FINALLY in Wreck Bas, San Cristobal Island, GALAPAGOS! Here is the summary for the trip. I was underway for almost exactly 10 days, (11 days if you count the last morning), my route took about 900 miles so averaged 90 miles per day, I used 22 Gallons of diesel and motored a total of three days, (72 hours) at an average speed under motor of 3.5kts. Caught three fish not counting ones that got away plus two birds (go figure) one drowned and the other one I was able to get off the lure. Lost one lure and broke two. Saw about 5 fishing boats, one was only 80 miles or so from Galapagos, and he stopped by to try to sell me some fish (I still had plenty but I gave them a few beers just for fun). I saw at least for or 5 fishing nets, or at least their buoys. I’m sure there was over 50 sail changes, or at least 50 sail configuration changes. I certainly sailed and motor sailed from almost every point of sail, upwind, downwind, beam reach, the winds were light and variable almost the entire time after the first two days. Overall no problems or failures, everything is in good shape!


In Galapagos you can only sail to ONE island, and you cannot ¨cruise¨ the islands without special permission and paying a lot of money that I don’t have.  So I am taking the ferry to some of the other islands to check out more sights.  The internet is VERY slow so it will be a while before I get all the pictures and videos uploaded but I did start some new folders on the website via photobucket.  The ones in this email are from Panama to Galapagos as well.  Hope everybody is ok and having as good a time as I am!! Below are more or less logs from the trip underway to Galapagos.   Love Kirk.

Hasn’t been doing too much writing underway, it’s been somewhat uneventful. I left Las Perlas a few days ago with two buddy boats, they left under motor and I left under sail. A day later they were only about 10 miles from me and still in VHF range, they were sailing south to pass East of island Malpela, and hopefully pick up more favorable winds further south. This is generally accepted as the preferred route and I agreed with the strategy, but after sailing for a day I realized that there was a SW current and a following breeze, so the rum line to Galapagos just seemed like the way to go and it has been paying off, I have been going SW mostly ever since and am breaking apart from the group, Not too fast, averaging around 3.5 kts, but hey, that’s 85 miles a day.

3 28 09 Have had less than 3kts of wind for almost 24 hours now. Motored all night 7PM to 7AM, but turned off motor to check wind and use the SSB radio, not enough wind to fill the sails, however I CAN sail at about 1kt if I reef everything and strap it down hard to keep it from moving, the seas are calm but there is enough swell to make some noise in the rigging if the sails are not sheeted in very tight. Then for the amazing part, the wind vane is steering in 2 to 3 kts of wind, and doing a decent job of it, did the same the other day dead down wind, now doing it on a reach, amazing!

I was in VHF radio contact with two buddy boats until they decided to motor on the second night while I sailed at 1.5kts, so they are out of range now, picked up another boat yesterday on VHF but he is possibly out of range as well now, I haven’t tried to reach him again. I haven’t seen any boats at all in about 24 hours. I will talk to almost all the other boats out here in route to the Galapagos in a few minutes during the SSB radio net, we exchange coordinates and weather condition, and generally gossip for a few minutes once or twice a day. Not much else to do! I will probably start the motor after that if the wind doesn’t pick up, I don’t mind the sailing at 1kts, but I don’t want to do it for 20 days just to get to Galapagos! I started with 37 Gallons of fuel and have probably used about 5 gallons so I have about 32 left. I have been motoring at low RPM, about ½ of max at around 1600 RPM doing about 3.5 kts and only burning 1 liter per hour, or 4 hours per gallon! I would like to arrive in Galapagos with a MINIMUM of 15 gallons of fuel (that is the main tank full and consuming the 22 gallons in jerry jugs). That means I can use about 15 gallons more, or 60 hours or 250 or so miles. BUT max range is double that which is just enough I think to motor the rest of the way if I had to (500 miles). However I expect to get some wind soon so I suspect I wont be needing all this diesel, besides I don’t feel like buying more in Galapagos!!

When it gets REALLY calm and the water is glassy I find myself staring out into the ocean a lot more. Mostly because you can really see a lot of stuff when it’s calm like this. When it’s rough, or even just normal out you can see flying fish and dolphins occasionally but nothing like you can see in a calm. You can see little fish, and jellyfish in the water around your boat; you can spot sea turtles very far away. I’m not sure if this means that it’s actually better when its calm, or if I’m just working extra hard to fight boredom! When the going gets really slow like under 2 or 3kts it just feels like you’re going to be underway forever. Some things I’ve done to combat boredom is catching weird sea creatures in a bucket as I’m sailing, strange jellyfish, weird bugs, you just throw the bucket at them just right (with a rope on the bucket) and then pull it in, you would be surprised how many weird sea creatures you can catch this way. I got the idea when I was taking a bucket-shower on deck and got a jellyfish in the bucket by accident. When it gets absolutely dead calm and I have to run the motor you can see stuff on the glassy water surface nearly miles away, especially turtles, and since your motoring its easy enough to alter course to go check out your new find, I have several pictures of turtles that I spotted well off, and they don’t even seem to be too worried about you coming right up to them, close enough to grab one and have it for lunch if you wanted! Recently I even saw a bird standing on something floating, so I checked it out, sure enough, it was a turtle!

I’ve been seeing either big dolphins or small whales in the distance today, but it’s hard to tell them apart. Then after dark this evening I could hear several whales around the boat, blowing air from their blowholes, but I couldn’t see any of them! One thing you can see at night that is just amazing is the trails that fish and dolphins make in the water when they’re swimming because of the phosphorescence, it’s truly amazing! This slow sailing isn’t all that bad. Oh well, time for a rum and coke.

I caught a very nice fish my first day leaving the Las Perals Islands, not sure what it is but I’m uploading a picture, best I can tell from my fish-book is that it is either a rock hind or a graysby. It had a body similar to a grouper but the mouth of a large mouth bass, and sort of red spots! I also caught two bonitos, the first smaller, enough for one big meal, and the second was 29 inches long, plus nice and fat, he was at least 6 meals, so overall plenty of fish, even though I would have liked something other than the bonitos, I here that some people don’t even like to eat them because their meat is a darkish red, but its not bad especially if you put it in rice or fry it, and it is even tolerable raw!

4/1/09

Today saw another turtle. You seem to see at least one every time the sea goes flat calm, they just float around on top with their back sticking out of the water, at first every time I saw one I thought hmmm…. What is that!? Then I cruise on over and discover a turtle, either oblivious that I’m about 2 feet away from him OR they are trying to dive but appear to be too buoyant to get down very fast. Now when I see one it’s getting more obvious. I keep telling myself I’m going to sail close enough to the next one to pet it, he he, but then I get nervous that I’m going to crash into him with the boat or snag him on a fishing lure.

I’ve also seen several dolphins, and some other unidentified fins, either big slow dolphins or small whales, I’m really not sure. I haven’t had a good look at a big whale yet, but one night when I was barely sailing along at 2kts or so, I heard one blowing, several times, but no chance of seeing it, its REALLY dark at night when there is no moon.

Here is the tally for the trip in daily distances.

DAY COURSE DISTANCE

DAY 1 3 25 212 ° 102.6 Nm

DAY 2 3 26 214 ° 112.0 Nm

DAY 3 3 27 229 ° 70.0 Nm

DAY 4 3 28 238 ° 51.0 Nm

DAY 5 3 29 245 ° 83.7 Nm

DAY 6 3 30 244 ° 98.6 Nm

DAY 7 3 31 246 ° 126.2 Nm

DAY 8 4 01 230 ° 70.2 Nm

DAY 9 4 02 219 ° 70.4 Nm

DAY 10 4 03 219 ° 75.7 Nm

TOTAL… 870 Nm


Filed under: sailing • Trip

Like this post? Subscribe to my RSS feed and get loads more!