February 2014 - Ecuador to Galapagos - Page 2

8 February 2014   Bahia de Caraques, Ecuador
We had a bit of a rest from jobs today.  Glenys spent most of the day reading up on the Marquesas using a pilot book that we have borrowed from “Albion”.  She’s making notes on the various anchorages and what we can do on each of the various islands.  A lot of the information is very sketchy and the pilot book is about ten years old, so she’s been relying on other cruiser’s blogs to find out more recent information.

I finally managed to finish off editing our photographs and have got our website up to date – I was five weeks behind.  

I motivated myself in the afternoon and finished the anchor rode by doing some whipping on the rope end and putting on some markers so that I know how much scope I’m putting out.  I then put it all away in the anchor locker, checked the windlass and shackled the chain onto the anchor.  We’re starting to feel like we’re ready to go – the sails have been repaired and we again have our anchor ready to use.  I’ve got a few more critical jobs to do next week, but we should be good to leave as planned on the 21st.

9 February 2014   Bahia de Caraques, Ecuador
Glenys continued with her research of the Pacific islands, while I did some investigation about where we’re going to go after New Zealand.  Our plan had been to stay in New Zealand until April 2015 and then sail up to Fiji and Vanuatu for five months.  We’d then go south down to Australia in September 2015 for the cyclone season and then sail up to Indonesia the following year.

Unfortunately, the best time to sail up through Indonesia is August, so that would mean that we’d be in Australia for nearly a year and we’re not sure that we want to spend that long there.  After great debate, we decided that we’re not going to stop in Australia at all – the regulations for entering with a boat are very strict, so it’s too much hassle.  We’d rather fly to Australia for a “road trip” from Malaysia or somewhere.

On the other hand, Indonesia is a tricky place to cruise because of their draconian regulations and some security concerns.  So, we’re planning to join the “Sail Indonesia” rally, which leaves Darwin at the end of July and arrives in Singapore in October.  This means that we’ll have to sail directly to Indonesia from Vanuatu.  Our revised timetable will give us 2-3 months in Melanesia and then a long 1,700 mile sail through the Torres Straits in July to meet up with the rally - it looks something like this:

It’ll be lots of sailing for eighteen months, but then we can chill out in Malaysia and Thailand for a year.

In the afternoon, we were invited to Alberto’s apartment for a pool party and barbeque.  It was a good turnout with about ten cruisers there and a similar number of ex-pats, who live in Bahia.  Most people disappeared as the sun was going down, but Glenys seemed to be in a mood to party, so we stayed drinking with Alberto and his mate, Curtis - big mistake.  I wouldn't say that Glenys was drunk, but by ten o’clock, she was in the pool in her bra and knickers and had lost a contact lens – those rum cocktails were very strong.  

I managed to persuade her to go home and had to support her as we staggered back to the marina.  We poured ourselves back onto the boat at eleven o'clock – I think that Pedro (the night watchman) was a little concerned about us because he followed us in his boat and made sure that we got home safely.

10 February 2014   Bahia de Caraques, Ecuador
Not a great surprise, but Glenys was feeling a little “fragile” this morning, so after dragging herself out of bed at half past nine, she went into town to wander around aimlessly for a while.  Meanwhile I got on servicing some of our winches.

I’ve been a little slack in my preventative maintenance and I was shocked to find out that the last time I serviced a winch was eighteen months ago and that was only because it had started to seize up.  It took me most of the day to service four winches.  I’ve probably said this before, but our Lewmar winches are a beautiful piece of engineering.  They take incredible loads and work wonderfully, yet I can take them apart and service them with nothing more than a screwdriver (used as a lever), a load of rags and some fresh grease.

Glenys didn’t feel much better in the afternoon, so she just did a few runs ashore to get water from the dinghy dock, then sat in front of the laptop browsing the internet.

11 February 2014   Bahia de Caraques, Ecuador
I arranged to go to Manta with Geovanny the taxi driver tomorrow.  We need to pick up the new bowsprit, get some boat parts and do a big food shop, so Glenys did a detailed stock take of her provisions.

She found that some of her flour had weevils, so she then had to inspect every single bag of dry goods on the boat.  It wasn’t good news - all of her rice and most of her flour was tipped over board.  Her pasta was okay because it’s been kept in plastic jars with tight lids.  She suspects that the problem came from some big bags of rice that she bought in Panama and has spread because she kept one opened bag in a locker.  The little buggers spread from there.  They’re tenacious little devils boring their way through plastic bags. 

I finally got around to repairing the dinghy floor.  We developed a crack in the fibre glass hull about four months ago and I patched it up with epoxy resin, but it only lasted a few weeks before my patch cracked.  We’ve been putting up with water in the bottom of the dinghy for months.  This time I put two pieces of thick, reinforced fibreglass matting on both side of the hull and made the patch a lot bigger, so I’m hoping that it will strong enough.

12 February 2014   Bahia de Caraques, Ecuador
Glenys spent most of the day working on the dinghy.  She cleaned the fibre glass hull which had become filthy in this estuary and then painted my fibreglass repairs with some white bilge paint.  She also tried to find the slow leaks that we’ve got in two of the tubes, with no success.  The leaks are not too bad, but I’m worried that the Hyperlon fabric on the tubes is starting to breakdown and has become porous.

I spent all day servicing the generator and engine.  I really hate doing this job because I have to change the oil and the diesel filters and it makes such a mess, although I’m gradually getting more organised after three years of doing the job.  It all went fairly well, but I’m a bit concerned about the starter motor on the generator.  There’s 2 mm of play between the motor and the engine flange and tightening the bolts has no effect.  I suspect that there are some captive nuts inside the engine flange that are loose and that might mean the generator has to be taken apart – not a pleasant prospect.  That’s another job on the list of things to do in New Zealand.

In the evening, we invited over “Albion” and “Armagh” for a beer or six.

13 February 2014   Bahia de Caraques, Ecuador
I woke up this morning realising that when we leave Ecuador, we’ll finally be free of American 110V mains electricity.  The rest of the world uses 220V, which is the voltage that most of our appliances use on the boat.   We have two exceptions to this – the air conditioning unit and a small heater that we bought in the States.  There’s no point in lugging these things around with us because we can only use them in marinas and they’ll be useless from here on – after running around the anchorage, I finally sold it to the marina for $50.

We spent the morning preparing shopping lists for tomorrow’s spending spree in Manta.  Glenys has a long provisioning list which will hopefully keep us going for three months.  I’ve got a list of boat parts to top up my spares inventory after the jobs that we’ve done here.

In the afternoon, I worked on our 15hp outboard.  I separated the lower gearbox assembly from the engine to inspect the water pump and change the impellor.  The lower unit hasn’t been looked at for a couple of years, so I was very nervous about things being seized up, but it went fairly well.  The water pump is in a sad state with a broken bolt and dodgy looking seals, but all I could do was to put in a new impeller and put it back together.  I’ll buy a replacement water pump and service kit when we get to New Zealand and hope that the engine holds out until then.

In the evening, Glenys made an Ecuadorian dish called Seco de Carne, which is a kind of Beef Stew with Tamarind – very tasty.

14 February 2014   Bahia de Caraques, Ecuador
We went into Manta with Geovanny and blew $1,200, half of which was at the supermarket and half of that was beer and booze.  Alcohol is very expensive in French Polynesia, so we’ve bought eight cases of beer, 20 litres of red wine and 10 bottle of rum – we’d have bought more, but we couldn’t store any more on the boat.  Glenys stocked up on canned and dry goods and was particularly happy to find tinned tomatoes – she’s not seen them anywhere in Ecuador over the past three months, so she bought 15 cans of the stuff.

While Glenys was in the supermarket, Geovanny ran me around town for a couple of hours buying various things for the boat (or trying to.)  It’s so difficult to get anything faintly to do with sail boats.   It’s very frustrating knowing that I can go on-line in the UK and get stuff delivered directly to my house within a couple of days.  Instead, I spent hours driving around Manta trying to find things like spark plugs and pump impellors – no such luck.

We picked up the new Bowsprit, which looks to be the correct size, but they haven’t polished it to a mirror shine like I would have expected.  Still, it looks strong enough and we can polish it up somewhere along the road to New Zealand. 

I talked to the marina office about clearing out and leaving on the 21st.  They said that I’ll need a National Zarpe and will not need to clear out of Immigration, but my boat papers will need to be sent to Manta to the Navy (or somebody) to tell them that we’re moving on.  Unfortunately, they also said that I’ll need to give them a copy of my Autographo, which is a kind of cruising permit for the Galapagos, but my agent in the Galapagos (Bolivar) hasn’t sent it to me yet.  I’ve emailed him requesting a scanned copy – watch this space...