Beating to the Galapagos

We came out of the ITCZ about 5am this morning. It was nice to leave the rain, lightning and high humidity behind. Or at least I hope it's behind. As I write this evening, lightning is flickering in the sky to the north.

Today was really delightful sailing though not very productive. The wind is coming from the Galapagos, as is an adverse current. So we're sailing hard on the wind in 5-10kts of true wind into about half a knot of current. In the last 12 hours we traveled 62 miles and got a nice rest. Fay served up a great mid-day dinner of spaghettini and meat balls, with freshly grated parmesan and some ciabatta that I made a couple of weeks ago that has been in the freezer. Mid-day dinner while sailing along on a sparkling sunny day with smooth seas and 7kts of breeze. That's about as pleasant as sailing hard on the wind at sea can be. As Fay wrote in the log - sublime.

But in the last 12 hrs we only made 38 miles towards the Galapagos which is a little too slow. The breeze has pickup to a steady 8-10 and faired us a bit so we're only about 10 degrees off course and we should do better in the next 12 hrs.

Tonight it's almost cool. I still have just a t-shirt and shorts, but Fay had long pants and a hoody before she went off watch. There is an almost full sky of stars and as we've reached 3 degrees south, the north star is no longer visible. Fay has made preparations for crossing the equator with suitable props, costume and script for King Neptune! But first we need to sail another few hundred miles.

ITCZ comes to us

We departed the Las Perlas islands yesterday morning around 7:30am and began our passage to the Galapagos.

We've been watching the daily NOAA surface analysis weather faxes to try to avoid the ITCZ. It had spent a lot of time further west and north which convinced us to not stop at Isla Coco. Instead we plotted a course recommended by Jimmy Cornell that went south early, then turned west later on. This looked promising since the ITCZ jumped around a lot, but getting south and staying east would improve the chances of making an end run around the ITCZ.

Well the ITCZ came to us anyway! The surface analysis about three hours after our departure showed it had moved right onto our course! We had about 4-5 hours of smooth, light air sailing, then the wind died and we had to start motoring. Last night was all lightning and confusing winds. We were able to sail for 3-4 hours this morning, though about 30 degrees off our course. Then we came into a very large area of rain from which we could not escape. Heavy at times, very confused seas, but no lightning. At one point a ship crossed about 2nm behind us and we never saw it, visibility was really poor. AIS is really fantastic. I think the south then west course did help us with the ITCZ, even though we were hoping to not pass through it at all.

We finally escaped the rain about 5pm this afternoon, but the wind was 3-4kts on the nose and the seas very confused and sloppy, so we're motoring. Ten minutes ago we had 6kts on our starboard bow and I was considering sailing, now we have 4kts on our port bow and the bumpiness has jumped significantly. It would be nice to get the seas straightened out a bit and even just 7-8kts of reliable wind so we could sail. But in this area we know we can count on the conditions changing frequently, so we'll wait and see what we get next.

The ocean has a lot more phosphorescence tonight. Our bow wave and our wake are dazzling. And again tonight we've been visited by white birds. There was just one last night, but there are three tonight. They dart back and forth, mostly along the starboard side of the boat in a sort of ghostly illumination from the starboard running light. I think they're grabbing small fish turned up by our bow wake as they occasionally swoop down onto the water for a few moments. They're white shapes really stand out in what is otherwise a very dark night.

Some cloud cover has returned, masking the few stars I could see earlier. And the seas have gotten lumpy again after a teasing period of smoothing out. But the radar is entirely blank (no rain squalls - no ships - no fishing boats) and there is no lightning. We should turn to the west early tomorrow morning. Time for the 8pm log entry and another attempt to reach the Pacific Puddle Jump net controller on the radio.

Las Perlas - not so cool

For the last three days the water temperature has been rising, all the way from 69F to 80F! Now the turquoise water has returned, the air temperature has also risen, and the first half of today was uncomfortably humid at about 76%. I can only guess that the Humboldt current that travels from the Southern Ocean to the equator up the west coast of South America must meander in and out of the Gulf of Panama and during our first four days here the current was "in".

Fay also had strep throat for the last five days so we've been moving a little slowly. She's now feeling much better and we're planning to depart for the Galapagos tomorrow morning. The forecasted winds, when there is any wind in the forecast, are all over the place. Our "plan for the worst, hope for the best" is that we're prepared to motor the entire 900 miles, but we're hoping we'll be able to do some sailing. I even optimistically positioned the spinnaker at the top of the pile in the bow locker and led the sheets.

We'll post regular position updates on the web site.

Quote of the day: There's no time like the present to dip into the future.

Las Perlas - Cool

Today we departed the marina at dawn, about 6:30am to be precise. Light air forced us to motor all day to this anchorage off Isla Canas in the Las Perlas islands (see "Where's New Morning).

It's cool here, the water is just 70F, compared to the 84F in Panama City. It's a very refreshing break from the intense heat of the marina and the city. We're guessing it's the Humboldt current curling up from the south. Whatever it is, the water looks more like Monterey than the Caribbean; it's thick with something (krill? plankton?). And the rich water probably explains the dozen whales we saw this morning and large pod of dolphins we saw this afternoon. And don't forget the hundreds of seabirds who all seem to be feasting. But it's not quite as inviting to dive in for a swim, especially with the numerous jellyfish we saw as we were anchoring. It could be a full 3mm wet suit to get us into the water tomorrow.

And anchoring is sort of like Maine with a 20' tide to calculate into the equation. We anchored in 35' of water, knowing we'd lose 18' during the night! We set enough scope for high tide and at low tide we'll have a long leash.

New Morning had no problems today, so our months of work seems to have put a number of things right that have plagued us for the last two and a half years. We're feeling much more confident.

We're going to rest here for a few days, re-pack a couple of lockers and shift our focus to life under sail rather than life at anchor.

Departure Tuesday?

Yesterday we topped up the fuel tanks, gave New Morning a wash down, packed away more stuff, washed some clothes, etc., etc. After we take care of a few last minute items tomorrow, including final provisioning for produce, we plan to depart on Tuesday.

After three weeks on the dock we are looking forward to getting back on the water. We're heading to the Las Perlas Islands, about 50 miles from Panama City. We'll spend a few days there making sure everything is working as expected, then depart for the Galapagos. If the weather and ITCZ cooperate, we plan to route via Isla del Coco to the north, otherwise it's a little more southerly at first, then turning west.

More San Blas pictures

I added Fay's pictures from our second trip to the San Blas Islands, with a heavy emphasis on the time we spent outside the village of Gerti.

Canal transit pictures

I've uploaded the pictures from our transit of the Panama Canal for your viewing pleasure. Enjoy!

Canal transit video

This sequence of pictures from the canal web cam were captured by our friend Lou Dietz who cruised from California to New Zealand a few years back with his wife and two children.

If you watch in the top right corner, you'll see a white ship appear and enter the first lock. Behind the white ship is a tug, and behind the tug is New Morning, rafted to a Beneteau 54. New Morning is on the right in the pictures. About half way through the sequence you can see us enter the second lock behind the tug and ship, and then in the last few seconds you can see us follow them into the third lock.

If you have trouble viewing it, try this link to YouTube, be sure to select 720HD.

Tsunami safe

We got several calls and emails from people concerned about our safety. The Tsunami was supposed to hit Panama about 9pm last night, but the propagation models suggested only 6" of surge so we went out to dinner. There were no problems here.

But northern Japan looks devastated. At roughly 100x the amount of power that was in the 1989 Loma Prieta quake in California I can't imagine how much damage and movement occurred. One article I read said the island of Honshu moved 8' east. We wish them the best of luck in coping with the disaster.

Two steps forward, one step back - and Carnival

We've been in the marina now for a full week and we would definitely like to leave. We have no internet access from the boat, it's about a 10 minute walk to either Bennigans or the Flamenco Marketplace where we can get WiFi. We are pretty much as far from land as you can get in this marina (check the satellite picture from the Where's New Morning page). And the marina has tons of surge at times which makes the docks heave up and down, jerks the boat all over (we've got lots of chafe gear out), and even makes it hard to just walk down the dock. We've made lots of progress on lots of projects, but it doesn't look like we're going to be departing this week.

Carnival started last Friday and goes through Wednesday. It doesn't quite shut down the country, but it emptied the marina of about half the boats and there is definitely less traffic. Even the ATM is out of cash. In Panama apparently most people go to the countryside where various smaller towns specialize in Carnival parties so the traffic leaving the city last Thursday and Friday was pretty crazy from all reports. But now the streets are strangely unclogged, but of course most stores are also closed!

We've been working on remedial maintenance projects (autopilot, voltage regulator), scheduled and routine maintenance (fuel filters, engine bolt checks, covering up sharp points on the foredeck to protect the spinnaker, etc.), and just general departure stuff like checking to see if the running lights are working (they are!). I'm stocking up on more oil for the engine and various consumables and spares (can't have too many spares!). We spent most of a day going through the boat to make room for four months of food. Fay has spent days figuring out what to purchase and returned from her first trip to the market today (not crowded) with at least 200lbs of food and beverages which we're now trying to stow. She tells me she has at least two more trips to make.

Last week we finally received some hydraulic fittings that we needed for the autopilot and Andy, our mechanic, came by today to put it all together. Everything went very well until we started bleeding the system of air. The procedure calls for turning the wheel against the force of the autopilot to force it to pump more and it was doing a good job of bleeding the air out of the system when BANG! the steering broke. Actually the chain on the starboard wheel broke. Needless to say it should not break, but if it's going to break, then breaking in the slip is much preferred to breaking during rough weather. So it looks like the autopilot is working, but now we can't steer by hand. Back to the cycle of figuring out what parts we need, where we can purchase (Panama?) and how soon we can take delivery.

We're sort of like vampires now, we come out when the sun goes down and things cool off. We're up way before sunrise and finish our projects on deck within 30 minutes of feeling the morning's first rays. It's just too hot on deck during the day to do much. Fortunately the air conditioning in the forward cabin is working well so we can always duck in there to cool off, or write a little email. And now the sun has dipped down, it's cooling off, the breeze is gentle, and it's time for a margarita!

Welcome to the Pacific

Here you can see the lock doors opening to allow us to pass into the final lock of our transit, it all went very smoothly. Our advisor, Jose, was excellent and our line handlers did a great job. We were rafted with a Beneteau 54 and we were the "command" boat which meant we drove the raft while the other boat just left their engine in neutral and wheel centered.

Through the Gatun locks we had a medium sized ship (450'), a tug, and then our two-yacht raft in the chamber. There is a fair amount of turbulence as the chamber fills, then more as the ship, then the tug, moved forward, but our handlers were smart and we stayed in great position, never coming near the walls.

We spent a nice night on Gatun Lake, hoping that fresh water would kill off the marine growth on our bottom. Fay fixed a great dinner and we had a lively conversation on world politics with our pro line handler, Rudy. Rudy knows his history and politics pretty well, and he has six children, a dozen grandchildren, 6 great grandchildren, and his father is 94 and still alive! A fascinating family!

We were awakened about 5:30am by the howler monkeys and then the construction crews working on the new locks. Our second advisor joined us about 7:00am for Fay's quiche and then we slowly motored to the Pedro Miguel lock. The advisor allowed us to take the "Banana Cut" which is a little more scenic, shortens the trip a bit (irrelevant because we did most of the trip at 4kts) and kept us out of the main channel and big ships for awhile.

For the Pedro Miguel and Miraflores locks we had two rafts of yachts, a tourist boat (which allegedly was formally owned by Al Capone) and a medium sized work boat (150'). Plenty of room in the 1,000' lock. All went smoothly and we popped out into the Pacific Ocean about 2:30pm.

We're now in the Flamenco Marina in Panama City, compiling our final list of items to be completed before we head to the Galapagos. The marina has lots of surge, 13' tides, no internet access from the boat, and jack hammers powered by a portable generator tearing up the concrete about 100' from where I sit outside at a cafe. We have many incentives to get moving!

And now a little later

Cristobal Signal, the radio operator for the canal, just advised us that we pick up our pilot at 1545, that's 3:45pm Eastern time. I estimate that means we enter the first lock around 4:30.

Canal update

Mark and Kimberly came by last evening and we had a chance to get to know them better. They are quite accomplished sailors! They are transiting the canal in about two weeks and on their way to San Diego they will cross their outbound track and complete a circumnavigation. And for Mark it will be his second circumnavigation! So we're really pleased to have such experienced sailors with us for our canal transit.

Late breaking news: Our transit time has been moved up to 3pm (Eastern time). We'll be out of the slip around 2pm, pick up our advisor by 2:30 and theoretically be entering the first lock about 3pm. Gotta go!

Dolphins

Unloading the camera this morning I discovered these pictures of dolphins. We have been somewhat disappointed by the lack of dophins and whales we've seen the Caribbean, so this was a pleasant surprise. We were returning from San Blas, somewhere between Porvenir and Linton, when we spotted several groups of dolphins. This pair broke away and played tag with our bow for about ten minutes, then returned a little later for another round.

We' ve had the same experience in California, but the dolphins usually had a number of scars on their backs. These dolphins were absolutely pristine; just perfectly beautiful.

Now back to our regularly scheduled programming of the Panama canal transit.

Canal time

Tomorrow is the big day, we transit the Panama Canal!

The process goes like this.  We are currently in Shelter Bay, on the Caribbean side of Panama.  We motor to the "flats", near the east side of the entrance to the Gatun locks.  We wait there, dong some lazy circles, until our canal advisor arrives.  If we were a ship, we would get a pilot, but since we're only a little boat, we have an "advisor".  In any case, the advisor tells us what to do throughout the transit.

Once the advisor is onboard we head to the first lock.  We don't yet know who else will be in the lock with us.  We could be alone (not likely), with two other yachts behind a big ship (more likely), rafted to a tug, not known yet.  We should find out tomorrow morning.

Once in the locks our line handlers, Kimberly (San Diego), Mark (New Zealand), Rudy (rent-a-linehandler), and Fay, catch a "monkey's fist" from the line handlers on shore, wrap it around our lines, and then our line gets dragged back to the line handlers on shore.  The purpose of the lines is to hold us in the middle of the lock and it's a very important job.  We don't want to hit the very rough sides of the locks (built in 1914).

The three Gatun locks each lift us about 20'.  So they fill the lock with water, flowing downhill from the lock above, and ultimately from Gatun Lake.  The lock is about 1,000' x 150', so something like 22 million gallons of water flow into the lock which creates a lot of turbulence.  Once we've been lifted 20', the ship in front of us (there will likely be a big ship in front of us), slowly moves forward under its own power, while electric "mules" keep it in the center of the lock and stop it from hitting the next door at the end of the next lock.  Repeat this for three locks.

When we come out of the last lock, we motor about 1/4 mile to a very large mooring buoy where we tie up for the night.  The advisor goes home and we have dinner.

The advisor returns the next morning about 6am and we motor slowly across Gatun Lake, roughly 30miles to the Miraflores locks.  It's a similar process, but much less traumatic because the water is draining out of the lock, rather than filling the lock.  The water just basically drains out the bottom, while our line handlers ease our lines to keep us centered, and we are lowered 20' each time.  That's it, we're in the Pacific Ocean!

Somewhere in there the advisor gets off and then we motor to the Flamenco Marina where we'll do our preparations for the trip to the Galapagos and French Polynesia.  We expect to depart in mid-March.

There is a webcam for the Gatun locks at: http://www.pancanal.com/eng/photo/camera-java.html

Pick the Gatun Locks high res and then select the magnifier to zoom in.

Third time is the charm

Or so I hope.

The last ten days has been a crush of work to prepare New Morning for the Pacific crossing. We replaced portions of the engine charging system, most of the solar panels, some tank sensors and an assortment of regular maintenance (fuel filters, belts, etc.).

I'm now on the 3rd generation of day tank level sensors. The first round, the NMEA 2000 sensors from Offshore Systems just didn't work. Oddly they seem to still be sort of working in the other fuel tanks, but the water tank sensor died entirely and the day tank fuel sensor was never accurate.

The second generation was a brief, but a full try with the Maretron TLM sensors (ultrasonic). But even with a "focus tube", foam apparently defeats the Maretron sensors. Since diesel fuel foams up when pumped, and even to some degree when sloshed around, these sensors can't work for fuel (though they are working for the water tank).

Third time I went with the tried and proven "magnet on a stick", also known as a resistive sensor. It is quite literally a stainless steel rod with a magnet that floats up and down with the fluids. WEMA makes a nice one. I married it to a Maretron TLA100, tank level adapter, that turns the resistive reading of the WEMA sensor into something that can be distributed on the NMEA 2000 bus and used by the Offshore Systems transfer pump controller.

So far so good, the sensor has been quite stable in its reading. It still needs some calibration. And after we reach the Pacific I'll transfer some fuel and give it the foam test. But I'm really pulling for this third solution!

Yesterday Fay recruited two great line handlers for our canal transit on Sunday. But more on that later today!

Pacific Puddle Jump

Latitude 38 followed up the PPJ party by posting our picture in their online version. See it at Lectronic Latitude and scroll down little bit.

Fay in Harken

Fay always dreamed of being a model, but I don't think the dream included sailboat hardware catalogs. None the less, there she is, at the helm of New Morning, promoting Harken's headsail furling system. Well maybe she's overshadowed by New Morning, but hey, I'm nowhere to be seen!

We're not sure how this picture got into the catalog, we probably benefited from Billy Black's marketing efforts. Billy's picture looks great and New Morning looks nice going to weather in light air. See the larger picture In The News.

Catch up

Wow, time flies when you're having fun. So far behind on the blog.

Picking up where I left off, we spent another week or so in the San Blas Islands. A few more days in the Robesons with a cocktail / dinner party on each boat the next three nights after the floating cocktail party. We were all procrastinating moving on because the wind was a fairly steady 15-20, gusting higher, and anywhere you go from the Robesons is upwind and into significant swell. We took a great river trip in the dinghies, winding up a small river into the jungle and even visited a Kuna cemetery. The birds and monkeys along the river were pretty interesting as we moved through the very quiet water with a heavy jungle canopy above us. Definitely the highlight of the stay in the Robesons. But after another three nights of partying and too much fun with Kookla and Blow Me Away, it was time to go, wind and swells or not.

Our plan was to check out, spend a night at Chichime, then move on to Linton and Portobello. But there wasn't much cooperation on that plan. First, when we attempted to checkout on Saturday morning we were informed the port captain was gone for the weekend. They're supposed to be open 7 days / week, but…

So we moved to Chichime and figured we'd check out on Monday morning and shorten our stay in Portobello. But on Monday morning our voltage regulator, which had been barely limping along for the last month, only charging at full blast (i.e., no regulation), died entirely (the two other spares had failed in short order a month before). That led to five hours of fiddling with the alternator wiring, taking measurements and talking with Electrodyne who made our alternators. Finally, after five hours, they concluded that they had given me incorrect information for the last three weeks regarding how to "full field" the alternator. I made a simple change to the wiring and we had power immediately. I was the regulator for the rest of the trip, sticking my head into the 120F engine room to change the wiring as needed when the battery voltage got too high. So that was Monday.

We finally got away on Tuesday, but since we were due in Shelter Bay on Wednesday we had to skip our stop in Portobello. With only 3-4 knots of wind from well aft we had to motor the entire way to Linton. We made a stop for a sleepless night rolling around in Linton, then moved on to Shelter Bay and tied up on Wednesday afternoon. Thursday we met with a service person from Lyman Morse, then Andy - our excellent mechanic working on the autopilot, and finally Ramone who is helping with the solar panel replacement. It was a busy day.

Friday morning was up and off to Panama City (or just Panama as it is known locally) with Brad and Gloria from Kindred Spirit. We spent a few hours running errands around Panama, then checked into the Decapolis and enjoyed air conditioning and a nice dinner. With a good internet connection we each downloaded about a thousand email messages (no exaggeration) and spent a little time on the web.

Saturday was the Pacific Puddle Jump seminar at the Balboa Yacht Club. The presentation was a little light on hard content, in part because much of the material had been emailed out earlier, though we had not received it because we were not registered on the correct list. None the less there were free cocktails and an opportunity to meet a number of people on other boats who will be making the crossing to French Polynesia in the same general time frame, and at least one boat that will be stored in October in the same marina where we plan to store New Morning. All mixed in with the usual telling of cruising tales, discussion of the inability to obtain badly needed repair parts and cruising plans.

Sunday was spent mostly on the internet catching up on a wide range of tasks. Then on Monday Fay flew to San Diego and I returned to Shelter Bay. I'll continue to develop my boat mechanic skills this week while Fay shops for more parts in San Diego and catches up with family.

We're scheduled to transit the canal on the 27th!

Leftovers

Lobster again? There was lobster with butter and artisan bread. Then there was lobster risotto with a cucumber salad. Then there was leftover lobster risotto after the floating cocktail party.

What, you ask, is a floating cocktail party? Not the floating cocktail party as in moving from bar to bar, this was literally a floating cocktail party. I'm not sure who thought this up, but the idea is that rather than someone hosting cocktails on their boat, we just meet up in our dinghy's. At the appointed hour, about 5:15, we lashed up four dinghy's and let the wind blow them across the water; roughly in the direction of Columbia. There was rum and coke, beer, peanuts, cashews, lobster/artichoke dip, olives and all in all a pretty amazing set of snacks for a raft of dinghies! Floating and drifting as the rum and beer flowed, the laughs cascaded across the water and the big boats became smaller and smaller.

Eventually the sun set and New Morning was disappearing in the distance. Just the twinkle of Cosmos' anchor light as our guide (not the Cosmos, but Cosmos, the skipper of Kookla). We had our trusty 2hp outboard; Aaron had a 30hp outboard. Aaron towed us back to New Morning at an exhilarating speed while I wondered about the strength of our painter and the carabiner that attached us to the back of Aaron's dinghy; thinking that if it failed it would come flying our direction at a pretty spectacular rate. But it held and we were soon back to New Morning. And a dinner of more leftover lobster.