This is going to be a long post. I had a seven-day passage to write it. And it is not a white knuckler passage like the last one so I can afford some brain cells working on something other than thinking that we were going to come apart. Funny how it gets hard to put something clever on paper when you haven’t slept in a couple of days and your so tensed up you couldn’t pound a pin up your bum with a hammer. (Did you enjoy that mental image?)

Also have Dawn here to cook so that frees up a chunk of my day as well.

I will try to get pix posted in here as well but the wifi is pretty slow. If the pix are missing I will try to catch up with them later.

Onward…….

Left Contadora Island in the Las Perlas, Panama, on Feb 7. I must say I did rather like Panama. The people are quite nice and it is a very interesting place. Hope to go back someday. Much more to see there. Exceeded my expectations.

11:00 was the start of the second leg of the race/rally. Pretty small area for 40 or so boats to be milling around in. We , on Vivo, were all set up with the Parasailor to do some kick butt down wind running. No repeat of our first start. That was the plan anyway. So we get out to the area between the islands and there is a pretty dramatic wind shift. We got the Parasailor up and were making good time but there was a small, actually kind of large, well, island, right in the path we needed to be on to keep the wind in the huge parasail. Some boats got some pictures before we bagged it. Hope to get some to post.

So anyway…..   There I am again. With the wrong selection of sail plan for the start of the race. No excuse this time. Other than maybe it was only my second race ever. So we bag the Parasailor. Which is kind of like getting a 65-foot Boa Constrictor out of a tree and into a bag. We round up into the wind and start getting up the main and jib. Turns out the wind conditions at that start are exactly the stuff we sailed in the Caribbean.  Close reach for y’all sailors out there. So, finally, we get it together and start this bloody leg. Had a great sail the fist 30 hours or so then the wind, as predicted, dropped off to nothing. It is not unusual to have to motor all 850 miles to the Galapagos. We were fortunate. We did the first 200 miles under sail in less than 24 hours. It was bliss. The kind of conditions you live for. We hauled Vivo butt! We were actually about boat number three when the wind died off. Or at least I would like to think so. Then its just who wants to burn more fuel than the other guy. And at six bucks a gallon in Galapagos I will be falling back some. Probably a lot.

But now we motor. Slow and hot. Caught and lost two really large fish. They hit and took off like they were going to eat the whole spool. Then broke the 120 test pound line. Both were swordfish and after they broke off they entertained us with a tail walking show as they tried to shake off the lure they stole. (Don’t worry, the lure rusts away quickly and the fish is all-good) The first was 4 or 5 foot long, the second even larger. Wish I had some pix or video to share. The fish were out of the water skipping along on their tails about 100 yards behind the boat.  It was something. I doubt I cold have landed them even if they hadn’t broke off. 150 pounds of pissed off swordfish is kind of scary to bring into the cockpit with you. People do it but I guess I am just not hungry enough yet. And I am down to my last couple of lures. I have to figure out how to catch smaller fish. Or, get a bigger boat. And that isn’t gona happen!

A friend I met along the way a year or two back is helping me out in finding crew as we go along. I owe him big time. If you read far enough down the blog from last year or so you will run into the Garner family from Green Bay Wisconsin. You should check out their blog. Wes is quite a good writer. Google One World Garner Family Catamaran. They have finished their trip but the blog is still online.

So now we have sailed/motored into the Doldrums. Or Horse Latitudes. It is hot, no wind, no waves, like a gigantic infinity pool. Dead calm. Flat. Amazing. We went from some very sporty fast sailing in some moderate height seas to this in ½ day. It will be like this for the next few days as we approach, and cross through, the Inter Tropic Convergence Zone or ITC Zed. The brits don’t say Zee like we do. It’s Zed. This is where the weather in the northern hemisphere meets is southern neighbor. And everything starts working in the opposite direction weather wise. These waters have stymied sailors for centuries. You could sit for weeks with no wind. Dying of thirst. Throwing the horses overboard to lighten the ship and reduce water needs. Towing it with the oar boats to try to find wind. Driven more than one hapless sailor mad. Me included. Six hours into it and I was nuts. Its about as exciting as watching a puddle evaporate.

So I put the fact that I had lost 2 of my last 4 fishing lures, as well as my mind, to work. What do I have onboard with which to make a lure? A broomstick, a Pop Tart wrapper, a rubber glove, some red tape and some bad bead jewelry that Dawn had. Yup, that should do it. Ladies and gentlemen, may I present…   Mr. Bill’s sea fairing brother…  Mr. Ugly!  Is it going to slay them? Yes.  I can just tell. Can’t wait to get it into the water.

At this point we are 3 days into the passage to the Galapagos with 3 or 3 ½ to go. Getting into the on watch grove. 3 hours on 9 off. But you have to adjust to the peculiar hours. I have 11 – 2 in the AM and the PM. And as you close in on the 2 AM end of shift your pretty well ready to hit the rack. Takes 3-4 days to get used to it then it really feels like you could do it forever. But on this passage we are fighting boredom as much as anything else. The waves and sea state, and traffic, give you a lot to look at and keeps you occupied. The Doldrums have not much to offer in that respect. We are about as alone as you can be. Nothing in sight or on radar. We have taken to reading and watching movies on watch. Which I had not allowed before. Because there actually was something to watch out for. Not here. On watch you are basically responsible for pulling the engine into neutral if we wrap up a net or something into the prop. Maybe I will rig a string from the throttle to my bunk and just tell everyone to go to bed. Probably not but maybe.

Then Dawn broke her toe on one of the cockpit chairs. Getting nice a black and blue. She is soooo happy with that. Should make hiking in the Galapagos really fun!

The grey ghosts came by. Well, grey birds anyway. Galapagos birds I must assume. As we are 850 miles from anywhere else. 150 miles from Galapagos. But at 2 AM with a pretty bright moon out the group of four sea birds showing up was kind of ghostly. I entertained myself by hitting them with the spotlight. Didn’t seem to bother them any and it was cheap entertainment. When they fly they make a clucking kind of sound. I heard the sound before I saw the birds and thought something really odd must be going south on Vivo. Usually its squeak squeak bang slam. Not cluck cluck. Glad to have the company. Gets a little dull about that time of the morning.

Found a new reason I like being in the ARC group. A couple of boats ahead of us spotted a long line fishing setup out in the middle of nowhere. 1-½ miles of net. With a buoy on either end. You sail into that and you have a big tangled problem. They got a GPS location on both ends of the net and we were able to radio relay it back all the way through the 39 boats in the fleet. Which by now are spread out over hundreds of miles. We were not on an intercept course ourselves but I am sure some of the boats behind us would have been. Or near.

Some of the boats got rained on and cleaned up today. We could use it. We are caked with salt. We missed all the squalls. One boat, Sweat Pearl, got rained on all day. They were wet and miserable. Would have traded them a half day of it for sure.

Day five, or six, or maybe four. No idea. Fishing again and we got two hits at the same time. They both took off like a freight train. I grabbed one pole, Bob the other. Mine ran off about 4/5 of the reel than spit the hook. Bobs took the whole reel and gone. Lure and 450 foot of line. I clearly need bigger gear. I don’t want to catch fish that big. I just want a nice Mahi or Tuna. So the bench was empty. Down to my last store bought lure but have two poles to fish with. It was time to deploy Mr. Ugly. The rest of that day nothing. Next day, in goes my last store bought lure and Mr. Ugly again. Took till 4 PM but we got hit. First on the store lure which it spit out. Then Mr. Ugly got hit. Nice swordfish. Merc saw it. Tail dancing along taking massive quantities of line. I didn’t see it but she said it was as big as the other three we had tail dance for us. Makes it maybe a five footer. By then I was on the rod and it went deep. Then slack. Spit it out with about 350 foot of line out. I started reeling back in and when it got to about 200 feet of line out it got hit several times again. I assume the same fish. Never hooked up but that’s probably a good thing. I would have lost again. They are just too big for the gear I have. But Mr. Ugly got asked to the prom and is no longer a virgin. I am such a proud Papa. He came from nothing! Literally. Out of the trash heap. Only the hook was new. Everything else recycled. Although I must say Pop Tart wrappers don’t hold up very well. But I have a plan. You know the foil lid on a Pringles can? Oh yeah. I have a plan.

70 miles to Galapagos. About three hours from crossing the equator. There is an old sailors tradition when crossing the equator. Ones who have done it before are called “Shellbacks”.  Ones who have not are “Polywogs”. The Shellbacks come up with all kinds of tortuous hazing for the Pollywogs. But since we are all Pollywogs on board here we are just going to have a glass of rum and toast the event. Can’t wait. We do passages dry, (if I had not mentioned that). And I don’t mean the kind where it doesn’t rain. I mean the kind where you go without a drink FOREVER! Gets kind of tough. Every time I open the fridge I can hear the beer and wine shouting at me. But when you get that first beer after dropping the hook and finishing the passage. Ho boy does that one taste good!

So off to see the Galapagos. Always wanted to go there. Never figured I would sail there. And after this there is a three week passage to Marquesas’. If you think that last one was long what do you think I might come up with having three weeks of time to kill? I am going to clog the blog!