Leaving Golfito, Costa Rica, for The Marquesas
At sea, Friday, March 19, 2010

Loyal readers of this blog will recall that Vilisar tried to leave Panamá
twice last year for The Marquesas (French Polynesia) only to be forced to
turn back by a bad oil seal and various other problems. Friends and
acquaintances were saying that these were omens. Who knows?

Her crew, Kathleen and Ronald, were in any case of two minds about setting
off again this season. On the negative side, we are heartily sick of
hanging around in various harbours when we want to be sailing somewhere.
Long passages, by contrast, get your blood moving. And, this one is very
long indeed: just under 4,000 Nm to the first islands and the same again
through the various South Pacific archipelagos to reach New Zealand by,
say, November. The killer factor that decided us for NZ was that we could
likely find a buyer for Vilisar in New Zealand if after the long voyage we
wanted to sell her.

Getting ready was largely routine by now; Kathleen took over the
management of the provisioning, charts, routing, etc., while I did my best
to get all the gear ready for offshore. The huge painting job was finished
for now, although of course it is in a sense never-ending. But Vilisar
looks beautiful as she starts out on her South Pacific adventure. The
ancient cabin wiring remains a problem. We had the whole engine room re-
wired while we were in Panamá and it looks great. Twice however, including
the day we were getting ready to leave Golfito, there was an electrical
hitch. This time the fuse panel on the bulkhead between the engine room
and the cockpit had corroded almost completely away. Robert, the
electrician, said the wood was wet. How that happened I do not know,
unless it got wet while we were heeled on a starboard tack and saltwater
rose in the cockpit through the scuppers. There was a minute crack in the
thick timber that makes up the bulkhead, so perhaps that was what
saturated the wood. And, the humid air in Golfito meant that the wood
would almost certainly never dry until we ran the engine for a long time.

Anyway, we replaced the panel and the fuses and re-wired everything.
Robert spent three hours on the boat on St. Patrick's Day to fix it and to
get the running lights working again (the wires had been nicked by the
painters and their scrapers, and rainwater had caused corrosion). When I
look back over the years, nearly all our technical problems on Vilisar
have been electrical. The basic engine is fine (except for the $4-oil seal
last year), but the old wiring left in the cabin needs to be replaced with
marine-grade stuff. Electricity and salt water or salt air!

Once Robert goes ashore at noon, we start pulling up the anchor. This is a
slow job since the chain is heavily bearded, and I have to clean it one
foot at a time as it comes over the bow rollers. Not such a difficult job
but very hot in the midday heat. Eventually the anchor chain is laid out
on the deck forward to dry and the anchor is stowed on the bow roller. We
motor down to the fuel dock.

We are slow in tanking up because we insist upon filtering everything that
goes into the tank. There is no automatic shutoff for the pump; we have to
keep stopping to measure the depth. After the onboard tanks are filled,
then come the four 5-gallon jerry jugs that will be stowed on deck. Of
course, we have to add diesel fuel additives like Startron Enzyme and
biocide in order to prevent the build-up of microbes in the tanks and to
stabilise the fuel (diesel fuel begins to decompose after about ninety
days, I have finally learned; microbes build up in the tanks and then clog
your fuel filters). I haven't always been assiduous in looking after the
fuel and fuel tanks, I have to admit; the deck jugs sat in the sun for
months, for example, before they went into the main tank. The result was
contamination and the tanks had to be emptied of their black sticky mess.

Stuart, an English-speaking local street person, swam over from the other
dock to help us get water and move jugs around. He had a trail of small
boys with him who were full of curiosity about a sailboat. When we pulled
away from the dock, we were carrying Stuart and several kids, who all at
some point sprang overboard and swam back ashore.

As we were rounding the big navigation buoys to go out through the ship
channel, we realised that the engine alternator was not putting out any
power. We called back to Land Sea Marina on our VHF radio and had them ask
Robert to meet us back at the fuel dock. After all, he had just re-
installed the fuse box and voltage regulator.

The boys are ecstatic to see us again, and soon there are about a dozen
10-12-year olds on board as we tie up at the nearby municipal dock. They
were already out of school for the day, and here for their afternoon swim.
Stuart is also still here and soon he had festooned Vilisar with red
balloons. We look like we were ready to embark on a honeymoon trip.

Robert needs about half an hour to get things right (he had not properly
seated some connection or other and this time he actually starts the
engine to make sure all is well). Soon we are pulling away from the dock
again, this time with Stuart and several boys along for the ride before
they spring overboard again. With many hand-waves and calls back and forth
we are once more headed for the exit channel with about 90 minutes of
daylight left. I suppose you could say we left twice today for French
Polynesia. Will we ever actually make it?

I personally like to leave in the morning. But, if we had waited we would
have been leaving on a Friday; I am not superstitious at all, but for long
voyages you take whatever advantages you can get. Anyway, as Kathleen
points out, we will have to motor for the first couple of days until we
can get out into the NE Trades; the Costa Rican coast is very airless. It
would be better to motor at night and be cooler.

As we came out into the Golfo Dulce (Golfito is the 'little gulf'), the
first rainsquall of our trip sweeps over us and soon I am soaked. The air
and the seawater are over 90 degrees Fahrenheit, so you are not really
uncomfortable. But you begin to feel chilly after a while unless you get a
foul-weather jacket on. Ah, well, I suppose we should get used to it. We
still have to get through the Doldrums.

By the time the rain has passed over, the lights have come on along the
shore on either side and darkness is nearly upon us. The sliver of a
waxing moon is just about to follow the orange sun-ball below the western
horizon. Steering due S until we can leave the Golfo Dulce and then turn
west, the stars come out in the high heavens; the stars near the hazy
horizon will have to wait until later. The Southern Cross is just visible.
There are still lots of clouds around so my temporary guiding star keeps
disappearing. But it is wonderful to sit nearly naked in the cockpit and
let the balmy tropical air dry you off.

Down below, before she goes to sleep on the port settee, Kathleen heats up
some chorizo sausage and boils up a few potatoes in seawater. The spuds
are for a potato salad tomorrow or a quick snack at night; the spicy
sausages become hot dogs immediately.

Darkness falls and Kathleen is soon asleep. I am alone in the cockpit; it
is a good feeling even though anxieties are magnified at night. It is a
little bumpy still near the land, but in a few hours we shall be out on
the broad Pacific where we can expect the swells to be long and not too big
(we check these things out in advance at www.passageweather.com, which
gives wind, barometric pressure and wave forecasts for up to five days in
advance). We are being followed at about the same speed by another boat,
probably a fisherman. Eventually he picks up speed and passes us about
half a mile away to starboard and we have the ocean to ourselves for the
moment. Despite the dark and cloudy night, I can still see the lights on
the east side near the surfing town of Pavones, and the dark, relatively
uninhabited land mass of a cape to the west.

Our route to French Polynesia must first get us through the Doldrums
(properly called the ITCZ i.e., the Inter-Tropical Convergence Zone), a
belt of windless and squally weather between us here at about 8 degrees North
and the equator. Above it we might hope to get some NE Trades winds and south
of it SE Trades. We have decided to head due west from Golfito until we
reach about 128 degrees N, hoping to get some benefit from the NE Trades, then
punching through the ITCZ until we pick up the SE Trades. Unfortunately,
there is next to no wind on the Costa Rica coast until you get about 200
Nm out.

This means motoring for a couple of days. If it is calm and the waves are
of low frequency (12-14 seconds), we should be able to steam along at
about 4-5 knots for the first couple of days. If we are really lucky we
might pick up some winds earlier. You can look at all the forecasts, but
once you decide and once you leave, you take what you get.

Morning, Friday, 19 March 2010

We expect it, but it is a bore anyway. The first few days at sea, and the
first night especially, are hard. Your sleep is disrupted by three-hour
watches, the gear never functions perfectly at first, and our Lister air-
cooled engine is loud and hot. The tiller pilot does not want to work for
us and it is hard to play with it in the dark. One of the toggles on the
drawers under the navigation table for some reason comes un-screwed and I
have to fish around on my knees on the cabin floor until I can find it. I
dig out a screwdriver and reset the toggle. Can't imagine the mess if
that drawer ever opened spontaneously while are heeled over at sea and
dumped its contents onto the cabin floor. Or on further thought, I don't
need to imagine it! We had just this happen to us in the first weeks after
we bought Vilisar in 2001. It certainly taught us to stow properly for
even small trips.

Each time I took my watch in cockpit last night, we experienced a black
rainy squall. Perhaps we are already in the Doldrums, whereas the weather
charts showed it much farther south. When I woke up for my shift at dawn,
however, the seas had calmed, and while there were clouds around there was
sunshine and no rain.

Kathleen and I spent some time chatting over coffee (Hmmmm!) and then she
makes up a great potato, apple, celery and cumin salad for breakfast. We also
eat the second half of the melon we started last night. With the engine
running for hours, the cabin gets very hot, and the fruits and vegetables
are ripening too quickly. Hope we get wind soon and can shut the engine
down! We need to get started at the fruit, though. We have provisioned
with lots of pineapples, watermelons, cantaloupe, a big bag of local
oranges, braids of onions, cabbages, green peppers and even tomatoes. We
can more or less predict when the stuff will go off; the potatoes, onions
and cabbages will last the longest. The melons, toms, celery and carrots
will go first. Kathleen picks things over nearly every day to make sure we
don't lose stuff.

As I go below from my morning watch, a pair of dolphins swim past us. A
good omen!