WE HAVE LEFT THE BARN!!!!!
Day 1: Saturday 3/16:
Oh what a last few days but we finally got everything done and left the fuel dock at 1:00 pm on Saturday 3/16……only 3000 nm to go!!!!!
Everything was going along just fine…..we did a few chores each day and then played on Santa Cruz with Les and Rose. Well, that all came to a stop when on Friday everything we had planned took 3x longer and we did not get done until late Friday night. First, we had to go pay for the fuel. Bolivar, our agent, took a ferry from San Cristobal to Santa Cruz and met us on MM around 9:00 am. He quoted the international fuel price @ $4.92/gal. That was better than the $5.15/gal he had quoted a month ago. So, Kathy harvested the money tree and off we went to the petro office and bank. Two hours later we were all smiles – the price was now $3.83/gal…….whoa……that makes a big difference on the 1140 gallons we needed!!!!! But, not to worry, Kathy took some of the windfall and went shopping – bought a really cute sea lion wood carving!!!!!!
We then had to setup the fuel bladders. Two 160 gallon each went in the cockpit and one 115 gallon bladder went in the Portuguese bridge. Les and I finished close to 5:30 pm. In the middle of all that, all 4 of us had to go to the Immigration office to check out. After that les and I had some ER and Laz work/tidying/cleanup and we finally finished around 8:00 pm. Kathy and Rose in the meantime did the last minute provisioning – mainly a lot of fresh fruit and vegetables. And by the time they had finished stowing it was after 8:00 pm. We had hoped to be done early afternoon and go in for a great dinner, but we settled for a quick sandwich and then off to bed!!!!
Fuel Bladders
We all got up around 12:30 am (like 3-4 hours of sleep) for our 40 nm to the fuel depot on Baltra Island. We arrived at 6:30 am…….too early. We thought we were going to have a counter current but we had +/- current and averaged close to 8 kts. We called Bolivar around 7:00 am and he said he was on his way. We finally got our call and went to the fuel dock around 10:00 am……and then the challenges started again. The fuel depot is setup to fuel big ships and uses a high pressure hose, like 50 gal/min……yikes. We were able to make it work filling the internal fuel tanks, but not so on the fuel bladders. At one point, we feared they were going to say “no mas” as we were taking way longer than planned and backing up other boats. Les had a brilliant idea – let’s stick a hose down into the bladder….great……I’ll just run down to the Mystic Moon hardware store and get the exact size…….so, after a lot of tries and emptying every cubby hole in MM looking for the right size hose, we got it, perfect fit and viola, we were able to fill the 3 fuel bladders. We took on ~1100 gallons as we were not able to take the last 40-50 gallons as the high pressure hose was too much.
We left the fuel dock around 1:00 pm in very calm conditions. We were all worn out……3 hours of a very stressful fueling. You see, Galapagos is rightfully extremely environmentally conscious so we were closely watched for any fuel spills…..whoa!!!!!
And, just to make the day complete, our chartplotter Nobeltec Time Zero decided to wipe out all the connections to our various instruments – GPS, autopilot, AIS and radar. It’s not every day you go through this setup so out came the books and 2 hours later all is back in order………arghhhhhh!!!!!
Shifts:
Rose: 6-9 pm
Kathy: 9-12 pm
Les: 12-3 am
John: 3-6 pm
We then repeat in the daylight hours but with a lot less formal schedule allowing people to nap, cook and do other chores/read as desired. I got a good 5.5 hours of sleep last night and feel very refreshed!!!
Sunday 7:00 am MDT or 1300 UTC:
All is well. Conditions have been mild – no stabilizers until clearing Isabela!
Position: 01 09 S 91 50 W
Traveled: 110nm; 2896 nm to go; ETA sometime 4/4-5
Wind: for the most part <5 kts but had a brief period of E 10-12 kts east of Isabela; maybe from a squall
Waves: 2-4′ SSW swell; 14 sec period; very little wind chop
Speed: current speed is 6.2 SOG, has varied 5.3-7.2 SOG; avg 6.3 SOG (we planned for 6.0 but hope/want 6.5)
Weather: no rain, mostly cloudy yesterday although clear at the moment; had fog as rounded southwestern Isabela and got into the Humboldt current; sea temp went from 82 deg F to 68 deg F!
Fishing: We are still inside the Galapagos National park so no fishing. We have to go out 40 nm so maybe later today!!!
Fuel Burn: too early to tell; tanks still very full but maybe used 35 gallons or about 3 nmpg (plan is for 2.25 nmpg)
