Merry Christmas....Cruising Style

San Christobal, Galapagos, Ecuador

Twas the night before Christmas and all through the boat
Not a person was stirring, and we were afloat.
The dive gear was hung from the pushpit with care
Drying from the dives at Espanola where,
Zak had his first dive, and mom a refresher
and we saw a white tip shark, but not a thresher.
When out on the transom, I heard a great thump
and rushed out to find two sea lions in the middle of a hump.
In case it isn't bad enough to clean up their oil and poo
now we would have to clean up their seamen too.
I yelled and I poked, and chased them away
but they kept coming back for a roll in the hay.
Eventually they left and I managed back to sleep
and I woke up at daybreak feeling a bit like a heap.
Off to the engine room I did jump
to find in my stocking a nice broken pump.
Apart it did come and amongst all the ick
a plastic bead stuck in the valve, causing it to tick.
Fixed and back together I now can have fun
after some errands in town we have to run.
Probably off to the beach while time flies by
I will give the damn sea lions the evil eye.
so on this equatorial Christmas where I learn the hard way of the birds and the bees
Merry Christmas to all, fair winds, and following seas!

Galapagos Passage & Welcome - Jo

We left Bahia de Caraquez/mainland Ecuador after being there for about 10 days...it was more of a cruising community than Puerto Lucia so fun to meet up with some boats that are doing the same stuff we are.  Other reason for going there was cheap fuel..the last we will see for a long long time.  Did alot of boat prep and a bit more provisioning, some relaxing and hanging out.  We left for Galapagos on Sat. the 12th about noon on a rising tide...it was hairy going thru the sand bar with waves crashing against us(I hid my eyes a little of the time) but ended up just fine...so West we go and off into the great Pacific.  The first of many passages on this big big ocean.  Our first day out was quite pleasant/reasonable winds and for a change little seas.  By day two that had changed and the winds came up pretty strong and as usual not in the direction we hoped for.  Seas were quite lumpy and we heeled to a less than comfortable degree.  By that night poor Zak was quite seasick so we were down to 3 for watch tho that is what we will have to get used to as Zak will be leaving us in early Jan. and going back to the states.  Still working out the details of what he will do to finish up this gap  year but boats, sailing and being out here so unconnected to the internet are not his thing and so all have decided that it best he ducks out here.  By day 3 we decided to motor sail as we could make it in the next day and not have to do a 4th overnight.  Did that off and on which did in fact allow us to spot LAND HO early am on Tues.  Nice sight to see the high mountains of the Galapagos on the horizon and we had a lovely bunch of hours in a comfortable sail towards San Cristobal, our first stop.  Back to turquoise blue waters but not nearly as warm as the Caribbean.  Friendly town here but we are finding that you really can not do much on your own without tours/guidesand therefore major expense.  Yesterday we did an excursion to a place called Kicker Rock and did some snorkeling.  Saw Galapagos sharks, sea turtles,some large fish,marine iguanas, blue footed boobies, frigate birds, and lots of sea lions.  There are so many sea lions here and they have no fear of people...we are having a hard time keeping them off our boat which is a no no due to oil,mess and such on the transom.  Thurs we had taken our bikes and gone for what we thought was a 10 km ride up to a volcanic crater lake...however it was more like 17 k and was basically a straight up ride.  So after 3 hrs and lots of complaining and huffing and puffing we aborted and headed back down...thinking we had experience the highlands and would take the taxi the El Junco(the crater) on our way to the other side of the island next week.  Upon arriving back in town we did find that we had climbed 2000 ft up on those bikes and should have listened to the girl tour guide who suggested taking a truck with the bikes a good part of the way up rather than the young/strong guy guide who said no problema...ride up.  It only took Gram 9 minutes to get down, while I took 15 not being gutsy enough to barely brake.  Have figured out a few more activities we want to do here and will most likely stay thru Christmas as this feels like a good anchorage and the next one(Santa Cruz) is a bit more uncertain though in a larger town. Bill's brother Matt and family(Dawn, Adrienne and Simon) fly in to S. Cruz on the 31st so we will have good reason for a New Year's celebration. They will be in the Galapagos for a week and we will all spend some time on Santa Cruz and then move to Isabella.  Wishing all of you a merry merry Christmas, happy Hanukah, and peaceful New Year.  We miss all our friends at home but are having for the most part a great time.  lots of love...Jo

(Sea) Lions, & Turtles, & Bear(icudda)s...Oh My!

Isla Lobbos & Kicker Rock, Galapagos

Well, we didn't actually see Barracudas, but Sharks, Boobies, or Sea Iguanas doesn't start with a "bear". Today we went on a snorkeling expedition. The first stop was the channel inside of Isla Lobbos where we saw many sea lions both on shore and playing in the water. We swam around with them while they played tag and were VERY cute. There were also sea iguanas who unfortunately had already eaten today, so they were all on the rocks sunning themselves and trying to warm back up after their morning swims. We saw some angel fish, some cool fish with yellow lips, and Mexican Hawk fish, who look like parrot fish with a large bulbous forehead. We then crossed over the bar where we saw a green sea turtle feeding on the grass. We were able to swim along with him for 5-10 minutes from just a few feet away.

We then hopped out of the water and headed over to Kicker Rock, so called because it resembles a foot. It rises from about 100+ foot depths to almost 600 feet high. The boobies nest here and hang out on the shear cliffs (think the cliffs of insanity from "The Princess Bride" which I happen to be reading right now). We ran around the rock in the boat first, then hopped in and swam through the channel between the two rocks. There we saw King Angel fish, some Jacks, and two nice small sharks, each about 4 feet long. The channel was about 50 feet deep, but I was able to get about 35 feet down and could see the sharks quite well. We then headed off around the wall of the smaller rock where we saw some REALLY cool red coral on the wall, another sea turtle swimming along, and some other larger schools of fish.

Back on the boat, we headed to a nice beach for lunch and a few hours of lounging amongst some more sea lions. One even came right up to Martina, our tour organizer who had joined us, and tried to steal her spot in the shade. Overall an amazing day.

Cruising with Wifi

San Cristobal Galapagos

I am sure this will be a continuing subject as we meander our way try across the globe, but I thought this was a fine time for an update on our Wifi system. Generally I have been VERY pleased with our wifi system. The Port Networks 250 pulls in signals at great range and seems to do fine with a fair amount of rocking and rolling. Wifi availability has been pretty good. We had excellent wifi in Cartegena, both in the anchorage from Club Nautico ($) and in our marina from Club de Pesca (free). The San Blas had ZERO coverage, but they barely had electricity so no surprises there. We were connected in Panama at Shelter Bay ($) and on a mooring at Balboa (included with mooring) in Panama City. The Las Perlas were a dead zone as we were near uninhabited islands, but we got service from the Tropic Star Lodge (free) in Bahia Pinas at the southern border of Panama. Coverage was good in La Libertad around the Puerto Lucia Yacht Club (included with dockage) as well as in Bahia de Caracas from the Puerto Amistad Yacht Club (included with mooring). In Bahia we even could pull in several signals when anchored a few miles out waiting for high tide and our Pilot, but they all were either locked or MAC address restricted.

Here in San Cristobal in the Galapagos, the City has free wifi (see screen shot above) throughout the Malecon (boardwalk) and it reaches quite well the half mile out to the anchorage, coming in stronger than the onboard Linksys router (probably due to the fact the linksys is mounted about 3" above the waterline and the Port Networks antenna is 15 feet off the water while only separated by 25'). In fact, we started pulling in working wifi 9 miles from town (see screen shot below) and more than 2.5 miles from the nearest land as we came down the western side of the island. In the Harbor I can still see that same AP (verified by mac address) I picked up 9 miles out, though there are others closer by with better signal strength. They certainly have some high powered access points here, but it is still amazing that I am getting at least 4.5 miles of working range (and maybe more) while underway at sea.

Almost universally, this is a connection shared between MANY boaters and sometimes many on shore as well, so it tends to get slow from about 10 am till 10 pm. Generally at night the connections are decent with maybe 40 to 50 kbps pretty normal. Many of these have firewalls blocking useful services and websites (blogs seem to get mislabeled as adult content quite often) though sometimes you can get around that by not using their DNS servers and inputting your own. It will be interesting to see how the coverage compares as we head west and further from civilization. I will keep up with some occasional updates for others to reference as they follow in our wake.

Galapagos

San Cristobal Galapagos

We are currently 9 miles from our first harbor in the galapagos and
are managing to Pick up wifi. The passage was a little rough bit not
too bad and we made great time.

I saw two sea turtles "doin it" and a whale spout so far. More later
once we see land and hopefully some cool animals.

Update: Photo of sea lions on Malecon in downtown San Cristobal. They remind me of drunk beggars in NYC.

En Route Galapagos

0600 15 December
South Pacific Ocean
00 29.3S
88 19 2W
Winds 13 - 15 kn South to SSE

Winds have been shifty, changing in speed and direction through the night. We elected to motorsail at a low RPM
as this helped keep our speeed through any lull, and maintained a proper course towards San Cristobal. We plan to sail come daylight, and have 87 nm to go. We anticipate a late afternoon arrival at (inappropriately named) Wreck Bay.

Bahia to Galapagos Day 2

South Pacific Ocean
00 08.1S 87 01.1W

Today was a rather nice day out on the ocean. The wind was decent and far enough aft to fly the reacher for part of the day and we made decent time untill the wind died off in the evening. We decided to motorsail tonight to try to make it into port before dark tomorrow so as to not have to wait offshore overnight or come into a strange harbor at night. Hopefully the wind will be cooperative tomorrow and we can sail some more.

Last night was rather rough out here...not as bad as our trip down from panama, but not so great in any event. Not a whole lot else to talk about. Zak and I are in the pilothouse, listining to David Sedaris, Me Talk Pretty One Day and looking out at the sky full of stars.