get where they are
going on a schedule. Halekai, on the other hand, is a very traditional
design, with only one couple on board, and will probably prefer sailing over
motoring. By nightfall, Carpe Diem has passed us, while by the next morning
Halekai has fallen quite a ways behind us.
As
usual, we put our fishing lines out once we got offshore into deep water.
By 11 we had already caught a small tuna and put it in the freezer. We
hadn’t even noticed the fish was on the line until Nancy saw it skipping on
the surface, and it took only a minute to reel it in. Just as we were going
to have dinner around 1 PM (we eat our main meal in the middle of the day
when we are on passage), we had another fish on the line. This time
however, the line kept going out fast until we increased the drag, and it
was clear we had hooked a big fish. We turned the boat through the wind
leaving the genoa set on the “wrong” side in order to park the boat while we
landed the fish. This is called “heaving to.”
It
took nearly a half hour to get the fish near the boat, although it was still
straight down and we had yet to see what it was. Finally as we got it to
the surface we could see it was a large tuna. After a total of an hour
fighting the fish, we had gaffed it and brought it on deck. It was perhaps
the largest fish we had ever landed in our sailing experience. Later that
day, Nancy and Jennifer cleaned the fish and cut 30 thick steaks out of it.
We now won’t fish until we’ve eaten all of them, which probably will take us
half way to the Marquesas.
The
winds during this passage varied from flat calms to at most 12 knots. This
meant that we motor sailed more than half the time, although we did have
some long stretches when we were happy to sail at slow speeds thanks to a
positive current that kept us going close to the speed we would have had if
we motored (without the current). As mentioned before, near the equator are
the “doldrums” and winds are rarely very strong. We’ve heard of boats
waiting in Panama for a long time for winds that would help them get to the
Galapagos. We’re not that patient and so long as we have lots of fuel we
will use the engine to keep up at least some minimum progress.
The second day out, Murphy’s Law struck again, the pump we use to transfer fuel from our two main tanks to the “day” tank wasn’t working. The boat is set up so that two large fuel tanks in the bottom of the boat carry most of the fuel, and then a smaller tank that is mounted higher than the engine can be used to gravity feed the engine. The small “day” tank has about 30 hours of fuel, enough for about 230 miles. So, even though we had enough fuel on board to go 1000 miles, if we were unable to transfer fuel to the day tank, we would be limited to what was left in it at the time (maybe 100 miles). Not a catastrophe, since we could always wait for wind and only sail, but our 3-4 day passage could have stretched into a week or more.
After hoping (unsuccessfully) that the pump motor had simply overheated and would restart after it cooled, we ended up taking the pump out and opening up the motor. At this point the motor started working. A two hour job that adds one more piece of equipment to the list of those that we now know how to disassemble and service in the future. If we couldn’t get the pump to work, we do carry on board enough spare pumps of different types that we could have jury rigged something to get us by.
The
favorable current got up to 1.5 knots, letting us sail most of the night of
the 10th of March in spite of light winds, and everyone got a
good night’s sleep. By mid-morning on the 11th, we could see San
Cristobal on the horizon, the easternmost island in the Galapagos. On our
first trip here in 1997, we stopped at San Cristobal to check in, and to
start taking some tours. This time, we plan on continuing non-stop to Santa
Cruz, an extra 40 miles or so. The town of Puerto Ayora on Academy Bay in
Santa Cruz has more amenities and is where the Darwin Research Station is
located.
We
sped up in order to make Santa Cruz before dark, and we were just anchoring
when the sun went down. Academy Bay is open to the southwest and is subject
to usual ocean swells coming from that direction. The day we arrived the
swells were unusually high and waves were breaking in the shallower areas of
the harbor. Everyone puts out an extra anchor off their stern in order to
keep their boats pointed into the swell and we did the same. Just after
going to bed, we heard a loud noise and our boat had turned sideways in the
swell. The line used for the stern anchor had broken and our anchor was now
lost on the floor of the bay. After some effort we put out another anchor
using standard anchor line instead of the lighter line we had used before.
To our dismay, when we returned from dinner the following night, again we
had lost this second stern anchor, this time due to the pin in the shackle
coming out. Again we put out another anchor (we’re down to our normal bow
anchor, this stern anchor and one large storm anchor as a spare). Later in
the week we had some local divers try to find the anchors, but the
visibility was bad with all the swells coming in, however, before we left,
the visibility improved and Paul was able to find at least one of the lost
anchors and bring it up.
The downtown area of Puerto Ayora, the main town on Santa Cruz, hasn’t changed a lot since we were here in 1997. The same supermarket and hardware store are on the main square and a variety of shops selling souvenirs line the streets. There are, however, Internet cafes on every corner and dozens of bright and shiny white pickup trucks that are actually the taxis, all constantly circling the downtown streets. We learned that there are maybe twice as many people living in the Galapagos since we were here before, and homes and buildings are creeping outward and into the national park that covers 80% of Santa Cruz and 97% of all the Galapagos.
The Charles Darwin Research Station is on Academy Bay a short walk outside of Puerto Ayora. We visited it with our friends on Anthem, and later, Nancy and Jennifer went back a second time. Funded in part by the World Wildlife Foundation, the Darwin Station is focused on research and support of the unique animals and plants in the Galapagos. In a natural park setting, they have areas with the Galapagos tortoises and iguanas. The tortoises include endangered hatchlings from eggs collected on various islands that are then raised and later released, as well as mature adults of the various subspecies from each island. These tortoises are perhaps up to 5 years old.
These are two marine iguanas, a species that is only found in the Galapagos. They evolved from land iguanas that became able to swim under water without breathing for very long periods of time.
The
most famous tortoise is “Lonesome George”, the only remaining specimen of
one subspecies. Still in his prime at around 70 years old, they are trying
to have him mate with females of a closely related subspecies, but haven’t
had any luck. The oldest tortoises are as much as 150 years old, and could
have lived during Darwin’s lifetime. The tortoise in this picture is
maybe 50 to 100 years old.
Nancy and Jennifer met the managing director of the World Wildlife Foundation for the Galapagos and collected a variety of reports and pamphlets. He had previously been the director of the Darwin Station. He explained, and it was confirmed later by a guide we had, that his biggest job was political. In spite of what we would have thought, many if not most of the politicians are not overly concerned with ecology and preserving the Galapagos. For example, strict limits have been set for the number of visitors as well as new residents that can go to the Galapagos, but these limits are not enforced. The politicians are under pressure from opposing groups such as fishermen, but many also are prone to a high level of corruption. It appears that most citizens tend to just ignore the politicians, who frequently are out of office in a flash and ineffectual. There have been ten presidents of Ecuador in the past ten years, and the most recent ex-president was just released from jail, yet will run for office again.
Luckily, the political climate doesn’t affect us, and we’ve found the port officials, customs, and immigration folks all very friendly and helpful.
Because we’ve been here before, we didn’t arrange to take any additional boat tours to the outlying islands, but will stop at Isla Isabela on our way to the Marquesas. Isabela is the largest island in the Galapagos and has 5 volcanoes, some of which are still quite active. We did take a day tour to the highlands of Santa Cruz. We were picked up by our guide, Steven, an American whose parents sailed here on a yacht in 1949, and took up residence. Back then, there may have only been a few hundred people on the island, and his parents were quite the pioneers. Steven said that his parents had taken several years sailing down from the west coast of the USA, and had worked for a while for the Panama Canal and later at the US army/air base on an adjacent island.
Steven, and
his Ecuadorian wife (who was the travel agent who arranged our day tour),
have a home that was his parents, right on Academy Bay, as well as a 700
acre farm in the highlands. They raise cattle, harvest timber, and have a
small, informal restaurant for hosting tour groups that visit their
property. We were lucky to have Steven as a guide as we tracked down wild
tortoises on his property. The tortoises migrate from the highlands to the
lowlands during February and early March and although the peak migration was
over, we still saw a number of tortoises just wandering around his
property. This photo is of Steven with a tortoise we saw on the side
of the road.
Jennifer found this large male tortoise under a tree on Steven's farm. All of the tortoises are actively tracked by scientists. Originally they would cut notches in the plates around their shell in a pattern that reflected a number. This didn't work too well when their shells got chipped naturally by rocks. Then they used radio ID tags, but these are expensive. Now they simply brand a number on the shell. This was number 435.
In addition, we
visited one of the island’s lava tunnels that is on his property. These
tunnels were formed as rivers of lava flowed down the volcano, with the
outer edges becoming solid, while the interior kept liquid. Eventually all
the lava flows out leaving these tunnels. The one we saw was about 15 to 25
feet in diameter, and about 200 feet in length was accessible. These
tunnels sometimes collapse and tortoises, cattle or other wildlife fall in.
The view from Steven’s restaurant was beautiful, looking out to the ocean where we could see several nearby islands. Other than two local tour guides that stopped by to become reacquainted with Steven’s facility, we were the only visitors that day.
Most of the
Blue Water Rally boats are leaving for Nuku Hiva in the Marquesas today, and
we are not likely to see them again for some time. We will stop at Isabela
for a few days first, and then will head for Hiva Oa in the Marquesas, which
is a closer port of entry. We’re not sure why the Rally is bypassing Hiva
Oa, but after arriving in the Marquesas the Rally boats should be able
cruise at leisure the other islands in the Marquesas and Tuamotus before
reaching Tahiti. Jennifer has met some other young people from the Rally
and has gone surfing, and went to a very
multinational party to see one Rally participant off to return home. There
were people from Norway (Blackbird), Holland (Bibi), and Canada (Baccalieu)
as well as some French and others. She was the only American.
We’ll post more information about our trip to Isabela when we get an Internet connection in the Marquesas. Assuming we leave Isabela on Monday, March 20th, we hope to arrive in Hiva Oa in 17 to 20 days (April 6th-9th), pretty close to our original schedule. This will be the longest passage we’ll make, over 3200 miles. Last time, it took us 19 days. Then we were part of a rally and were penalized for every hour we motored, this time, we’ll motor if there is no wind (likely for the first 3-5 days) and should take a bit less time. In 1997, we didn’t see any Internet cafes, but now we are at least hoping there will be one.
Meanwhile we hope all of our family and friends at home are well and enjoying an early spring.
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This site was last updated 03/17/06