escapade sailing

Isla Santa Cruz

Having dragged Jemima away from the sea lions of San Cristobal, we sailed to Santa Cruz.  The doldrums continue to produce glassy calm seas for us, sailing weather best suited to diesel engines.  I am so looking forward to the trade winds further south.

Santa Cruz is the centre of tourist tripping in the islands.  A pleasant little place with plenty of cafes, wifi, t-shirts and the Charles Darwin Research Institute.  It is populated by laid back local Ecuadorians and roaming gangs of sun burnt eco-tourists dressed in wide brimmed hats and beige safari suits, being led by a National Park guide.

One spin-off of this tourism is the recent arrival of some great restaurants, we ate well.  They are growing quite a few crops on Santa Cruz, so rather than the usual fried snapper with plantains, we are offered ‘farm to table’ modern Ecuadorian fine dining no less!

There is also a great Saturday morning farmers market to top up our stores, a huge open barn full of fresh produce, followed by a trip to the breakfast stand where they fry up a very sustaining plateful for the early morning marketeers.

There are lots of young black-tip sharks swimming around the boat, large eagle rays, the usual boobies and pelicans dive-bombing.  On land there are plenty of iguanas and another breeding centre for giant tortoises.

There is nature to see here, but most of it has been packaged up to sell as a tourist day trip, which I have an irrational aversion to.

We head for the next stop, Isla Isabella.  Past the spectacular Isla Tortuga, a jagged crater rim emerging from the sea, swell surging around its rocky walls.

Isla Isabella 

A large hammerhead appeared to welcome us to Puerto Villamil, a lovely shallow lagoon to anchor in.

This feels like a real sleepy backwater in comparison to Santa Cruz.  Sea lions playing in the mangroves around the shore, sandy dirt roads in the village.

More surf, not the powerful point breaks of Cristobal, but a very fun beach break a few minutes away, I have surfed it every day.  Lots of waves here. I remember watching Sir David Attenborough’s programs from the Galapagos years ago and being distracted by the waves peeling behind Sir Dave.

Los Tuneles

This is really a one-off landscape, unique to the Galapagos.  The only way to see it of course is to sign up for a boat trip with a local naturalist as your guide. (I am trying.)

It’s a remote area of mainly collapsed ancient black lava tubes, leaving arches and bridges standing in a labyrinth of clear aquamarine pools, channels and caves.  Sea-lions chasing the boat.  Tidal waters full of life, we snorkelled with sleepy white-tipped sharks and huge grazing sea-turtles.   Above the water are mangroves and candelabra cacti hundreds of years old.  Outside the reef we saw giant manta rays.  The whole trip was pretty amazing.  Sometimes you just have to be the tourist.

Dancing Boobies

I have read about the ‘complex and comical’ courtship dance of the Blue Footed Booby.  In flight, boobies look much like a Guernsey Gannet in shape: streamlined fuselage, feet tucked away, low level gliding and a powerful dive from a great height.  We have seen a few of these birds around the islands but not up close, and certainly not dancing.  In Los Tuneles we almost tripped over a pair, mid performance.  It’s wonderful.  Slo-mo foot raises, whistling (male), grunting (female), all sorts of posturing.  Apparently the male needs to persist with this dance for WEEKS before the female acquiesces.

We have noticed that several birds, animals and fish here are not afraid of us, or camera shy, but seem to be positively performing and posing for their close up!

The Booby dance is on the video, if you make it past the sea-lion footage..

Penguins

This special Galapagos penguin is only to be found here.  Penguins!  On the Equator!  They are often seen in the bay where we are anchored, but it’s still too warm here, they are enjoying colder currents in the western islands.  So I had given up on seeing penguins here, but just as we were swimming back to our trip boat, the skipper called out “Pinguino!”  And there he was, a solitary penguin waddling along a rock next to another pair of dancing boobies.  Only in Galapagos!  I may buy a safari suit.

Now what?

Dawn is flying home to the delights of springtime in Guernsey, catching up with family and friends.

Jemima and I are planning to sail the next part of the Pacific and meet Dawn again in Polynesia in a few weeks.

Hare brained scheme

The traditional route from here is to sail to the Marquesas, the closest, northernmost islands in French Polynesia.

It is a well-trodden path these days.  This is the start of the cyclone-free season in Polynesia and most of the boats we met in Panama are making their way to the Marquesas.  I’m told the anchorages get crowded at this time of year.

So Jemima and I have decided to sail 2000 miles south instead, along the much less frequented route to Rapa Nui (Easter Island).

Bit of a detour.  If it all works out we’ll enter Polynesia via Pitcairn and the Gambier islands, (another 1200 miles) by which time it will be winter down there.

So thermal underwear possibly, but we will be 900 miles south of the crowd.

Next Update

Well Dawn won’t be onboard to run the IT department!

We will try to send some text via the sat phone, if not it may be a quiet month on the blog!

Video

So here’s the roundup of footage from the last month, sorry but the sea lions have really stolen the show.  Again.

The first thing I become aware of here in the Galapagos is that there are quite a lot of rules restricting my usual behaviour.

We are used to exploring by yacht, dinghy, paddleboard and windsurfers.  Finding deserted anchorages, freediving with the fauna, spearing the odd fish for supper, swimming ashore and generally doing exactly as we please.  Here of course the whole place is rightly protected from the likes of me.  A national park to ensure the future of a globally important natural wonder.  This does mean that if I want to go and see much beyond the three anchorages we are permitted to be in, I have to sign up to a tourist trip and be processed with the herd, which I’m just not good at. But I’m trying.

The Sea Lions

The first day I went for a swim at the town beach and was joined by a frolicking young sea lion darting around me.  A lifeguard in a tower blew his whistle and said I was too close to the pup.  Well really.  These young sea lions are just ridiculously playful and friendly, more about them later.  First a word about their biggest fan, my daughter Jemima.

She does like a pinniped, her face lights up at the honk of a nearby pup. She spent a summer teaching sailing and hanging out with the sea lions in California, which became the subject of the final dissertation for her marine biology degree.  Then there was an orphan fur seal pup she nursed in South Africa, the Kiwi fur seals she found to play with in the wilds of South Island and most recently some sea lion spotting in the Falkland Islands on a yacht delivery stopover.

So the Galapagos Archipelego could be described as ‘right up her street’.

The sea lions here really steal the show.  They are everywhere, living all over town, swimming round every boat and hauling out for a nap on any flat surface available. 15,000 individuals live here, and sometimes it sounds like they are all within honking range of the boat.  Hundreds of them on every beach, all around the rocks, lounging on any moored boat or pontoon they can climb on to.  Most sailing boats have rigged a defence system of fenders to prevent mass boardings, the sea lions would love to be lounging on our cockpit cushions given half a chance.

They think they own the place here, sprawled out sleeping on the public seating along the harbour front.  They will tolerate humans nearby as long as we don’t disturb their lazy nap in the sun.

They are so entertaining.  The young pups bleating for their mothers, grumpy old bulls barking, snorting and harrumphing around the colony.  Families curled up together, lying in the sun until one of them changes position, disturbing everyone’s sleep so they all have to wriggle around to get comfortable again.  Adolescents romping through the sleeping mass and jumping on everyone.  The very comical way they move on land and seem to be continually exhausted and only capable of lying in a heap.  We find we can watch and enjoy all this behaviour every day.

But then you see them in the water.  We have been joined by excited pups on several snorkelling trips now.  At times they swim straight for us at high speed, porpoising with excitement to come and play with human swimmers.  Then they will cavort around us, coming closer on each pass, gaining in confidence, jumping over us.  Lithe, sleek, twisting bodies, changing direction so fast and gliding around us for the sheer joy of it.  It does put a big smile on your face.

We had a long encounter with one individual.  We anchored our dinghy in about 8 metres of clear water over white sand, pulled our fins on and slipped in to snorkel.

The young sea lion saw us, launched off the nearby cardinal mark he had been lounging on and came leaping over, spinning around us.  Then we started diving with him, I was wearing some weights and could easily go down to the bottom to watch him swimming above.  He seemed to enjoy this and then would repeatedly swim from us straight to the bottom and wait for us to join him.  I would dive down, we both lie on the seabed for a while, looking at each other, then he would zip off and we spiral round each other back to the surface where we both take a breath before he goes back to the seabed to wait for me.  “Again! again!”.  A playful, freediving puppy.

This seems like a pretty intense interaction with a wild sea creature and we were all buzzing from it.  Between us we have swum with dolphins and whales in a few different scenarios, but this contact seems different, much more personal.  The sea lions are actively engaging with us.  Friendly, unafraid, inquisitive and playful.

It’s easy to (mis?)interpret some of the behaviour as cheeky humour.  We were all resting between dives on the glassy, sunny surface.  The sea lion approaches Jemima horizontally, almost motionless, putting his whiskers right up to her mask, they lie there for a moment eye to eye, then the pup blows a huge bubble in Jemima’s face and cavorts off.  I’m sure he was laughing as much as we were.

After a few days the pups in the local ‘nursery’ area of the anchorage have become so accustomed to Jemima’s regular visits on the paddle board, they are now coming for rides on it!

Surf

I’m tired tonight after a full day in the Galapagos.  Paddleboarding, a boat trip, two scuba dives and a surf session.

Surfing arrived here relatively recently, and it arrived on sailing boats like ours, bound for Polynesia.  A few decades ago those surfing sailors would have been anchored where I am now, and could not have failed to notice the quality of rights and lefts wrapping around the points on both sides of this natural harbour.  The surfboards came out of the yacht lockers and the locals took note.  The new generation of San Cristobal kids are now charging the waves in their backyard and loving it.

There is a great Galapagos flavour to the surfing here.  A water taxi will pick me up from Escapade, drop me at the peak and come back for me at sunset.  Black volcanic boulders everywhere, marine iguanas patrolling the rocks, huge turtles in the water, the ever-present sea lions riding inside the waves at high speed.

As we sat at an empty break one Saturday morning, a visitor from mainland Ecuador told me the locals are complacent, or surfed-out, having too much fun.  There is no shortage of waves, look at where this archipelago sits on the equator.  Swells from the North and South Pacific arrive year round.

But it’s also in the doldrums, I haven’t rigged my windsurf gear since Panama.  Even if there was wind, I’m sure it’s not allowed, might disturb the sea lions. (But they would love it!)

Tortoises

There is a limited road system on San Cristobal, well one road really, across the southern part.  The whole of the rest of the island is wild national Park with no access.  We took a taxi down ‘the road’ to visit the breeding centre for the Galapagos Giant Tortoise. They are to be found foraging in the hot, dry vegetation, plodding heavily through the bush.  Magnificent creatures, the eldest of which may have been plodding here since the late 1800s!

Scuba

We dived the cold waters around the walls of Kicker Rock, 7mm wetsuits and plenty of lead, with lots of fish, sharks and turtles.  Many of these fish are new to us, as is the endemic Galapagos Shark, streamlined silhouettes circling above us.  We tried to pick a low-swell day for our dive trip, but visibility was not great in the churning waters around the rock.  We have a few more dive sites on our Galapagos to-do list.

Next island

After nine days at anchor here it’s time to move on.  We are leaving for the next stop on our Galapagos tour.  Isla Santa Cruz, 45 miles to the west.

Day 1

Farewell Panama.

Thanks for everything!

Our first full day at sea.  I think I already mentioned that this sea seems to be teeming with life.

Today started with a fin whale close by as we left the last of Las Perlas astern.

Then the manta rays started jumping.  Really jumping!  High back flips, all around the boat.  Mating displays?

The breeze was light and variable all day.  Sometimes we were reaching at 9 kts, then barely creeping along at 3 or 4.

The afternoon was glass calm, Escapade still somehow gliding on at 4 kts.  Big manta rays on the surface all around, 2 metre wingspan.

Dolphins, turtles, schools of fish.  We landed another Spanish mackerel, protein for the day.

This evening the sea was glowing, mesmerising, the three of us each quietly absorbed in the beauty of it all.

We’re not used to sailing in such light wind, it’s very quiet and peaceful, and very satisfying to be crossing the smooth sea at the same speed as the wind.

The wine-dark sea.

I think that’s the title of one of the Jack Aubrey books, the HMS Surprise sails in to an unnatural dark red sea and her superstitious crew consider it an ill portent.

Well today we crossed a vast red patch, my marine biologist daughter tells me it is caused by the upwelling of nutrients resulting in an algal bloom. Swirling dark red clouds below the surface.

Tonight the phosphorescence was a good show, fish appearing as comets and a large manta like a spaceship alongside.

Day 2

Off the shelf

After all that marine wildlife, the next day was so different.

We had sailed west, straight off the continental shelf and out into the empty Pacific.  The sea bed 150m below us dropped away to 3,500m. We left the Americas behind, along with all signs of life at the surface. Not a bird in the sky or a single bite on the hook.

Day 3

The Doldrums

The Equatorial sea areas previously known as the Doldrums seem to have been re-named.  So we are now sailing through the Inter Tropical Convergance Zone (ITCZ), but I think we’ll stick with the old seafaring term.  We are only about 4 degrees North of the Equator now and the winds are lacking in power and consistency. No problem if you happen to have a light boat, a keen crew and some big sails to play with, but we’re not breaking any speed records.  This area is also known for overcast skies and thunderstorms which we seem to be dodging at night.

Day 4

Malpelo

Sea mounts rise from the ocean floor 3000 metres below, we sailed over one summit just 100m beneath us, an underwater mountain that would be a pretty good size Alp.

But one breaks the surface, a Gibraltar style rock emerges from the ocean, the tiny island of Malpelo is a Colombian possession, a remote naval outpost.  It is almost on our rhumb line to Galapagos.

I have heard stories of spectacular diving, pristine waters and huge schools of hammerhead sharks.  We hoped to stop and have a look, but it seems that it’s now off limits to visitors.  Dawn’s VHF request for permission to approach the island was denied by the Colombian Navy, so we sailed on by.

Scale

I still like a paper chart.

If you want to buy a nautical chart in Panama City you should go to see ‘Mister George’ at Islamorada International.  He has a huge colour printer and will run off an official, full size Admiralty chart of anywhere in the world, at the touch of a button. We bought a 1: 20,000,000 scale planning chart of the South Pacific.

Now I have had time to unfold it and start to understand the size of the area. It’s daunting.

Our first Atlantic crossing in 2004 was 2,850 nautical miles I think, from Canaries to Antigua. It seemed an epic voyage. The Pacific at the equator is 11,000 miles East to West!  All of the land masses of the world could fit in the Pacific basin with room to spare.

Day 5

Fish 

Having trolled a lure from dawn to dusk without so much as a click on the reel, I finally had some fresh fish on board tonight.  Reading in the cabin on my night watch, I looked up to see a fish flapping around on the galley floor.  It can only have arrived through the open hatch in the ceiling, a good 4 metres above sea level, obviously cruising altitude for this flying fish.  He seemed a bit surprised, as was I.  I guess he would have been swimming for his life to outrun a predator, breaking the surface and soaring to windward to escape, only to ricochet off the hatch of a passing yacht.  What are the chances?   Talk about ‘out of the frying pan in to the fire’.

A tiny adjustment to his trajectory would have actually landed him in my frying pan!

He wasn’t really big enough though, and seemed very keen to be swimming again, so I scooped him up and re-launched him into the night.  Good luck.

Hydro Power

It took a while to run this sea-trial as the wind was not blowing in the doldrums.  When we did finally get up to 7 knots the new generator worked great, 16 amps coming in at that speed, rising to 30+ amps at 10 knots.  As soon as the boat is moving at her usual sailing speeds we have complete power autonomy.  This is really a game changer on passage, not only will it keep all the systems running day and night, without ever having to burn any diesel, it means that we have more power than we can use.  I can run the water-maker anytime, we have switched from gas to an electric kettle.  (Tea consumption is very high on this boat so that saves a lot of propane use.)  We have just sailed all night at about 7 or 8 knots, autopilot driving, and the boat batteries at 100% this morning!

So the tea is hot, the beers are cold, we’re charging laptops willy nilly, I could use an electric drill all day, I might buy myself a hairdryer!

Day 6

A fine pair of boobies

At night we are joined by birds, usually in pairs, fluttering round the boat using our lights for a bit of night-fishing.

Last night at sunset a pair of boobies were doing laps and riding the airwaves off the code zero headsail.

One landed on the port bow and sat there resting his wings.  We are still 350 miles from Galapagos so there’s nowhere else to perch within a few days flight.

A pod of dolphins arrived and we went forward to see them.  Jemima had taken the booby’s seat, he flew a lap of the boat and tried to land on her head!

A squadron of squidlets

My rounds on deck this morning were rewarded with this little haul.  Jet propelled protein snacks.

I found them at 7am, before the sun cooked them to the deck.  They were scattered from bows to transoms, ink splattered everywhere.

Now cleaned and in the fridge, to be fried with some garlic at lunchtime, and served with a chilled glass of wine perhaps.

Ship’s stores

It’s two weeks since our trip to that market, and 6 days at sea on this passage.  The on-board tomato ripening program is going well.  We ate the last avocado this morning, our daily papayas are coming to an end, last mango is ripe, the miniature green bananas are turning yellow at a manageable rate.  We still have lettuces, broccoli and plenty of cabbages and 50 limes, so we are keeping the old scurvy at bay for now.

Keeping busy

Dawn and I are used to sailing without crew, so having Jemima on board makes life much easier.  The night is split into three watches of four hours each, so we all get 8 hours sleep.  Luxury!  The code zero and full main have not been touched for days.  Escapade is cantering along at 8 and 9 knots to windward in a 10 kt breeze.

So days are filled with eating, reading, music, sewing, workouts, fiercely competitive Scrabble sessions, charades, an audio book of Darwin’s 1835 voyage on the Beagle, and lots of gazing at the ever-mesmerising ocean gliding by.  But our main pre-occupation is food.  The discussing of options, menu ideas, planning, preparing and consuming three square meals a day, plus elevenses, afternoon tea and of course sundowners.  Don’t forget treats for the nightwatch.

Day 7

Equator

The funny thing is, it’s getting colder.  The heat in Panama was up there at the top end of our operational temperature range, day and night.  That was about 5 degrees north of the equator.  Since we have been sailing south, the temperature has dropped quite a bit.  This morning we are only 2 degrees north of the line and there is a chill in the air.  We are attributing this to the Humboldt current bringing a touch of Antarctic freshness to us via the coast of Chile.  That would also account for the penguins swimming around the Equator in Galapagos.

90 Degrees West

A less significant meridian this one, but 90 degrees west of Greenwich means that Escapade will have sailed a quarter of the way around the world.

I don’t need much of an excuse to start chilling a bottle of fizz for sunset and 25% of a circumnavigation is surely a worthy cause?

The Big Blue

Only the cleanest bottoms are allowed in the Galapagos.

The rules of the national park ban any foreign barnacles from arriving and we have heard tales of yachts being sent back out to sea to scrub off any growth before being allowed in.  We’re about 100 miles off, the wind died away tonight so we dropped the sails and jumped in for a sunset swim to check the hulls.  They were still spotless as you would hope, having been recently antifouled.  I polished up the props and I’m sure we will pass any inspection.  It was great to be swimming round the boat again, although we’re not used to that glowing mid ocean blue.  A few gossamer jellyfish drifting by, lit by low evening sun. Nearest land is only a mile away… straight down.

Day 8

Landfall

Our first Galapagos island on the horizon at 8am, Isla Genovesa.  As we trolled our line into the fishy waters close to the island, we attracted a large and noisy crowd of frigate birds all swooping down on the lure.  We thought that announcing our arrival in the Parque Nacional with a drowned seabird in tow would not be a good look, so I quickly reeled in while Dawn tried to scare them off with a fog horn!  Disaster averted.

Crossing The Line

Ceremonies to mark the passing of a ship over the equator have been a naval tradition for hundreds of years.  It was seen as a rite of passage for new hands and an excuse for a bit of dressing up and nonsense for everyone else.

Dawn and I are sailing across for the first time, so we are ‘pollywogs’, about to become ‘shellbacks’.  Jemima has crossed the line already so she was to preside over the ceremonies.  Around 14:00 she appeared as ‘Queen Codfish’ (standing in for Father Neptune) in a glorious home-made costume decorated with shells from Las Perlas.

The first requirement from us was to ‘enliven her spirit with fruits of the land’ so a bottle was opened.  Offerings were made to Neptune in the forms of song and dance to request safe passage.  We sat by the chart plotter and watched the numbers click down to zero and the N became S.

Welcome to the Southern Hemisphere!

We furled the headsail, circled round again and jumped in to swim across the line.

Celebrations continued with Jemima’s chocolate and banana Equator Cake.

Day 9

San Cristobal

The little town of Puerto Baquerizo Moreno sits on the shores of Wreck Bay.  We sail in, drop anchor and sails at about 9am.  A few minutes to savour the stillness before we are boarded by uniformed representatives of Customs, Immigration, Quarantine, Ecological Service, plus our agent, a diver to check our bottom (“limpio!”) and a fumigation team to exterminate any Panamanian insects who may have stowed away.

Time to go ashore to stretch our sea legs and celebrate a long passage with light winds all the way, but almost all of it under sail.

Our Galapagos exploration begins..

It is very hot and the wind is not really enough to motivate us to hoist a sail. We are waiting for some breeze to take us 850 miles across the Pacific to the Galapagos. Our GRIB file forecasts are relentlessly light and variable.  So we have had a few days island hopping in Las Perlas.

Our first anchorage at Pachequa was surrounded by so much life, in the sea and the air.  Squawking seabirds in vast numbers. Pelicans dive-bombing, whole colonies of cormorants taking flight, fish jumping, dolphins never far away.

We made our way to Isla Contadora with the promise of a bar or restaurant, we found both and had a memorable return trip to the boat that night. 3-up on the paddle board splashing towards Escapade through bright bioluminescent sea.

Next anchorage was a hot swampy lagoon. Just us and a million birds. We were too worried about crocodiles to swim.

The following day we found the pearl in Las Perlas. The tiny islet of Boyaneta is a bank of white sand on a ridge of rock. Clear water to cool off in, no sign of crocs. A wild and beautiful speck of land.

I am loving the freedom to explore again. Open the pilot book, pick an island and plot a course, nobody around, go where you like and probably catch supper on the way.

We visited the village on Isla Pedro Gonzales and threaded the narrow and shallow channel Ventura Cruz through the jungle to Isla del Rey.  While we were keeping an eye on the depth and calculating the tide, we couldn’t help noticing the sharks and crocodiles in the channel, so no swimming there.

We plan to leave tomorrow, next post should be from The Galapagos, wind permitting!

Getting out of Panama was starting to feel like one of those dreams where you just never quite get where you’re trying to go.

The weeks went by, antifouling, waiting for a rigger, waiting for the Watt & Sea, installing it, waiting for the canal transit date, provisioning, last minute jobs.

Living in a marina, which is not our natural habitat, using our shore-vehicle fleet: two folding bikes and a skateboard to get the three of us out to dinner.

Finally the morning arrived for us to cast off the lines and sail away.

How different can it be? Another stretch of tropical sea, a few miles from the one we just left.

But it is different.  We are now entering the largest expanse of ocean on the planet.

Let’s see, the first difference is that there is no wind!  At this time of year the trades blow reliably and strong on the Caribbean side, but over here they are light and fickle.  Caribbean Panama sees plenty of cloud and passing rain squalls, over here it’s blue skies.

We motor away from the Panama City skyline with zero wind, past the last of the anchored ships and all the canal traffic, out into the smooth blue world with a low long swell sliding under us.

The beginnings of a breeze reach us, we hoist main and gennaker, turn off the engine and we are ghosting along at windspeed, 4 or 5 knots in silence. The simple pleasure of feeling Escapade under sail again at last.

Large numbers of rays are swimming past, great packs of 20 or 30 at a time, close to the surface.  They look like mantas, but small and golden brown.  Haven’t seen those before.

A few spotted dolphins join us briefly, but they are distracted by the rays, ambushing them in what looks like a feeding frenzy now astern.

The skies are full of sea birds, wheeling above shoals of fish.  The sea is full of life!  Whales surface close by, my new fishing lure attracts a nice bonito for our lunch.  (And dinner).

By now the wind and boat speed are creeping up to 9 knots as Jemima tiller-steers us round Isla Pacheqilla, the northern most of the Perlas, our first Pacific island.  We sail on to Isla Pachequa, furl the kite, drop the main and anchor off a white sandy beach, densely covered by the colonies of pelicans, frigates, cormorants and egrets.  The pungent scent of guano wafts over the bay!

Tides are not really part of life in the Caribbean, except perhaps to time the best current for a trip.  But anchoring here needs to be carefully calculated, there is a 5 metre range, Dawn is consulting a tides app for the first time in years. Get this wrong and we could wake up sitting on a rock.

Now humpbacks are breaching, bottlenose dolphins slowly cruise by and the air above us is dark with birds.  So yes, it all feels new and different.  The plotter shows this anchorage is still only 45 miles from the Caribbean, but we are floating in a whole new ocean.

Image from http://www.panamericanworld.com

The two giant continents of North and South America were connected by a tiny thread of land, just 30 odd miles across, until 1914 when the Panama Canal opened for business. And what a business! An audacious civil engineering project that included the biggest dam ever built, the world’s largest man-made lake, and the locks which were world’s largest concrete structures at the time. It was superbly conceived and executed in the era of steam trains. The flooding of high valleys to create a 30 mile wide inland lake, requiring locks and cuts to connect to the two coasts. The whole enterprise runs on simple mechanical principles and gravity. It has operated flawlessly every day and night for over 100 years.

It was our great privilege to take Escapade through this extraordinary feat of engineering. We left Shelter Bay Marina on the morning of the 29th March. Decks loaded with rented nylon lines and fenders for the locks. Our friends Josh and Suzee were aboard as line handlers, joining Dawn, myself and Jemima. Spirits were high, everyone excited to be on our way at last. I was a little jumpy, checking all the systems and instruments were working, trying to remember how to drive the boat after the long lay-up. We had one of those cylindrical radar-reflectors that sit at the top of a shroud. Lots of UV up there, it must have degraded, then filled with rain in the wet season, and the motion of the boat leaving the harbour was enough to shake loose the cooked cable ties and allow the water-filled plastic cylinder to start it’s journey towards the deck 60ft below. This brittle plastic water-bomb landed inches from my head in a spectacular explosion, starting the trip with a bang and doing nothing to calm me down.

We arrive at the anchorage off the container port at Colon to have lunch and wait for our pilot to come on board.
Our pilot Roy arrives and explains we will be transiting with another yacht, rafting up together to go through the locks behind a ship.
The ship appears and we follow her below the unfinished new bridge to the Gatun locks, rafting up to the yacht Aequus just outside. Her pilot is also called Roy. As we motor slowly in, lines are thrown from the walls on both sides. Light lines with a ‘monkey’s fist’ flying accurately to the four corners of our ‘raft’. We tie them to our heavy nylon lines which are hauled up and secured.

The locks are 980ft long and once the ship was tied up there was room for our little raft in the space behind her. The gates close and 150 million litres of Panamanian rainwater fill the lock, lifting the giant ship and two sailing boats up 9 meters in as many minutes. Turbulent waters as the fresh and salt mix around us. Gates open, we all move forward in to the next two locks and the process is repeated until we have the bizarre view from the top of the third lock, looking back down to the Caribbean, now 27 metres below.

There are jungly hilltops up here, and a lighthouse! Escapade moves into the strange environment of the Gatun Lake. Our ocean-going boat in fresh water for the first time, 85 feet above sea level.
We tie up to a huge ship’s mooring buoy for the night, a launch arrives to pick-up the Roys, and we settle down for sunset and supper on the lake.

Next morning we wake to a chorus from the howler monkeys and a steamy, windless day.
Today’s pilots arrive in time for breakfast; Luis, a trainee advisor and Ricardo, his examiner. Together they will pilot us across the 30 miles of lake to the Miraflores locks. The buoyed channel runs around beautiful islands in the lake, lush rainforest filled with wildlife, a few feet from the world’s freight plying endlessly between oceans.

Little boats like us don’t tend to get too close to giant bulk carriers and container ships, generally best passed at a distance. But here we are invited in to the big ship’s world. Sharing locks and channels with the largest craft ever built.

For 100 years, ships have been built to the dimensions of the Panama locks, apparently squeezing in with inches to spare. They are hauled through with locomotives towing them on steel hawsers.

Last year a set of new, wider locks opened for a new generation of even larger ships. ‘Neo Panamax’, the one-way toll for these giants to use the canal is a million dollars.

One of these broke down as we were approaching the locks, delaying us for two hours before our final sprint down the Gaillard cut and under the centenary bridge to the Miraflores locks.

Then down through the Miraflores lake, into the last two locks tied up against a tourist ferry, and finally the last set of gates open and we untie and motor out into the Pacific Ocean. Pelicans diving as we glide under the Bridge of the Americas in the golden sunset. Quite a moment.

Then a few more days in Panama City, preparing and provisioning. Dawn and Jemima run a highly organised victualling program, filling the boat with food, wine, beer and finally a trip to the Mercado Abasto, the huge clearing house for the fresh fruit and vegetables of Panama.

It begins at 03.00 every day, farmers arrive with truck loads of farm-fresh, never-been-refrigerated produce, just how we like it. Lots of hard green tomatoes and papayas to slowly ripen on board as we head west. We were there at first light, browsing the huge piles of fresh greens and fruit in the cool of the early morning. As the sun rose higher the aromas of ripe fruit became headier. Our patient porter followed us with his barrow, loaded with our growing haul of goodies. Get that lot stowed, nearly ready to go now…

I am writing this afloat in the Pacific Ocean!

Here is the video of our Canal transit.

The cutting room floor

Tidying up the Escapade files we found a few scraps of film from last year plus some recent shots of San Blas.

Dawn stitched it all together for this quick end-of-season roundup featuring Dawn, JP, Jemima and special guest Monkey…

The ‘Clearing-off Boat’

Farewell to Guna Yala