Having sat around in the rain for too many days in the immediate past, I was itching to do some nice spinnaker sailing. Rob’s thoughts (very valid thoughts I might add) were that if we put up the chute it’ll rain and then we’ll have 1200 square feet of wet sail inside along with everything else that’s still wet. I pondered that thought for about 3 minutes, then pulled the sail out of the aft cabin and rigged it up. Just as the sock that contains the sail rose to the top and the chute filled, the rain started (already knew that, didn’t you?).

Yup, he was right again. Fortunately I waited out the rain and the sun came out eventually and we had an awesome day sailing north in perfect conditions. Then as we rounded the north end of the Perlas and set a lay line for our anchorage the clouds started to threaten again. I knew I had about 10 minutes to decide whether there would be wet sail or dry sail in the boat, but it was just too good to put away and I opted for wet sail, hoping it would dry a second time.

That, of course, was not meant to be. After the rain started the wind completely died. So we socked the chute, motored into the anchorage, and put 1200 square feet of wet chute in the aft cabin.

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So if the timing works out we’ll come back to the river and meet up with Nakia and Sarana in a week or so and hope there’s some sun then. But for now we’re heading north to the Pearl Islands (Las Perlas). It’s really bouncy out, with a southwest swell on our beam and some westerly and even northwesterly swell mixed in occasionally. The wind doesn’t know what it wants to do, even though all the forecasts said we’d have a nice southerly pushing us along today. Primarily it’s been about 5 knots on our nose.

We’ve got a 5:00 ETA into an anchorage on the south side of the Perlas. Tomorrow we’ll scoot up to the top of the island chain and meet up with Hello World and travel to Panama City with them when the weather finally settles. Axel asked if we wanted to race, and of course I say yes. How we’re going to come up with a handicap high enough to beat a Sunbeam 53 is going to take some pretty good imagination, but heck I’ll give it my best shot.

For now we’re just bouncing along north in Panama….

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We plan to leave tomorrow morning, rain or shine. I think our rain gear is almost dry from our passage north. We have friends in the Pearl Islands we can share the check-in process with in Panama City so we’re going to try and catch up with them and head into the city.

Teresa, Rob & Maya
Bahia Pinas, Panama

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“I was about to wake Rob this morning at 4:00 when I noticed a boat approaching astern. Our radar told me he was coming at about 11 knots directly towards us. By the time Rob took over they were close enough to make us nervous, so Rob started shining our spotlight on our sails to make sure they could see us. Then they turned their very bright spotlight directly on us. We’re a little nervous about this part of the coast but hoped that the good guys weren’t using boats properly equipped with running lights.

Sure enough they got close enough and hailed us on the radio and said they were Ecuadorean Coast Guard. Rob replied that he wasn’t familiar with an Ecuadorean Coast Guard (we know they have a Navy, though) and they started asking questions about who was onboard and where we came from and where we were going. Finally they wanted to know our zarpe number and the name of the Port Captain in Bahia de Caraquez that had signed the zarpe, and when we gave them that information they turned off the spotlight, said thanks very much and headed back towards shore.

Today we were buzzed by a US Coast Guard C130 who did a low pass and just had a look. Seems to be a very busy place, this Columbian coastline! We’re still on track for an early Wednesday morning arrival in Bahia Pinas. Likely we’ll have to shorten sail Tuesday night and slow down so we arrive during daylight.”

So now it’s Thanksgiving Day, and as planned we made it into Bahia Pinas yesterday morning. It was a beautiful downwind sail the whole way from Ecuador, where we set the main out on starboard and the jib on a pole on port and never had to touch anything again. Then, sadly, we approached the ITCZ and the wind died. Then the rain started. And it hasn’t stopped. We’re sitting under a low pressure system that hopefully will clear up soon and allow us to explore beautiful eastern Panama a bit.

For Thanksgiving we’re using our good cruiser skills and improvising with what we’ve got. No turkey - no problem have chicken. Can’t grill in the rain - ok we’ll pressure fry it. No stuffing - well we have potatoes for potato salad. Now it’s starting to sound more like the 4th of July than Thanksgiving. Except that very special can of pumpkin I have been saving in my food locker. Do I really know how to make a pie crust - well no not really. And we don’t have shortening, but Joy of Cooking saves the day with a recipe that uses cooking oil. Do I have evaporated milk for the pie - well no but hopefully we can mix up some milk, UHT cream and powdered milk and make something similar. I still have to follow a recipe to cook but am finally learning to improvise when necessary!

I hope this blog posting finds you all having a wonderful Thanksgiving with family and friends wherever you may be.

Teresa, Rob & Maya
Bahia Pinas, Panama

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I mentioned in my broadcast email this morning that there was a little political battle here. We’re not sure it’ll not just coincidence, but here are the circumstances - see if you come to the same conclusion.

First, some good friends of our were anchored in a bay in Northern Ecuador that’s a very dangerous area and were attacked onboard at night. Thankfully due to the quick thinking and actions of one couple the others who were boarded weren’t physically hurt, just a minor robbery occurred.

Second, the US Government jumps on the piracy bandwagon and issues an alert to warn people to avoid the coast of Ecuador. Unfortunately the pirates are in Somalia, not Ecuador. This was a robbery of convenience when two expensive boats were anchored in a bay where the people never see yachts and are very very poor.

Third, the Ecuadorean Government suddenly defines new rules for foreign vessels departing Ecuador, effective immediately, which happens to be 2 days after the US’s piracy alert. Unfortunately it’ll take a week or so to put all the pieces together in the area where we were anchored because it’s not a commercial port but the Navy is treating private boats like commercial vessels again.

So we got out because we already had our zarpe processed, the port captain was kind about it, and the owner of Puerto Amistad busted his hump to help put the pieces together for us as quickly as he could.

Now we’re screaming up the coast. We’ll pass the area where the attack occurred 20 miles offshore in about an hour. I’m positive there’ll be no problems for us.

That’s all for now.

Teresa

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We have a bottle of champagne chilling in the fridge right now for our equatorial crossing, which should be around 6:00 tonite. Our friends at the Puget Sound Cruising Club gave us the bottle as a gift when Rob gave his talk on underwater photography a few years ago, and it’s been in the locker waiting for today ever since. Somehow we just imagined our crossing to be this idyllic and peaceful moment, not a complete pounding!

But we’ll get through today just fine and are looking forward to enjoying some time in Bahia de Caraquez. Last picture I saw there were 33 boats in there, so we’ll have plenty of folks to visit with. We’re going to get some serious chores done on the boat too. And of course we can’t wait to meet Brittney in Peru in September for some travels.

That’s probably all for this intransit log. There’s wi-fi at the club where we’ll be anchored, so I’ll get the regular logs updated soon. When we leave here in November I’ll post again to this log while we make another passage back through the ITCZ to Panama. Then in February when we leave Costa Rica for the Galapagos and the South Pacific I’ll be posting here alot.

That’s all for now.

Teresa

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Another uneventful day sailing south. On the early watch yesterday evening we ran into another squall. Since we’re out of the ITCZ now they are much less intense than before, but still something to watch out for. The one last night seemed to have a mind of it’s own. The rain showed up on radar as a band 6 miles long but only 1 mile wide. Since we were approaching the narrowest area I figured we’d sail right through in 20 minutes or so. An hour and a half later we were still in the middle of it. While it seemed to be moving with us against the wind I suspect the rain was merely spreading in our direction. Hard to tell at night, we can see rain but not clouds on the radar. Anyway, I managed to get us out of the rain before waking Teresa for her watch, lest anyone think she’s the only one driving the boat in the rain.

The rest of the night it was a bit windy and since we left the jib up all night we made better time than our normal night at the cost of sleep. It’s hard to sleep down below when the boat is pounding into the waves at 5-6 knots. After pushing hard all day yesterday and into the night we are past fuel worries, we have enough left to motor the rest of the way if necessary.

It’s been a beautiful day today, our first sun since last Wednesday. We’ve had 10-15 knots of wind out of the south and we’ve been sailing under reefed main and reefed jib most of the day. Wouldn’t mind seeing a 30 degree wind shift to the West, but we can live with what we have, especially since two of the three weather forecasts expected no wind today.

With 140 miles left and a planned arrival on Tuesday morning we should make it in easily for high tide.

Rob

PS: We currently have 99.9 miles to our crossing of the equator. Teresa

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Right now we’ve got 240 miles to go and are chugging along at about 4 knots. We figure we’ll make landfall Tuesday morning. High tide is at 7:56 am, so we need to be there and ready for our bar crossing or else we’ll have to anchor out overnight until Wednesday, which would be very sad after all this traveling.

Nothing new to report onboard. Rob and Maya are outside and Maya is playing with her toys in the cockpit well. She’s just never been bothered by passages and we’re extremely thankful for that.

Teresa

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So late in the afternoon I was on watch and an enormous squall was in front of us right in our path, of course. And I was just tired of driving around the darn things for miles and miles. The worst wind we’d seen in them was 20 knots of wind, and there was no wind at the time at all. So I adopted the “take your medicine like an man” plan and decided to take the shortest path right through the middle. Well you have to know where this is going. God immediately decided it was time to get out the humility stick and give me a big ‘ole whack.

So into the middle we head and the wind starts building and keeps building. Suddenly we’ve got 30 knots on our nose and it’s still building and I know there’s no way we’re going right through the middle. We’ve got a reefed main up, so I turn down as far as I can without gybing the main and decide I better run with it for a bit. About this time the skies completely open up and it starts pouring. Rob is up from his nap but we decide he should just stay inside and not get wet since I’m already soaked (is there a pattern here?). Also about the same time I get hit up alongside the head (literally) with a huge wave. But running with it is not getting us out of it because we’re now just traveling in the same direction as it is. I really need to head up and work my way out. As luck would have it, it was raining so hard the seas were totally flattened out. That was amazing to see.

So after about 20 minutes more we finally scooted out the south end of it. And there was the wind we had been waiting all day for. It must have been just getting sucked into this massive squall and up over the top of us.

We set the staysail since it was getting late and we like to sail really slow and conservatively at night. And it was gorgeous last night sailing along. It was blowing 18ish, so the staysail and a reefed main were perfect. This morning when I came on watch at 5 the wind slowed down and the staysail wasn’t powerful enough to keep momentum in the big seas that had built up. So now we’ve got a double reefed jib and a reefed main and the windvane is driving us like a champ.

We’re still 3 or 4 more days from landfall, but the boat’s moving along beautifully and we’re not worrying any more about running out of fuel on the way.

Teresa

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