VILISAR CHEATS DEATH AGAIN: SUCCESSFULLY COMPLETES 17-DAY OFFSHORE PASSAGE FROM ACAPULCO, MEXICO, CROSSES THE EQUATOR TO REACH SAN CRISTOBAL ISLAND IN THE GALAPAGOS ARCHIPELAGO
Isla San Cristobal, The Galapagos, Ecuador, Friday, April 21, 2006

Vilisar lies to her anchor in thirty feet of Wreck Bay’s crystal-clear water in the middle of a small flotilla of international, mainly European, cruising boats, as well as local fishing smacks. Our view over the bow is to the Galapagos Islands’ administrative capital and second-largest settlement, Baquerizo Moreno. Astern we look out to the stretch of sea to the northeast across which we arrived from Acapulco, Mexico. Sea lions dash and splash playfully all around us, and make occasional boarding attempts, one already successful. We (Kathleen, Andrew and Ronald) are weary after days and nights of continuous watchkeeping, after some occasionally worrisome moments. But we are safe and we are “here”.

Seventeen days earlier, after working all morning on 02 April 2006 to rig the vessel for an offshore passage (i.e. essentially changing her from a caravan to a seagoing vessel), after a brief row to shore in the morning for last-minute supplies and, as it turned out, an unexpected visit to the Capitania de Puerto (we had to make excuses why we had not reported in to him when we arrived), all of us keyed up, we finally haul in the anchor and motor northward and to windward out of Bahia de Marquez near Acapulco approximately mid-afternoon of 02 April. Rounding the point, we hoist our staysail and our BRD (Big Red Drifter), turn Vilisar on her new heading of 140º (mag.), and switch off the engine. The GPS reports coolly that we have 1,218 Nm to go to reach the GPS-waypoint off San Cristobal harbour. As we turn our backs on Acapulco and head now nearly southeast, the winds are brisk and we are making a breezy 4.5 knots with the Cap Horn windvane steering at the helm. The sun is hot. With the engine off now we enjoy the quiet. We start to relax.

We set two-hour watches and complete whatever storing and readying is still necessary both below (food, gear, sails, clothing, books, charts, etc.) and on deck (anchors and chains, fenders, dinghy spars, life jackets, GPS, compasses, etc.). We have promised ourselves to keep a fishing line out at all times. Three minutes after putting the lure into the water we have an 8-10-pound, silvery-striped Bonito flopping around on the bridge, the dark red blood from this tuna staining the bridge and running under the caprail. Everyone regards this as a terrific omen. It also obviates a discussion about what we were going to have for dinner.

The sun goes down in a golden glow and it is dark by 1930. Full of rice and fish à la Chinoise, we begin the trip with round-the-clock, two-hour watches beginning at 1800 that night. Our experience is that three-hours night watches are interminable, but two-hour gigs go by fairly quickly. With two-hour watches, you get four hours of good, deep sleep before you are roused again. At the beginning we are all out of sorts and “overnighted”. After a few days, however, we have settled into our new routine. The only change is when, somewhere along the way, we agree to start the watches on odd-hours since one crewman was getting three daylight watches (sunrise and sunset).

The nice afternoon wind is basically an onshore sea breeze. It lasts until roughly dark and then drops off. Sometime late at night a land breeze might pick up, and we might get a few knots of speed. But these alternating land-and-sea breezes are only felt along the coast, and are determined by the heating up of the land mass during the day and cooling off at night. Our SE route takes us at a slow tangent away from the Mexican coast, which runs here nearly east: we feel these winds for a few days and then no more. We are in the Horse Latitudes, famous for the lack of wind. Old sailing vessels started slaughtering the horses and other animals on board to conserve water. We are determined to sail as much of the route as possible and want to arrive in The Galapagos with full fuel tanks. We are patient and wait.

On Monday a booby lands on our bowsprit and hitches a ride for several days, leaving only once to forage, one assumes, and returns later. He refuses to share his perch with his fellow boobies, but he lets Andrew approach him to within touching distance. The bird shows no fear at all.


For two days we are also closely followed by a brown and white Pacific ray, whose wing span is easily three meters tip to tip. These wing-tips are frequently out of the water. His two eyes are out on stalks in advance of his head. From his stern he trails a long whip-like tail. His size and bizarre shape would make one anxious. But we know these large rays to be docile plankton-eaters. One theory aboard the Vilisar is that he has fallen in love with Vilisar. Another other theory is that the motion of the water flowing over the vessel’s hull is brushing off the thick layer of sea lice; the “Ray” is getting his dinner delivered. Attached to one of is wings is a foot-long fish of a pure and translucent white like a Chinese exotic goldfish, as well as a small brown fish attached farther back. I guess these are parasite fish, but we could not identify them from our books.

The ray tails us very closely. Once, to our surprise, he suddenly dashes off in a big flurry of seawater. Could it be that the tab of the windvane steering bopped him on his eye-snouts? He is soon back on station, however, though now he keeps a slightly greater distance. After two days he is gone.

When the wind is light, we run using only our red drifter, and on some rather windless days even put up the awning over the mainsail boom to give us protection in the cockpit from the tropical sunlight. Andrew is quite red after a few days, and we are all suffering from a loss of fluids and salts. We start taking daily doses of vitamins as well as electrolyte powders mixed into a Kool-Aid type drink. The electrolytes are composed of sodium, potassium, magnesium and calcium, and make all the difference of one’s ability to function in the intense heat. Without them, your concentration, your mental acuity and even your eye-hand coordination suffers. You become listless, grumpy, and unable even to tie simple and well-known knots.

Our 1,200-mile voyage takes us through four weather zones. The windless “Horse Latitudes” are at the beginning; we are frequently becalmed, and our daily average speed is only about 2 knots. Later we encounter either the NE Trade Winds or the funnelling effects of the local Gulf of Tehuantepec gales. These latter are caused by a high pressure over the Gulf of Mexico and a low pressure on the Mexican Pacific coast. The winds are intensified as they come through the Tehuantepec gap from east to west, blasting passing ships with sudden gale-force winds from the east. These winds can be felt several hundred miles out to sea so maybe that’s what we were feeling. For a few days, anyway, we are making fantastic time of over one hundred nautical miles a day. Then we hit the ITCZ, the Inter-tropical Convergence Zone (aka “The Doldrums”) where we encounter the first rain we have experienced since Ensenada (south of San Diego and our first stop in Mexico) in February of last year. The Doldrums, always on the north side of the Equator and moving north as the northern summer advances, are currently lying between roughly ??º N and ??º N. The skies are full of huge puffy clouds, most of them beautiful to see after so many months of clear and cloudless blue skies. but some of them are black at the bottom with a curtain of dark rain at the bottom and lightening flashes top and bottom. By steering around these localized “line squalls” with their associated lightening and thunder, we also avoid getting a solid fresh-water shower-bath. All we can manage is a little spit and polish. Exiting this band of unsettled, humid and squally weather, we encounter, unfortunately, southeasterly winds and they stay right on the nose for the rest of our voyage to the Galapagos except for a day or so of unpleasantly stormy weather two where the wind in fact backs around to the east and blows up a bit. The result is overcast skies, very lumpy seas and occasionally waves big enough to slop over the caprail and onto the side deck or across the bridge. Once, at least, a wave rose up to port one night, curled over towards the helmsman, and totally inundated the cockpit with sea water. The generously-sized scuppers cleared the water away in seconds, of course, but the remainder of the night watch had to be endured in wet clothing.

Waves and winds always seem much bigger at night. As our voyage progresses we have the benefit of a waxing moon and finally nights of full or nearly full moons. On the nights with full moons we can hardly see the stars or planets to steer by. But it is bright enough that we can read the compass by moonlight. When the moon is not in the sky we have the same friendly stars and planets in the same skies every night for sixteen nights: half right and half high ahead of us is the Southern Cross; half left and rather low in the sky behind us the Big Dipper and the Polar Star; half right behind us and nearly directly overhead Orion’s Belt. These constellations also play a role in one worrying situation that arose as we are well advanced along our rhumb line.

Andrew notices one day that the GPS-compass is not in conformity with the magnetic binnacle compass. They disagree by about 45º or 50º. Had we been heading for a continent we might not fret. But we are trying to hit scattered islands in the South Pacific Ocean some 1,200 miles away. Even a small deviation might become meaningful across that distance. It would probably not be helpful to bypass the archipelago since the next stop would be Antarctica.

We compare the main GPS with our backup GPS: they agree with each other. We bring our small cabin compass on deck: it agrees with the cockpit compass but not the two GPS’s, i.e. the compasses agree with each other, and the GPS’s agree with each other, but GPS’s do not agree with compasses. Even eliminating the variation between magnetic and true (around here about 10º) does not get rid of the riddle. We scratch our heads for hours trying to figure out why the GPS and the compass will not agree. We speculate at first that World War III has been declared in our absence: the U.S. military, which runs the GPS satellites, have fudged the system as was actually done during the Gulf War in the early 1990’s (It has not been done since as the whole world now relies so heavily on GPS. But one never knows!) Then Kathleen wonders if the GPS might be proposing a more efficient “great-circle” route. But we cannot really get our minds around this.

In the end we follow the stars. The magnetic compasses agree with those constellations by which each of us as helmsman have been steering each night. We decide simply to follow the compass at roughly 140º (magnetic) and continue using the same stars every night for orientation. The anomaly crops up about one-third of the way through the voyage. After about two-thirds of the distance it disappears again and the GPS and the compass match again. Our apprehension disappears too.

We put up with weak following winds in the first portion of the trip but rely on our sails. Besides our pride as mariners, we could not in all honesty carry enough fuel to motor over 1,200 Nm. But in the windless ITCZ we start motor-sailing while we tell ourselves that we will go back to sailing once through. Encountering southeasterlies on the other side, however, makes us realize that we are either going to have to continue to motor, or we are going to beat directly to windward for days and days. We think if we “drive” the boat at moderate speeds we should be able to get maximum fuel efficiency and, if the winds do not shift, we could make it to San Cristobal under power.

Of course, we might simply sit and wait for better winds no matter how long that takes. We have plenty of food on board even after the fresh produce has been consumed, and even if we never catch anther fish (we never do after the first day). But would we have enough water? Kathleen has planned for about three gallons of consumption per day, or a gallon a person. In fact we use slightly less on the voyage thanks to our strict discipline. We carry about 60 U.S. gallons in two tanks under the settees in the main cabin, and we carry four extra 5-gallon jerry cans of drinking water lashed on deck to the cabin on either side of the mast. We filled up in Acapulco before leaving with agua purificada, i.e. bottled drinking water. At sea, all our dishwashing or other cleaning and bathing needs is done with warm, clean sea water (we generally strip off and take a bucket shower at least once a day); the fresh water is reserved for drinking (including hot drinks, Kool-aid-type flavoured drinks and just plain water). Tinned beer is extra. In fact, we arrive with water still in the tanks and the jerry jugs untouched. We also have four beers and most of a bottle of vodka left over.

Since we had sailed the first part of the voyage albeit very slowly, we were sure once we hit the Doldrums that we could motor the rest of the way if we needed to. But with the winds on the nose, would we have enough fuel? It is not just the headwinds that slow you down; with them come waves and each time Vilisar puts her head into an approaching wave she is slowed down. We never take a wave over the bow since Vilisar is wonderful about forcing the water way out to the sides. After hitting the southeasterlies south of the ITCZ, we are uncertain about our fuel reserves. One day we measure the tanks with our metal yardstick (we don’t have a fuel gauge), and find that our rate of consumption is actually less than expected. But, if we have to plough into waves and point the boat straight into the wind, our progress will be much slowed and the fuel still might not last. Everyone goes into overtime-prayer mode asking, if not for more helpful winds, at least for calmer seas. Eventually we get the latter and our speed and our rate of fuel consumption improve.

We have only one real heart-stopper on the trip. Still a day out from the first of the Galapagos Islands (Pinta), the engine suddenly starts missing. Put into neutral it recovers its rpm’s. But, as soon as it is put into gear, it falters again and threatens to die. In fact, it does finally die, and we are left drifting in weak winds and relatively calm seas. Contrary to what I have thought until then, the two fuel tanks on either side of the engine are not actually connected. Or more precisely, although connected, the engine draws fuel equally from each tank while in operation. We carry four 5-gallon jerry jugs of diesel fuel on deck and another ten gallons emergency reserve in the lazarette hold. Andrew and I pour the first four jugs of fuel into the port tank, which at that moment is less prone to saltwater slop and spray at that moment than the starboard deck. I assume that the fuel levels itself out down below between the two tanks. As it turns out, this is not the case, and the starboard tank later gets so low that the engine is sucking air. Definitely not a good thing for a diesel engine: if you run out of fuel you have to bleed the engine to get it running again; not something you really want to be doing as you roll around at sea.

An added complication is that our electrical panel shows our batteries are very low. This is incomprehensible since we have been running the engine and therefore the alternator for days. The batteries should be right up. Now we worry if we will have enough juice to get the heavy diesel started again. We decide to give the solar panels enough time during the day to charge the batteries up as far as possible. When we start up, we will also turn over the engine with the cylinders de-compressed until the flywheel has got some momentum. That ought to take much less power. For the moment we sail again and it is wonderful to have the noise gone. We sail slowly because the winds are very light. Although we are not within VHF-radio range of San Cristobal, with the winds from the SE, we cannot steer directly to the harbour. We might have to get a tow in or simple hang about for days waiting for the winds to change and hoping that the strong currents through the archipelago will not sweep us too far away.

Now here is another complication. On one of the boisterous nights at sea we blew our old mainsail! We were shortening sail in a blow and suddenly a huge tear opened up from the second reefing cringle forward and down. Andrew wrestled the sail down and lashed it to the boom. Later we dragged the storm tri-sail up from the forecastle and hoisted it. We have never had to use it up until now; I am glad that I did actually try it out experimentally while we were still in Long Beach marina. The tri-sail is run up the mast and the leach is tied to the boom or to a winch near the stern. It has a quite small surface, is cut very flat and is built tough to withstand storms. We sailed for the better part of a day coming into San Cristobal with the jib-, stay- and storm tri-sail and made reasonable progress until we could see San Cristobal Island in the distance and Baquierizo Moreno, the main town, slightly upwind of us. At this point we rolled the dice: the engine started. We motor-sail the last five miles.

So we arrive after seventeen days at sea with fuel and water (and beer) left, our mainsail ripped to shreds and, a foot-long tear in our red drifter and some fraying on the leach of the staysail. Our list of small and big work projects after this voyage, Vilisar’s longest to date, is fairly long. Beside the sail repairs we need to get a better grip on our electricals, our batteries. Vilisar’s topsides are brown with slime along the waterline as we come to anchor among the twenty-odd, mainly European cruising boats at San Cristobal. Vilisar’s hull, at least, is quite clean when we arrive after all the movement of water across for the past two and one-half weeks: that’s the way ablative paints work. They don’t work nearly as well when the boat is just sitting at anchor.

We managed our food, water and fuel well and realise we can make somewhat longer trips even without a watermaker. We were not great at catching fish along the way: after the Bonito near Acapulco, we did once hook a fabulous, three-foot mahi mahi (dorado) a few days short of San Cristobal. But the hook ripped out of its mouth as we were hauling him aboard and we never caught another fish.

It was especially great to have Andrew as crew on board. He jumps to help and even goes way out on the bowsprit to bring in sail while Vilisar pitches up and down in big waves. Just having a second person to help with sail changes and a third person to spread the load of watchkeeping made the voyage more enjoyable. Because the trip has taken a bit longer than expected, Andrew will now fly to Guayaquil from the Galapagos, and therefore will not be crewing with us as we had hoped. He has to get back to register at college again and to work a few weeks at his summer job. We’ll definitely miss him. This was the first time he has been back on the boat in over two years and the first time he has been alone on Vilisar with us.

Arriving in San Cristobal we find that the agent here who is supposed to have organised our cruising permit has only blank stares for us. But he sits right down and gets started. Most cruising boats are only making a stop for a few days or few weeks in the Galapagos on their way to French Polynesia (The Marquesas). Galapagos is on the “Coconut Milk Run” from the Panama Canal (Europeans or east-coast Americans) or Costa Rica (for west-coast Norteamericanos). We are unusual since we are planning to go from here to mainland Ecuador where we want to spend six months. Kathleen will be leading two-week workshops in four Ecuadorian cities including Quito and Riobamba for the Association of Ecuadorian Choirs. They will cover our domestic travel costs and lodge us with Ecuadorian families. This should be a great opportunity to see the country and improve out Spanish whilst making friends through music. And, if the concept works well, we might be able to use the same approach in other countries we visit as we circumnavigate. The agent is working on these permisos as well. All these things were supposed to be completed before we arrived and, in fact, we emailed him all the data and the application forms two months ago from Mexico. But the agent is fairly nonplussed: “I will submit on 03 May. Come back on 05 May and I shall have the cruising and visiting permits ready. Meanwhile look around. Of course, with such a complicated application my tip will be very big!”

After a couple of days of resting, visiting the vegetable markets, spending hours notifying family and friends that we have arrived safely and catching up on our emails we finally started serious sightseeing. There are sea lions in Hülle and Fülle right here in the harbour and there are even big green tortoises swimming around the boat. But yesterday (22 April) we take a tour with some other cruisers from Norway (including two little twin girls aged about six years who are circumnavigating with their parents) to the breeding station at the other end of this island and see about a dozen of the giant tortoises. We also visit a rainwater lake in the dormant cone of the largest volcano on the island. At about 700 metres altitude the place is semi-socked-in. But we can see the frigate birds circling around over the freshwater. We then drive to a rocky and lava-strewn beach to visit marine iguanas, ugly so-and-so’s that blend in with the black lava stones until you get too close and then spit at you. We all have lunch together at the tour leader’s house where his wife had prepared us a great lunch of fresh wahoo fish.

The town here has grown rapidly over the last decade in response to the government’s decision to encourage more tourism (much to the dismay of those who want to keep the Galapagos an isolated wilderness). Baquerizo Moreno definitely looks less run down than most Mexican towns and cities. But it is also newer and less crowded. Other cruisers tell us that it looks pretty good by comparison with the Ecuadorian mainland too. The people look smaller than in Mexico and with more indigenous blood. Everyone is friendly and helpful but definitely without the natural Mexican ebullience. It is of course much less cosmopolitan here than Mexico despite the steady stream of visiting small tour and cruising boats.

We are enjoying meeting other Europeans. Although there are now three, when we arrive there is only one US boat at anchor (S/V Altair out of Seattle with Paul and Suzette aboard: they are on the last legs of a six-year cruise and are headed back to Seattle via the Marquesas, Hawaii and perhaps SE Alaska). No other Canadians. There is a Russian catamaran, a German monohull (Monika and Felix aboard S/V Makani, Friedrichshafen), a South African sloop (S/V with and Jamie) and a whole slew of Norwegian, Danish and Finnish boats.

We meet the other cruisers in the little town. It is a little difficult to meet your cruising neighbours here at anchor since nobody launches a dinghy. The harbour is full of sea lions which will happily jump into your dink if it is left tied up to you boat or to the dock. In fact, I was lying on the starboard settee on the first day and looked up through the skylight to see the head and shoulders of a female sea lion that had just leaped aboard. She departed when I went on deck. The local fishing smacks use barbed wired to keep the mammals off: they are cute to watch in the water but they can make a big mess on your boat. If they jump into a light dinghy they can easily break the oars or do other physical damage as well. To discourage further visits I tied plastic bags and old rags to the lifelines. It seems to have discouraged them. But you can see the imps trying to get on the other boats all around us. And they can really spring high out of the water!) Instead of rowing ashore, everyone here uses water taxis to get ashore; they cost only fifty cents per person anyway. Things are even cheaper here than in Mexico.

I have received some translating work and the promise of more, so will focus on that to make a little cash reserve to help pay for the children’s flights to Ecuador as well as haulout and repairs to the boat when we get to Salinas or Bahia de Caráquez on the mainland. And, of course, at some point we are going to need new sails: these have come a long way. Repaired, they might get us to mainland Ecuador. But I don’t think they will take us on a longer voyage again, to Central America next winter, perhaps, or across the South Pacific to New Zealand next spring. But something will work out.