Hello from the Galapagos Islands

It took a full seven days (and 1.5 hours) to make it from Panama City to Isla San Cristobal in the Galapagos Islands. Overall it was a good passage with extremely light winds - but still good enough to sail 67% of the time. We could not have motored the entire distance so we absolutely had to find some wind some time somewhere. And we did, so all ended well.

On, this our first real open water passage, we stayed amazingly busy and never felt bored. We adopted a modified cruising watch schedule that we learned of from friends on "Shilling of Hamble". Mike does the watch from 7pm to 1am and Mary does the watch from 1am to 7am. We both get enough sleep (you learn to fall asleep immediately) and then only need a small nap sometime during the day. During the remainder of the day, we sort of alternate looking around at the big blue ocean. After crossing the shipping channel in Panama (which took about 3 hours) we saw no one else except a couple of days later we saw two more ships heading for Panama and one heading for points north most likely coming from South America. One whale surfaced about 50 feet from the boat for about 15 seconds and that was it for sealife.

The Galapagos are on the end of the Cocos ridge which runs all the way to Costa Rica and of course the famous Cocos Islands (home of the movie Jurasic Park). At the end of the ridge is a "hot spot" that remains stationary and slowly builds new islands with volcanic outbursts. San Cristobal is on the eastern side of the island chain and is therefore one of the oldest islands. That means it has had about a couple of million years to erode, form grasses and shrubs, etc. So it took us by surprise at how green it was as were expecting all the islands to be desert islands. While it is not tropically lush (like Tahiti, etc) it is green, does have a fresh water lake (in an imploded volcano) and supports a wide variety of wildlife.

The sleepy town here at the harbor is quite nice and the people friendly. It seems they actually like sailors and view them in a different light than the bigger groups of tourists and backpackers that find their way here. So, that has been a pleasant surprise.

There are sea lions everywhere. They are part of the ecosystem and everyone treats them that way. They are on the same beaches with everyone. Children play around them, and they in turn play around the children. It is amazing. We went to Lobos Island, a sea lion rookery, and swam with about a dozen sea lions. One tried to nibble on Mary's fins and one tried to take her camera. They were literally inches away sometimes; making for emotions from slightly scarred to incredibly happy.

Then we saw a Galapagos Tortoise preserve/farm where they have been breeding these giant creatures since 2002. They protect them from rats and cats until they are about 30 cm across and then they can fend for themselves. Over 100,000 were slaughtered in the years past and obviously the island population is now pretty small.

Finally we went to a beach by the airport and swam with sea turtles. We respected their environment and only got within a couple of feet but others we know actually grabbed onto them and took a ride underwater. They are big and graceful and look like they could just open their mouth and snap your hand right off. But they are very gentle actually. That same day, in the same bay, we were standing in the shallows and three baby sea lions came up and started playing around us. We gave them a stick and they took it from each other. One swam round and round Mike and took little play bites from his ankles. Mike moved fast as it wasn't fun to him.

That is it for fun and recreation. On the work side of life, the new feed pump to the watermaker seems to overheat at one hour of use, so we'll make water more often now, and the VHF decided to quit transmitting so Mike might have to re-wire it. For shear bureaucratic bizzarness (?) it will nice to get out of latin America. We've been told "all paperwork will be ready tomorrow at 9am"; only to just begin the paperwork at 10:30, then take the next four hours to move about town and pay for taxis so that our state-required agent could process other peoples paperwork along with ours. We were "done" with everything when we realized that did not have our Autographo. "Oh, that, well it will be ready tomorrow or the next day -trust me". It did come the next day and it allows us to visit two other islands. So, we'll let you know about the other two after they are done.

----------
radio email processed by SailMail
for information see: http://www.sailmail.com

Look mom no shadow!

Today we officially passed directly under the sun. The only shadow was straight down. We put out our hands and every shadow was straight down. It really works! We are at Latitude 03 10.24' North. Tomorrow we'll be further south and the sun will be further north. We will start casting shadows southerly for the first time in our lives.

It is funny how the little things seem so amazing now. Life is much simpler than in the old days back in the States. Of course so much stress is gone from the daily life of working and earning and paying bills and that makes a big difference but still - it is the little things that we notice most nowadays. Casting a new shadow; having to choose between practicing music or reading; etc.

We are in the ITCZ and about to move out of it - well unless it decides to move south and envelope us once again. We think we've moved through it twice now. Formerly known as the Doldrums, it is the Inter Tropical Convergence Zone where the north winds of the northern hemisphere meet the south winds of the southern hemisphere meet. All goes quiet, storms brew - mostly thunder heads or squalls. We motored between two enormous ones two nights ago; it was an eerie feeling - knowing that we could be hit with super gusts, heavy rain, etc enough to rip sails and everything off the boat if we were unlucky. We weren't and just got to look long and hard at potential disaster.

We did find our first squall ever on April 1st. We were just putting along when a dark cloud - nimbostratus - formed and came right for us in less than 15 minutes. It was not a thunderhead so we knew it was just rain but man was there lots of it. We went up on the foredeck and had our first "squall shower". More than enough fresh water, and warm water to boot. It was great.

We are now less than 400 nm to the Galapagos Islands. We've found rain, thunderheads, no wind, lots of wind, and strange currents in differing directions. In about four days we'll see the strange sites of the famous islands.

----------
radio email processed by SailMail
for information see: http://www.sailmail.com