Diary Entry from The race to catch up, Trinidad to Galapagos April 2005

Posted on 12/06/2005

Five months after hurricane IVAN in Grenada the damage to Milliways was finally repaired by Peake's yard at Chagaramus, Trinidad. So in mid February within 24 hours of launching we were on our way to Panama trying to catch up three months on the schedule and go into the Pacific for the 2005 sailing season. We have to be across the Pacific as far as Tonga or Fiji by the end of September and then either go south to New Zealand, or west to Australia, by the end of October to avoid the typhoon belt, as there are very few hurricane holes in the Pacific islands. About 8000 miles of sailing.

The passage from Trinidad to Panama is about 1100 miles along the top of the South American continent, passing along the Venuzuala, Colombia and Panama coastlines. It starts with an overnight run, keeping 50 miles off the coast across the Gulf of Paria, well named, as it is the haunt of pirates, and many boats have been boarded and robbed. Sailing with no lights and complete radio silence, using the radar for short duration, and within shouting distance of another yacht for conpany and protection we sped through the night, afraid of every echo or light we saw. It was a dark night and we sailed along the edge of a frontal system which we thought would keep the pirates away as they would not want to get wet! We were happy to arrive safely at Playa Tamarindo on the island of Testigos early the next morning.

We island hopped each day along the coast of Venezuala, from Testigos to Tortuga and on to Los Rogues. Every island has miles of unspoilt white coral sand beaches and touquoise blue water clear to a depth of about 10 metres and is unihabited except for a few seasonal fishing communities. The islands are a playground for the rich, at the weekends they fly their planes into airstips marked with conch shells, have a barbeque on the beach and fly home again or spend the night on their motor yacht which the crew have positioned in the bay. Tortuga was our first experience of an island no more than 8 feet high and surrounded by a double coral reef. We arrived about two hours before dawn and so stood off the island keeping it in view on radar. A brand new 52ft Super Maramoo yacht just ahead of us trusted his electronic plotter and continued in during the dark. He went up on the reef about a quarter of a mile east of the entrance. There was nothing capable of towing him off and after two days it was wrecked and abandoned. There is a high price to pay for getting it wrong. The paper charts and the electronic ones derived from them are between ½ to 1 mile different from reality and the reef is constantly growing and changing shape. A good lesson for the Pacific, we now take visual and radar transits between passing islands to check the electronic chart error, and only believe what we can see.

The island of Margarita was disappointing, the anchorage was remote and plagued by dinghy hieves while the marina was so dusty and still only half built after 10 years. The check in was unnecassarily beaurocratic and expensive even with an agent and at offices in Pampatar 10 miles away. Polamar town was either plush or poor, and lawless, the supermarkets have armed security guards everywhere and the hotels patrol their beaches. It was un-safe to travel far outside the marina except with a trusted taxi driver. However everything was so cheap, fillet steak was cheaper than sausages at 3 US$ per kilo! We re-stocked the boat over a weekend, waited for Customs to observe yet another Saint Day, checked out and set off west again. How is it that Customs work shorter hours and have more holidays than anyone else, must be the stress of dealing with yachies.

The Dutch ABC Islands are just like being in Holland, only warmer and drier, the architecture is completely European, clean, clinical and expensive. Bonaire was pleasant and catered for tourists particularly divers. Kralendijk has the last yacht chandlry this side of Tahiti, bought a few things as the Irish say 'to be sure, to be sure'. Curacao and Aruba are heavily industrialised, providing offshore oil refining and chemical plants for the oil from numerous wells off the mainland coast. However the anchorage in Spanish Waters off the Caracoa Yacht Club was delightful with houses right down to the waters edge.

The two day run west from Aruba to Cartagena is reputed to be rough around the headland of Punta Gallinas with steep cross seas, but this time it excelled itself with a full Force 10 storm, winds up to 50 knots, for most of one night. Milliways took it well with a tiny headsail and reefed mizzen, keeping the speed down to about 6-7 knots, it had reached a 'too' exciting 13 knots at one stage as we were pulling sail off. It was an unplanned test of the quality of the repair work, well done KNJ and Trinidad Rigging, nothing broke. The first time I have thought about using the sea parachute and the bridle was not rigged on the bows. To rig or not to rig, ey there's the question.

The 'One dollar coast'
We sailed into the Boca Grande at Cartagena on a misty dawn with the smell of wood smoke from the villages on the shoreline becoming stronger as we approached and dozens of dug out canoes fishing in the channel. Cartagena in Columbia is a classic medieval Spanish town with a huge citadel which defied attack by everyone including Admiral Vernon's fleet in 1741. Its famous defender was Don Blas de Lezo who lost his left leg, right eye and right arm in various battles with the Brits but still sucessfully commanded his troops to defend the town. The town inside the old walled part is mostly original, and safe to walk around day or night. The Club Nautico Manga Yacht Club was very helpful and we could have stayed here for several weeks, it's on the next time round list. A yachtie doctor gave a talk one evening on staying healthy in the tropics on a boat and asked Heather if she would assist at the local medical clinic for a day, as they are always short of staff, an interesting and enjoyable day. Once again food and diesel were very cheap, we called it the 'one dollar coast' as nearly everthing was just 1 US$, even the fixed rate taxi's anywhere in the city boundaries, how do they make a living. We started taking anti-malaria tablets in preparation for Panama and found that if we had them with breakfast we felt more awful than usual during the morning, but if we took them with our sundowner G&T we had the most weird dreams.

The San Blas Islands are 250 miles south west across the Gulf of Darian and the navigation on the approach is quite difficult. You must correctly identify one of three narrow channels winding between the Coco Bandero Cays non of which are more than a palm tree high. Every one of the 300 islands in this National Park has its surrounding reef, an entrance in the coral and a tiny white sand beach with a few palm trees. We chose the Caobos Channel through to Green Island and Coco Bandero, followed by the Mangles Channel to Carngombia and to exit via the Mayflower Channel and Chichime. The snorkelling was excellent, so much live coral, massive olive green brain corals and delicate purple fan corals, with thousands of brightly coloured fish. A few big ones including sting rays just lying on the sandy areas, and reef sharks! Bit scary the first time you come face to face with a shark, you feel extremely vulnerable and definitley 'in' the food chain, and tend to rapidly scuttle back to the safety of the reef along with everything else. Some friends were amazed to find a fresh water crocodile swimming in the Green Island lagoon, 20 miles from the mainland, photographed it and quickly left. Sharks feed when they're hungry but crocodiles are hooligans just going round killing things 'cus they can. The shallow waters up to the beach are covered with brightly coloured, red, brown and yellow star fish. Native Kuna Indians live on some of the islands, they come out to the boat in ancient dug out canoes. The women sell traditional Molas squares about two feet by two feet, which depict classical South American designs and animals. It is a kind of applique work, very time consuming to make and quite beautiful, we bought several. The men sell fish and 4 lobsters for 3 US$, they were wonderful finished on the barbeque. Although in a hurry we spent a week just drifting from one magical island to the next but we could easily have spent at least a month here, it is the best part of the Carribean.

Reluctantly we moved on to Portabelo, which is the town where the Spanish shipped their gold and silver back to Spain. It is at the head of big natural harbour with old forts dotted around the bay to defend it. This is where Drake finally met his end and was buried at sea just off an island at the entrance. It is a World Heritage site and the museum was full of interesting history, most of which was not flattering for the Spanish. The traditional festival and parade of the Black Christ is held here each year to remember the African slaves who were shipped to this area. The display of Congos masks used in The Devil Game were quite eerie. The town is a bit run down, the square with the church was noisy with children and chickens, the old men sat and smoked, the Chinese ran the supermarkets,(as usual), and the roadside was lined with brightly painted American school style buses, it was just how we imagined South America would be. The people were very friendly.

The Panama Canal
The final 40 miles was a run into the Small Ships Anchorage, known as 'The Flats' at Colon and about two miles from the Gatun locks. We moored amongst the 50'sh yachts next to the container boats, car transporters, oil tankers and cruise liners. It rains every day, and the mosqitoes and 'no-see-ums' bite all the time. We used Naviera Stanley a Ship Agent to help with the formalities, gathered 10 tyres (tires) to protect the sides, needed them all and the fenders, and four huge 150' ropes. You buy the tyres at Colon for 3$ each and then get charged at Balboa, the other end, another 1$ by the same people to take them away! The ropes are hired by the day for 15$ each, it is not worth using your own or buying them they are too big for use on our size of boat. There is a 3 to 4 day paper chase to check in, at Immigration and Customs, get a cruising permit, have the boat measured and fill in so many indemity forms in case we damage their canal or screw up their schedule by not managing to keep our allocated position in the 46 lockings that take place every day. We have to sign that we can motor at 8 knots, but in practice everything moves at 6 to 6.5 knots. Measuring was no problem the day after arrival, you are then allocated a transit time and just have to wait about 10 days. In our case on the morning of the transit we were re-scheduled back by two days.

The Panama Canal Yacht Club is a sprawling old hang out for yachties while they wait to transit the canal. 1US$ buys you a beer or two bottles of Coke, and the Chicken Chop Suey meal was 2US$. The world outside of the razor wire around the yacht club has to be seen from inside a taxi, you dare not walk the streets. Everyone with our colour of skin is classed as an American and they are not held in high regard. Colon town is falling apart with many empty US military buildings, unfortunately many of the jobs stopped when the Americans left. The place is just getting more and more run down and the people more angry. We had to find four line handlers to help us and we served our apprenticeship by acting as line handlers overnight on Sanuk with Mike and Alex, another yacht from Grenada repaired in Trinidad. I checked and serviced Milliways engines. The night before the transit we entertained the line handlers to dinner so that they would see Milliways in daylight and get to know each other. Heika and Klaus a German couple came as line handlers, their boat Filia Ventae was also wrecked in Spice Island Marina by the hurricane and was eventually repaired there. It was good to meet them again. A Welsh Canadian retired couple Gwyn and Sandy from yacht Aloha made up the four handlers. The jokes started and we knew we had an enjoyable couple of days ahead.

Southbound Schedule 3004973 U-K Yacht MILLIWAYS 1800 Tuesday 19-APR-2005

The transit through the canal is a once in a lifetime experience, the pilot came aboard at 1800 hr, took over the helm and we motored to Gaton Locks. We tied alongside another British boat from Southampton a Westerly Overlord called Skardu going to Australia. This flight of three locks lift you 70 metres, they are impressive, particularly at night, and behind a very big container ship the Atlas Monteverde. Our pilot was Captain Manuel Mendieta the local man who looks after the Little Ship Club members in London, he was great fun and spoke very good English. 2230 arrived at the overnight mooring bouy in Gaton Lake, ate dinner and talked until very late while the fresh water crocodiles swam around the boat waiting for tit bits, no one went for a swim! The howler monkeys woke us at 0500 next morning and at 0730 Manuel arrived back on board. We started the 4 hour motor at 6.5 knots along the canal mixing it with the big boats one passing the other way about every half hour. You must maintain your place in the queue, the engines have never run so hard for so long, with full fuel tanks and seven people on board, but both behaved well. The lake was made by damming several river valleys and the remains of trees stick out of the water beside the dredged channel and the islands team with wild life. Gaillard Cut is an impressive man made hole through a mountain with massive rock walls either side. A Columbian Navy square rigger The Esmerelda came by the other way with the crew in their white uniforms very impressive, we crowded under the bimini for shade and ate pancakes with maple syrup. Arrived at Pedro Miguel lock at 1130 on schedule but had to wait for an hour for a Panamax freighter to clear the other way, only one lock in operation. Lunched on way to Miraflores Locks where the webcam worked and several family and friends watched us go through and enter the Pacific Ocean. It is about a mile to the Bridge of the America's a spectacular road bridge which connects North and South America. The skipper was duly soaked in the 'new ocean' water and we arrived in Balboa Yacht Club Panama City about 1430. Tired but ellated, a whole new ocean ahead of us.

Next morning we moved to Flamenco anchorage which was very swelly and after a couple of days sailed for the Los Perlos islands about 45 miles south. Arrived mid afternoon and anchored behind the village of Pedro Gonzalez, (wasn't he always the bady bandit in the old cowboy movies ? anyway we know were he lives now) Having generally ignored the 18 inch tides in the Caribbean I misjudged the Pacific tides which were on springs and over 18 ft. With only 2 ft of water under the keel, and still four hours to low water, we hastily pulled the anchor and at 2100 set off for Galapagos. The navigation was finalised as we threaded our way down the North Channel between the islands during the night, with the radar doing overtime.

The first day was a great run on NE trades spilling over from Caribbean, followed by two days in the ITCZ or doldrums, little wisps of wind from everywhere and terrible thunder storms at night, our SSB radio was damaged by a build up of static and will not transmit more than about 15 miles, the tuner will not tune the aerial, will have to repair it in Tahiti. Then followed 7 more days of hard on the wind sailing to finaly reach Galapagos, covering a distance of nearly 1200 miles, to make 900.

Crossing the Line
We crossed the equator one day before arriving at Galapagos at 2352 Local time 0452 GMT, at position Lat 00.00S Long 87.20W sailing at 7 knots, we toasted Ourselves, Milliways and Neptune with a good malt, but dressed in oilskins as were in the cold Peru Current from the Antartic stream which comes up to the islands. We started in oilskins at the Needles and did not expect to be wearing them at the equator!

Galapagos
The Galapagos group of islands are unique, and wonderful, the wildlife is completely un-afraid of humans and will let you walk close to them. The check in at San Christabal Island, population 5372, was easy and we asked to have a permit to visit two other islands on the way through. There are sealions everywhere, asleep in the dinghy and on the back step. We went on a snorkling tour and swam with them in a secluded bay, they come right up to the mask and then dart away, the young ones play with you until their large mothers tell then to leave us alone. They take over the main beach at San Christobal at about 1600 each day and just lie about everywhere, gunting, belching, burbing and generally being noisy and argumentative. The tortoises are huge and mostly in protected breeding schemes as there are very few left. There are black, saltwater iguanas sunning themselves on nearly every shoreline rock, and tiny little Galapagos penguins. The blue footed booby's plumette vertically into the water after fish, and bob up with a dazed look on their faces, so would you if you hit the water the way they do! WE could easily imagine Charles Darwin walking along the beaches and black lava rocks with the Beagle anchored out in the bay. After a week we moved on to Floriana Island, population 120, and Post Office bay which is where the pirates and whalers used to leave messages for each other in an old barrel, its still there. The pink flamigoes flew past the boat in the evening sunset, their bodies looked like shiny metal. We were also allowed to visit Isabela Island, population 1427, and take a horse back trek into the middle of the island to see the second largest volcano crater on earth. The Sierre Negra culdera is 8 miles across, some volcano. We were sore in places which we didn't know existed the next day but it was well worth the discomfort. As our tour guide said, Galapagos is for looking.

Big barbeque at the beach hut by the anchorage that evening and tomorrow morning four boats including Milliways will leave for Nuka Hiva at the top end of the Marquises in French Polynesia, 3000 miles away.

Must go now have just caught a Mahi Mahi (dorado) so we can eat this evening

Photos

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