SV Yohelah

Many cruisers here in the Galapagos are, like ourselves, preparing for their longest voyage to date, and the activity in the harbor is apparent all around. Jugs of water and fuel are being delivered and sitting on side decks waiting to be emptied into the awaiting tanks. Awnings are coming down, dinghys are being hoisted and stored on deck, and windvanes are being prepared for the upcoming 3,000 mile passage. Our to-do list has been finalized and at a glance it doesn’t seem that long, but it just always feels like there are so many things to do.

The southeast tradewinds have not quite settled in yet and we’re a little too far north for them anyway, so we’ll have to make our way south pretty quick to find some wind for our passage to the southwest. A rhumbline course from here to the Marquesas will keep us in light air longer than we have fuel to motor and will take us into a huge hole that’s about half way between us and the Marquesas. Everyone is watching the weather charts and forecasts closely and comparing notes at the end of the day when we get together after finishing the day’s chores. When we arrived the anchorage was quite crowded and now it’s nearly empty. Boat are still trickling in but more have left to go south than have arrived.

We have a planned departure date of Wednesday morning, and will be leaving with our friends on Hello World and Carina. Hokus Pokus, a Swedish boat we’ve been anchored next to is leaving tomorrow morning on Mats’ (the skipper) birthday. The only fly in our ointment will be if we can’t get our new insurance finalized tomorrow. We’re insuring through a German company and the logistics of the time difference are causing some difficulties. But hopefully that’ll get ironed out tomorrow and we can check that off the list. There’s a morning and evening net where the boats enroute check in on the high frequency sideband radio and we’d like to start out with friends we’re traveling with so we can chat and compare weather and routes and things that are happening along the way.

The Galapagos have been a very interesting stop and we’re glad we got to go on our little four day tour and see the sights. Of course there was more here we could have done, but we’ll weigh anchor on Wednesday and as always be thankful we got to experience what we did. We’re anxious to get this 20+ day passage started and see how the winds will be. Landfall in the Marquesas will be very exciting for us and we’re ready to be on our way. French Polynesia is a highlight for many sailors and we’re happy to be joining that crowd this year.

Today on Yohelah we’re nearly ready to go and very excited for our upcoming 3,000 mile voyage…..

Wreck Bay, Galapagos is here

First and most important – Happy Birthday Leslie! OK, now an update. We arrived at San Cristobal Island in the Galapagos mid day on the 21st. We got checked in and are allowed to keep our boat here only 20 days, so we have much to do and as always not enough time. There aren’t too many boat chores, but a few important ones like refueling and changing the engine oil.

Sadly we motored the entire trip down from Costa Rica, so today Rob & Axel are going around finding enough jerry cans to borrow to get the refueling done in a reasonable amount of time. We have a permit that allows us to buy fuel tomorrow for $2.00 a gallon. If we have our agent provide the fuel he’ll charge $3.45 and won’t refuel us until the day before we leave. So Brit & I will spend a day shuttling the boys and jugs back and forth and collectively we’ll save about $400 refueling Yohelah and Hello World.

Rob & I returned late yesterday from a 4 day boat tour around to the other islands. Why we get off our boat and take a boat tour I’m not sure, but that’s just how it happens. We were part of a group of 15 on a tour that included a guide, all transportation, hotels and meals. For 4 days it was $440 each, which in our opinion was worth it completely. The group consisted of one additional pair of yachties and 11 other folks that all knew each other. There were 7 young people from a volunteer bio-reserve station that were here doing work to help clean out invasive plant species that have been introduced to the Galapagos from other areas, along with some relatives of one of the volunteers. They were all really nice and we enjoyed the group as much as the tour.

The first day we left early in the morning and made a bird watching and snorkeling stop at a couple of small uninhabited islands on the way to Floreana Island. Then at Floreana we had lunch at the home of a local family and took a truck up to the highlands to a tortoise reserve and some springs and caves. Then back onto the boat for a quick passage to Isla Isabella where we spent the night. The next morning we went to a tortoise breeding center and then up to Volcan Sierra Negra, where we had a 5 hour hike in the hot Galapagos sun. We hiked up to the edge of the volcano, which has the second largest caldera in the world, nearly 10 kilometers across. We went around the caldera a bit and down across some volcanic formations to a fissure where I think you could see right into the middle of the earth. Then back up to the caldera rim for lunch and a 1.5 hour hike back down to the bus after lunch. Needless to say, we were completely exhausted. But after the hike we went back out to see marine iguanas and snorkel with penguins. We saw lots of the swimming iguanas, which are endemic to the Galapagos (meaning they only exist here in the Galapagos and nowhere else on the planet). Sadly, the only penguins we saw were ashore and they weren’t in the mood to snorkel with us, which was unfortunate because Rob was dying to see what their little snorkels looked like.

Day three took us back to the boat for a a snorkeling stop and then to Isla Santa Cruz, the island with the biggest town. There we had an awesome lunch, a tour of some lava caves and then to the park to see the giant tortoises “in the wild”. That was followed by a stop at the Charles Darwin Research Center where we saw Lonesome George. George is lonesome because he’s the very last of his species and was rescued and brought to Santa Cruz many years ago. Given that these tortoises live well over 100 years he’s been lonesome for a long time and his species will be extinct once he’s gone. Attempts to produce offspring have been unsuccesful as different species are not fertile together. Three species of tortoise are extinct from three islands because of a volcano on one, invasive introduced species like rats and cats eating eggs on the other islands, and primarily from sailing ships taking live tortoises for meat.

Day four was a trip to a beach that Rob & I skipped so we could get some shopping done. I had accidentally dropped my scuba weight belt off the back of the dinghy in Cocos and needed to find a new belt and weights, along with some other miscellaneous and very difficult to find items. After one last lunch it was back on the boat and back to Isla San Cristobal. Neither Rob nor I have ever done multi day guided tours before and we have to say we totally enjoyed it. Anyone coming this way should look up Manolo at Sharksky Tours for a very busy but fun four days.

We’ve been keeping an eye on the winds between here and the Marquesas and it’s been pretty ugly. Before we left on our trip we heard about a boat that had been 5 days from the Marquesas for 10 days. There are just huge holes out there with nearly no wind. The forecast file I got today looks much better and is showing about 10 knots of wind just 300 miles south of here. Hopefully it’ll keep filling in between now and the 9th when we have to leave. With good tradewinds it’s a 20+ day passage for us. With really light and flaky winds it’ll be a lot longer than that.

Hopefully before then we’ll get all the pictures and videos uploaded from our stop here and at Cocos. We’re busy with chores and friends and scrambling to find some insurance since the broker we’ve been working with completely screwed up and dropped the ball and has left us uninsured at the very last minute. Anyone considering Anchor Marine in Seattle should find another broker.

Today on Yohelah we are a combined 100 years old and still recovering from our volcano hike 3 days ago…..

This is day two of the passage between Isla Cocos and the Galapagos. And unfortunately but not unexpectedly there is no wind. We’ve been motoring for 24 hours and likely will the rest of the way south.

The good news is there was a huge pleasure boat at Cocos that was selling fuel to the sport fishing boats and when we asked to buy fuel the crew member said they were selling it for $6 a gallon. We figured out the minimum we needed to motor all the way and asked for that much. They gave us much more than that in one of their containers and just said they would “take care of it”. When Rob bought the containers back the owner said it was free! Apparently he had some sympathy for the little sailboat in an area with no wind. So we’ll get there just fine now.

And the better news is (actually I shouldn’t say this and jinx us) that I think we’re through the ITCZ now. I need to download the weather forecast this morning, but it was really far north when we left and hopefully it’ll stay there. We motored around a bunch of rain squalls yesterday, but when I woke Rob up at 8:00 for his watch last night we were leaving the last cloud behind and motoring into a starry sky. This morning there are scattered puffy clouds around (I should know what kind of clouds those are!), but no indication of huge thunderheads.

The sad news is I have two ear infections. But I guess the good news is they didn’t get infected until after we were done diving. And I have drops onboard and one is feeling better already. Needless to say, it sucks to be sick while on passage.

The worst news, though, is that Rob didn’t get to bring his camera on our last dive Tuesday morning. We went out and dove on a site called Dirty Rock, which is a rock about 1/2 mile off the north side of the island that we had dove on Monday morning. The dive guides from the liveaboard boats call it “the reason divers return year after year to Cocos”. And for very good reason. It was a spectacular dive and I’ll describe it more in detail when we get to the Galapagos and I have time to write a more detailed log. But our darling little kitten hasn’t quite learned what she can and cannot chew on and one of his cords for a flash had a short in it. Suffice it to say that when the eight to ten foot long hammerhead swam within five feet of us Rob & I both were very very sad that only Axel’s camera was flashing.

Teresa

We’ll write more later about the stop here at Cocos, but let’s just say for starters that this is an amazing place. The island is absolutely beautiful lush jungle. We even have our own little private waterfall pouring right into our anchorage. And the diving is spectacular. Just for the record, though, it is very scary seeing the hammerhead sharks because it’s not you checking them out – it’s them checking you out. And they’re big and terrifying to me.

But we’re so glad to be here and although the $100 per day fees seemed exorbitant, the folks on the live-aboard dive boats are paying $1,000 per day so we’re actually getting quite a bargain! There are plenty of fishes and coral right here in the anchorage, so if we didn’t want to load up the dinghy and go out to a dive site we could just jump off the boat and have a terrific dive.

As luck would have it there is a big boat in here who was willing to sell us fuel so Rob’s been busy loading fuel in case the winds don’t reappear between here and the Galapagos. Apparently there is a huge low pressure system between New Zealand and South America sucking the wind out of the area we’re heading towards. Hopefully it’ll finish up and some winds will reappear by the time we’re ready to leave on Tuesday or Wednesday.

We did two dives yesterday and two the day before. Today we may just limit it to one, but it’s hard to pass this up even if we are getting tired. Brit and Axel (our friends from Germany on the boat Hello World) are here with us, so we take turns diving and waiting on the surface with the dinghies. There is lots of current and no place to anchor the dinks, so we have to tend to them during each dive and go pick up the divers when they surface. It becomes a pretty long day when you add in dinners together every night afterwards.

But it’s as incredible as we had hoped it would be and although we’ll be tuckered out when we finally go we’re so glad we got the opportunity to stop here.

Teresa

Cocos Island is here

We’re finally on our way to the South Pacific! We rounded the corner out of the Gulf of Papagayo about a half an hour ago and are on a heading nearly due south towards Isla Cocos. It’s about 300 miles so we should be there Thursday morning some time. We’ve got some good wind right now, but expect it to die by tonight or tomorrow.

We’ll be sailing into the ITCZ (inter tropical convergence zone) again, which means no wind and rain squalls. Unfortunately we’re traveling towards the Galapagos at a time of year when there is very little wind between here and there. We need to conserve our fuel as best we can so we’ve got enough to get to the Galapagos, so we’ll keep the sails up as much as possible. The winds off of Costa Rica are very gusty, though, so it makes the seas very rolly and the sails hard to keep full.

Teresa

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We’re still in Bahia del Coco in Northern Costa Rica after three weeks of visitors and big winds. Coco is at the southern end of the Gulf of Papagayo where it blows all winter long. Hard. Nearly every day. Without fail. But the weather is beautiful and warm and sunny and when it’s not howling it’s perfect here.

Teresa Lennstrom (T2) came down with her family for a week of vacation during the kid’s school break. They rented a condo here in Coco for 5 days and we spent a couple of days hanging out on the boat doing some swimming and watching Kevin do a dive course with the local dive shop. One day we went up into the mountains nearby and did a zip line trip through a beautiful canyon. Even though it wasn’t in the jungle canopy it was still very cool to zip line down through the canyon. And one day I got to go have lunch alone with T2 and get some girl time in. It was great to see T2 and her kids and remember that the phrase “polite teenager” does apply outside immediate family members.

We spent the next week hanging out in Bahia Huevos hiding from the winds and visiting with a couple of other cruising boats that were heading north. Then Leslie & Fred came down last week and we had another awesome week visiting with my sister and brother-in-law. Sadly the water got cold and we didn’t get much swimming in, but we spent a lovely day exploring a picture perfect private beach in Huevos. And I got to have a day in town with my sister having lunch and spending more quality girl time.

One day I checked the weather forecast and it looked like it was going to be relatively calm (for the Gulf of Papagayo, that is), so I had this brilliant idea to go for a day sail. We were going to head north into the breeze and turn south if it kicked up. But somehow we forgot that plan. We were screaming south and decided to tack and turn around and the jib sheet hung up on the flag halyard on the standing rigging. Once that was straightened out I heard Rob tell us we needed to roll up the jib quick. What he had seen and I hadn’t was 40 knots of wind coming straight at us. And of course we had up a full jib and full main. It took three people to get the jib rolled up and then we dropped the mainsail because we had to head straight back up into it. We were making 1.5 knots and water was coming over the bow all the way back into the cockpit. Needless to say it was a long hard trip clawing back into the bay and back onto our little anchor.

The next day we rented a car to drive up to the lake and see some jungle and do some zip lining. Sadly it was pouring in the mountains so we had to forego the zip lines this time. But we had a nice drive and saw some of the beautiful interior of Costa Rica.

Now it’s Sunday and we’ve been up to the marina this morning at the head of Bahia Culebra to fuel up the boat and wash off all the salt we took on during our little 3 hour tour earlier in the week. Tomorrow morning we’ll go get our zarpe and stock up on veggies one last time. We’re 2 days from meeting Brit & Axel (from Hello World) at Isla Cocos, where we’ll stay and dive for 3 days. Then we’re about a week from the Galapagos, where we’ll stay for the 20 days they’ll allow. I’ll update the passage blog until we get to the Galapagos.

Today on Yohelah we’re rested up and heading to Cocos to dive with hammerhead sharks for some unknown reason…..

The Gulf of Papagayo is here

A lot of sailors believe that as soon as you think about reefing the main you should do it, no matter what the conditions. Yesterday I thought it and said it at the same time, and was glad we had adopted that policy. We were rounding the Nicoya Peninsula to get into the Gulf of Papagayo where the winds have reportedly been blowing 20-40 knots day and night for the last month. We were still in the lee of the peninsula and weren’t feeling any of the Papagayo breeze yet, but the masthead indicator showed the wind was starting to move forward and freshen a bit (still only 7 knots). Suddenly it was like the light switch came on and we got hit with 20 knots and huge waves right on the nose. Luckily we were already putting in the reef, and on this boat with lots of practice behind us that drill now only takes us a couple of minutes.

Our trip up from Golfito was quick but long, covering 280 miles in 7 days with no overnight passages. We anchored the first two nights in Drake Bay where we stayed onboard and rested up after our Golfito stop. The next day we went to Manuel Antonio National Park where we anchored another two days but did get off the boat. It’s a national park with lovely hiking trails and beautiful beaches. We had to pay a small fee to anchor the boat there and hike the trails, but it was really nice and we had a marvelous day. We were hiking up around this big peninsula on a rather steep trail with few other hikers when we rounded a bend and found a group (troop/pack/herd/gaggle?) of monkeys. They were just playing in the trees alongside the trail and we enjoyed watching them for a long time.

The next day we were up again at 5:00 am to scoot up the coast and had a lovely sail across the Gulf of Nicoya into Ballena Bay. Then it was another 5am start to begin the trip around the Nicoya Peninsula. We made it as far as Bahia Carillo sailing with a nice breeze behind us, and we tucked into a tiny spot between the sportfishing boats on buoys and the rocks, just out of the ocean swell. It was a noisy but very pleasant night. Yesterday was our last 5am start and we were hoping to get as far as Bahia Potrero, about 15 miles from our destination of Playa del Coco. Luckily the current sets north here and was running strong yesterday and we had 2 knots pushing us along all day.

Those 20 knot winds only lasted about 20 minutes and as we entered the Gulf of Papagayo the wind indicator showed only 1.2 knots. Apparently the 20-25 knot constant breeze is out on the middle and on the north side of this bay, and where we are at Coco on the south side feels significantly less of that wind. So here we are for a couple of weeks. Teresa Lennstrom and family have a condo here in Coco for a week starting this morning and we’re looking forward to catching up with T2. Then on the 27th Leslie & Fred come down for a week and we’ll go cruise the area and see some of the anchorages around Northern Costa Rica.

Teresa

Manuel Antonio National Park is here

We left Golfito this morning at first light heading towards the north side of the Osa Peninsula in Costa Rica. It’s about 70 miles from Golfito to the next anchorage north, which is a very very long day for us. The stop in Golfito netted exactly what we had wanted – 46 books from the book exchange that Rob hadn’t read yet. That makes 60+ books he has onboard for the Pacific season. We also got to see old friends and meet some new ones and went on a marvelous hike yesterday morning up the hill that’s left me realizing I’m not getting enough exercise onboard.

As we rounded the corner at the end of Golfo Dulce Rob put out two hand lines behind the boat and I came downstairs off watch. A few minutes later I heard really weird noise outside and Rob making a huge exclamation. Of course if he’s hollering something very serious is going on, so I ran upstairs and saw our starboard fishing line up on the deck and the bungee attached to it nearly shredded. I looked over at the port side fishing line and there was a huge dorado on it. Making a long story short, I’ll just say we’re really glad the first was so big he one snapped the line because the small one was really hard to get aboard.

We’ve gotten skunked two times in a row by dorado now, losing the first outside Puerto Vallarta, Mexico a couple of years ago when I thought a picture was important. It worked off the hook before I was done taking the picture. The second one we lost was last week on our way into Costa Rica when the net completely gave way. Unfortunately, Maya likes to play in the fishing net and had chewed around a portion of the lines where it attaches to the frame. The net completely separated, the fish fell though and when the line went slack she was gone.

This morning there was no messing around with the camera or even the net. Rob grabbed the gaff hook and wrestled it aboard quick. It was huge (maybe 35 pounds) and there’s a pile of meat that’ll last the three of us a long long time (yes, Maya does get some even after the net incident last time). This is the first dorado we’ve had onboard since Lee & Kathleen caught, cleaned and cooked that one for us on the Ha-Ha so many years ago, and I’m going to send this mail now and go pan fry a lovely fillet for lunch.

Teresa

It was a beautiful sunny day with light breezes as we sailed from Golfito to Drakes Bay in Costa Rica. On watch, I was startled out of a perfectly good daydream by a loud snap and a zinging sound as something under tension broke violently. Even though the sound wasn’t loud enough to be the rigging, I instinctively looked up to make sure everything was where it should be. I then looked toward the lifelines as the next logical source of the noise. I noticed a pile of blue tuna line on the side deck – seconds before it had been trailing behind us, attached to twenty feet of 120 pound monofilamment followed by a 60 pound leader and a squid fishing lure.

The bungee cord between the line and boat looked like it had exploded. All the monofilament was gone, along with my lure. At least it wasn’t my favorite cedar plug lure, which was on the other side of the boat. I disgustedly looked back and saw a huge bull dorado (mahi mahi, if you prefer) jump into the air several times, crashing back into the water with huge splashes. It was around five feet long and it was gone.

Fishing on Yohelah isn’t really a sport. We use hand lines tied to the back of the boat. Each is made from eighty feet of tuna line with several hundred pound breaking strength and monofilament between the tuna line and lure. The monofilament gets the lure away from the more visible tuna line and increases the chances of a strike. A bungee on the boat end allows some give and helps set the hook during a strike. The bungee also tells us when we have a fish on the line. There is no playing the fish with this arrangement, you end up with a line in your hand and a fish on the other end. If the fish is big enough to yank you into the water then it’s sport, otherwise the fish is dinner. Unless of course it manages to break the leader or slip the hook before we haul it onboard.

So back to the fish story. Hearing the noise on deck, Teresa pops into the campanionway to see what’s going on. As I explain the huge dorado that just got away she yells that we have a fish on the other line. Sure enough the other hand line is running out at a forty five degree angle, a sure sign of a medium to large game fish. We haul it in and discover another large dorado. I’m relieved it’s not as large as the first, remember we don’t play the fish so they’re pretty energetic when alongside. The last time we had a dorado in this situation we netted it and discovered our lovely little gatita, Maya, had assisted the fish’s escape by previously chewing the net. This time I brought the gaff and hauled the fish onboard. Dinner. And lunch. And another dinner. And another. We’ll be eating Dorado for the next week.

Maya kitty didn’t know what to make of the yellow tail tuna we caught in Panama and didn’t show a lot of interest. She’s always turned her nose up at bonita’s with their dark red meat, as do we as this quickly became a ‘catch and release’ fish for us. When we caught a Spanish Mackerel she was beside herself, pestering me for pieces as I cleaned it, chewing on the tail if I was too slow. With the Dorado she could smell it, wanted it, but couldn’t bring herself to approach a bright yellow fish that big. I wish we’d had the video camera rolling as she made several aborted attempts leaving the protection of the cockpit, each time getting closer and closer before self- preservation overrode her tummy and she ran back to the cockpit. She eventually made it to the fish and helped me clean it, eating a pound or two along the way. Maya definitely prefers white fish over darker meat. Maybe now she has a reason to leave the fishing net intact.

Today on Yohelah we’re happy the bigger one got away….

Here we are this morning back in Costa Rica, but this time in the southern part of the country in the little town of Golfito. We had an overnight passage from Western Panama that was not quite boisterous, but certainly rolled us around in 20 knots of wind with just the reefed main up. Once we rounded the corner around the peninsula into Costa Rica the wind died and we motored slowly the last 6 hours to arrive at the entrance this morning after daylight.

After we left Bahia Honda we spent 4 days at the Islas Secas in Western Panama. The plan was to spend 2 days there and then move up to Boca Chica for our birthdays, but when we got to the islands and saw the 80′ visibility in 82 degree water we knew we would just have to miss Boca Chica. We dove 3 days in a row and snorkeled the 4th day. The diving was the best we had seen in all of the west coast and definitely whetted our appetite for Isla Cocos next month.

We spent the night before we left with Buzz & Maureen of Encore, who we first met in Huatulco last spring. They had done a 9 year circumnavigation in the 70’s and 80’s, returned to San Diego and worked 20 years, and were on their encore voyage. As often is the case, it was hard to say goodbye.

But yesterday we actually got lucky and some big winds were coming in to Western Panama, so instead of flat calm and motoring we had a nice breeze behind us yesterday to get us out of Panama. Today we’ll get checked in to Costa Rica and empty the boat of trash and do some laundry. We’re only here for a few days and don’t have much on our agenda except for helping Rob’s book stash for the South Pacific passage. The cruiser spot we’re at reportedly has the best book exchange on the west coast and Rob’s got about 40 read books he’s hoping to trade in.

Next we’ll head for the Gulf of Papagayo in Northern Costa Rica. It’s been blowing 40 knots there for the last couple of days and is forecast to continue at 35 knots for the next 3 days. We need to find a window to sneak in while the wind isn’t howling so we can see T2. We would like to see a few bays near here in southern Costa Rica, but if a window opens up we’ll haul butt (relatively speaking, of course) north. I’ve been watching the forecast for Papagayo for 3 months and it’s only been below 25 knots for 2 days. We’ll see how this goes.

Teresa

Golfito is here