READYING VILISAR FOR FRENCH POLYNESIA
Las Brisas de Amador Anchorage, Panamá City, Panamá,
Thursday, 04 June 2009
As I write (mid-afternoon), a torrential tropical downpour is cleaning Vilisar’s decks of salt and boatyard grime. The ITCZ (Inter-Tropical Convergence Zone) has moved north from near the equator and is nearly right over us. The rainy season has surely arrived. The air is heavy and the view is hazy with water. We watched earlier as black clouds formed over the high peaks farther inland and over the skyscrapers of the city. Then the wind switched from the south to the north, and the rain finally hit us. Surprisingly, since leaving the marine ways at Balboa Yacht Club alongside the Panamá Canal on Monday at noon, we have had several days of relatively sunny, breezy and rain-free weather. We were lucky to have relatively little precipitation while we were on the marine ways so we could get the painting done. That doesn’t mean that it has been pleasant, though: the humidity is extremely high and the whole feeling is sultry. Any movement at all and your clothes are soaked and sweat is gathering in a pool at your feet. This is especially true if you are working, say, in the engine room. Your hands are greasy AND sweaty and it is easy to drop a wrench or a bolt into the bilge. Blink, blink, blop! An all-too-familiar sound to a cruiser’s ears. It comes just before a stream of foul language.
This morning was spent doing the “check-out tango” in preparation for leaving Panamá to sail to French Polynesia. We had arranged for taxi-driver Roosevelt (Tel. 6513.6949) to pick up us at the Las Brisas de Amador dinghy dock (Las Brisas is the still-vestigial new marina on the Flamenco side of the Amador Causeway; they charge $5 a day to land the dink but, unlike at La Playita, here they are at least friendly. They have showers and toilets there, nicely done but still new and a bit rough). Roosevelt knows the check-out routine. We visited the Capitanía de Puerto inside the gated dockyards to get our Zarpe (i.e., the document that says you are leaving Panamá in good standing, which I guess means you have paid all your bills). Many gringos have told us that they are hard-arsed and difficult and will gouge you for a bribe. None of the above! It cost us altogether $9.70 and there were lots of smiles. Later we went to the Migración office at Flamenco to get our passports stamped (no charge for this but do take copies of your Zarpe). Roosevelt charged us $9 an hour for his taxi and guidance. We officially now have only 48 hours to leave the country, though we may stretch this out a bit. Many countries do not bother with a Zarpe any more, and we have been told that French Polynesia will not require them. But Ecuador will want them in The Galapagos, and we plan to make a stop there to get water, fuel and veggies.
While we are out and about, we also visit the Fastener Centre (Centro de Tornillo) and Centro Marino, a marine chandler in town on Avenida National to buy bolts and wing nuts for the dinghy, a few tubes of 3M 5200 sealant and six feet for 1¼-inch water hose to re-do the bilge pump connections (I tightened the pipe clamp too much and cracked the plastic water hose. Now whenever I pump, water squirts all over the batteries. Getting it installed was hot and dirty and requited heating the end of the plastic hose in boling water to get it on over the nipple. I double-clamped and reviewed language I had learned in the army.)
We were completely happy with the work the carpenteros de navales did during the week we spent on the marine ways. Erwin and Ivan Pitti, brothers, and their colleagues were hard workers and clearly knew what they were about. We had already used them back in March to replace the fractured bronze through-bolts holding the rudder in place. Now they have completely re-caulked the hull using cotton and 3M 5200-brand flexible sealant to fill the seams before fairing the whole hull and spray-painting with 2.5 gallons of Sigma-brand 2-part polyurethane white paint. As somebody said, where before we looked like a valero, we now look like a “yate”. While were at it, we had the caprails partially removed and the 35-year-old, rusting, galvanised boat-nails replaced with stainless nails, the caprail replaced with teak and the bronze sail tracks re-set. The shipwrights also made us a new dinghy seat, repaired the footlocker lid in the cockpit and made little wooden dividers for the deep drawers under the navigation table in the main cabin (when heeled over at sea, all the contents tended to slide way to the back, jam up and make opening the drawers almost impossible; the contents also got a soaking if, as up to now, we were taking water through the dried-out caulking. Let’s hope we shall no longer have to pump so much when we are at sea!)
Did I mention that, over at Taboga Island, we also replaced the two no-longer-galvanised and rusting headstays with new stainless steel wire rope? We got sick of getting rust stains on our jib and staysails and on the foredeck. I purchased the made-up stays from Toplicht, a Hamburg-based chandlery for traditional boats and brought them back on the plane a few weeks ago. (21 metres of 8 mm 7x7 wire with two splices and two Norseman eye terminals cost € 403 of which about one-fifth was sales tax.) I got Alex, a Swiss mariner who has grown up on sailboats to help me install everything and to mount our new Luneburg-technology radar reflector on a spreader. That was another $200 for work.
We feel that Vilisar is ready to go to sea again. She is now 35 years old and we have spent a lot on her in the last two years. Somebody once asked Bernard Montessier, the solo, round-the-world sailor, how much it cost to sail. He answered, “Everything you have!” That pretty much captures it. Just here in Panamá City over the last half year we have spent approximately $4,500 for rigging, re-caulking, carpentry work and painting. If we add in the money we spent in Ecuador for a new wormshoe ($800) and new steel fuel tanks ($1,000), you can see why we shall be eating a lot of potatoes on the South Pacific crossing.
But we are going nevertheless! We are topped up with diesel fuel (except for our jerry jugs), we have already bunkered a few hundred dollars worth of canned goods as well as thirty pounds each of potatoes and onions and will shop once more for fresh food before we leave on the weekend, first to Islas Las Perlas (off the Darien Coast of Panamá). This will be sort of a trial run. Then it’s 1,000 Nm on SE through the Doldrums. This could be a slow trip given the southerlies and the northbound swells. But at Isla San Cristóbal (Wreck Bay) in The Galapagos we hope to pick up fuel, water, veggies and good SE Trades for the onward 3,000 Nm to The Marquesas.
We have had our old Iridium satphone inspected and a new battery installed. We still have to buy a prepaid card. I think they are $160 for two months and 300 minutes. This will make everyone at home feel a lot less worried and the phone can be a huge help in an emergency. Rollo at Eletronicos Ancón had done the work. We also took him our old EPRIB sat-alarm signal (if you set it off, the Coast Guard in the U.S.A. will know immediately that has gone off and the location of the instrument to about 20 yards. A big improvement on family waiting until you are overdue by weeks and then having the NZ Air Force fly search patterns for days. These two items are important safety equipment for us.
When Rollo first looked at the EPIRB he said the battery was good but it didn’t seem to be emitting a signal. We left it with him. Later in the day we had a phone call from Kathy’s sister in Los Angeles (she is listed as our EPRIB contact): the Coast Guard had picked up our EPRIB signal and what’s going on? She immediately called us. So I guess either Rollo has got the signal to work or it was already working. That’s good to know! That reminds me too: I must get the Float Plan prepared.
Sunday, 07 June 2009
We had planned to leave today. But we decided to get Alli, a German welder who lives on a sailboat with his wife and daughter, to install stainless-steel handholds around the cockpit. At sea it is difficult to keep from being thrown around whilst steering and awkward to get into and out of the cockpit when the boat is well heeled over. It now looks like we shall leave on Wednesday.
Today, for a change, is a beautiful sunny day with blue skies and a clear view to the skyline. The winds are gentle from the south so perhaps the ITCZ has moved farther north and we are getting Southern Hemisphere weather. I spent the morning trying to get the solar panels to maximise their input. Never want to let the sunshine go to waste. It seems that one of the electro connecting cables is bad, though there is nothing visible. At least both panels actually work well and I shall just need to buy a length of wire. It took two hours just to find the fault.
More when we get to The Galapagos!
Las Brisas de Amador Anchorage, Panamá City, Panamá,
Thursday, 04 June 2009
As I write (mid-afternoon), a torrential tropical downpour is cleaning Vilisar’s decks of salt and boatyard grime. The ITCZ (Inter-Tropical Convergence Zone) has moved north from near the equator and is nearly right over us. The rainy season has surely arrived. The air is heavy and the view is hazy with water. We watched earlier as black clouds formed over the high peaks farther inland and over the skyscrapers of the city. Then the wind switched from the south to the north, and the rain finally hit us. Surprisingly, since leaving the marine ways at Balboa Yacht Club alongside the Panamá Canal on Monday at noon, we have had several days of relatively sunny, breezy and rain-free weather. We were lucky to have relatively little precipitation while we were on the marine ways so we could get the painting done. That doesn’t mean that it has been pleasant, though: the humidity is extremely high and the whole feeling is sultry. Any movement at all and your clothes are soaked and sweat is gathering in a pool at your feet. This is especially true if you are working, say, in the engine room. Your hands are greasy AND sweaty and it is easy to drop a wrench or a bolt into the bilge. Blink, blink, blop! An all-too-familiar sound to a cruiser’s ears. It comes just before a stream of foul language.
This morning was spent doing the “check-out tango” in preparation for leaving Panamá to sail to French Polynesia. We had arranged for taxi-driver Roosevelt (Tel. 6513.6949) to pick up us at the Las Brisas de Amador dinghy dock (Las Brisas is the still-vestigial new marina on the Flamenco side of the Amador Causeway; they charge $5 a day to land the dink but, unlike at La Playita, here they are at least friendly. They have showers and toilets there, nicely done but still new and a bit rough). Roosevelt knows the check-out routine. We visited the Capitanía de Puerto inside the gated dockyards to get our Zarpe (i.e., the document that says you are leaving Panamá in good standing, which I guess means you have paid all your bills). Many gringos have told us that they are hard-arsed and difficult and will gouge you for a bribe. None of the above! It cost us altogether $9.70 and there were lots of smiles. Later we went to the Migración office at Flamenco to get our passports stamped (no charge for this but do take copies of your Zarpe). Roosevelt charged us $9 an hour for his taxi and guidance. We officially now have only 48 hours to leave the country, though we may stretch this out a bit. Many countries do not bother with a Zarpe any more, and we have been told that French Polynesia will not require them. But Ecuador will want them in The Galapagos, and we plan to make a stop there to get water, fuel and veggies.
While we are out and about, we also visit the Fastener Centre (Centro de Tornillo) and Centro Marino, a marine chandler in town on Avenida National to buy bolts and wing nuts for the dinghy, a few tubes of 3M 5200 sealant and six feet for 1¼-inch water hose to re-do the bilge pump connections (I tightened the pipe clamp too much and cracked the plastic water hose. Now whenever I pump, water squirts all over the batteries. Getting it installed was hot and dirty and requited heating the end of the plastic hose in boling water to get it on over the nipple. I double-clamped and reviewed language I had learned in the army.)
We were completely happy with the work the carpenteros de navales did during the week we spent on the marine ways. Erwin and Ivan Pitti, brothers, and their colleagues were hard workers and clearly knew what they were about. We had already used them back in March to replace the fractured bronze through-bolts holding the rudder in place. Now they have completely re-caulked the hull using cotton and 3M 5200-brand flexible sealant to fill the seams before fairing the whole hull and spray-painting with 2.5 gallons of Sigma-brand 2-part polyurethane white paint. As somebody said, where before we looked like a valero, we now look like a “yate”. While were at it, we had the caprails partially removed and the 35-year-old, rusting, galvanised boat-nails replaced with stainless nails, the caprail replaced with teak and the bronze sail tracks re-set. The shipwrights also made us a new dinghy seat, repaired the footlocker lid in the cockpit and made little wooden dividers for the deep drawers under the navigation table in the main cabin (when heeled over at sea, all the contents tended to slide way to the back, jam up and make opening the drawers almost impossible; the contents also got a soaking if, as up to now, we were taking water through the dried-out caulking. Let’s hope we shall no longer have to pump so much when we are at sea!)
Did I mention that, over at Taboga Island, we also replaced the two no-longer-galvanised and rusting headstays with new stainless steel wire rope? We got sick of getting rust stains on our jib and staysails and on the foredeck. I purchased the made-up stays from Toplicht, a Hamburg-based chandlery for traditional boats and brought them back on the plane a few weeks ago. (21 metres of 8 mm 7x7 wire with two splices and two Norseman eye terminals cost € 403 of which about one-fifth was sales tax.) I got Alex, a Swiss mariner who has grown up on sailboats to help me install everything and to mount our new Luneburg-technology radar reflector on a spreader. That was another $200 for work.
We feel that Vilisar is ready to go to sea again. She is now 35 years old and we have spent a lot on her in the last two years. Somebody once asked Bernard Montessier, the solo, round-the-world sailor, how much it cost to sail. He answered, “Everything you have!” That pretty much captures it. Just here in Panamá City over the last half year we have spent approximately $4,500 for rigging, re-caulking, carpentry work and painting. If we add in the money we spent in Ecuador for a new wormshoe ($800) and new steel fuel tanks ($1,000), you can see why we shall be eating a lot of potatoes on the South Pacific crossing.
But we are going nevertheless! We are topped up with diesel fuel (except for our jerry jugs), we have already bunkered a few hundred dollars worth of canned goods as well as thirty pounds each of potatoes and onions and will shop once more for fresh food before we leave on the weekend, first to Islas Las Perlas (off the Darien Coast of Panamá). This will be sort of a trial run. Then it’s 1,000 Nm on SE through the Doldrums. This could be a slow trip given the southerlies and the northbound swells. But at Isla San Cristóbal (Wreck Bay) in The Galapagos we hope to pick up fuel, water, veggies and good SE Trades for the onward 3,000 Nm to The Marquesas.
We have had our old Iridium satphone inspected and a new battery installed. We still have to buy a prepaid card. I think they are $160 for two months and 300 minutes. This will make everyone at home feel a lot less worried and the phone can be a huge help in an emergency. Rollo at Eletronicos Ancón had done the work. We also took him our old EPRIB sat-alarm signal (if you set it off, the Coast Guard in the U.S.A. will know immediately that has gone off and the location of the instrument to about 20 yards. A big improvement on family waiting until you are overdue by weeks and then having the NZ Air Force fly search patterns for days. These two items are important safety equipment for us.
When Rollo first looked at the EPIRB he said the battery was good but it didn’t seem to be emitting a signal. We left it with him. Later in the day we had a phone call from Kathy’s sister in Los Angeles (she is listed as our EPRIB contact): the Coast Guard had picked up our EPRIB signal and what’s going on? She immediately called us. So I guess either Rollo has got the signal to work or it was already working. That’s good to know! That reminds me too: I must get the Float Plan prepared.
Sunday, 07 June 2009
We had planned to leave today. But we decided to get Alli, a German welder who lives on a sailboat with his wife and daughter, to install stainless-steel handholds around the cockpit. At sea it is difficult to keep from being thrown around whilst steering and awkward to get into and out of the cockpit when the boat is well heeled over. It now looks like we shall leave on Wednesday.
Today, for a change, is a beautiful sunny day with blue skies and a clear view to the skyline. The winds are gentle from the south so perhaps the ITCZ has moved farther north and we are getting Southern Hemisphere weather. I spent the morning trying to get the solar panels to maximise their input. Never want to let the sunshine go to waste. It seems that one of the electro connecting cables is bad, though there is nothing visible. At least both panels actually work well and I shall just need to buy a length of wire. It took two hours just to find the fault.
More when we get to The Galapagos!
posted by rjb @ Tuesday, June 09, 2009
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