Acapulco to Galapagos Islands Nov. 27 – Dec 10, 2003
The passage from Acapulco to the Galapagos Islands was our first long ocean passage; one that I had been looking forward to but have to acknowledge had been the cause of some fear on the part of the crew. On this leg we spent almost two weeks at sea in just about every condition. The plan was to head straight south for the first 500 miles, skirting the seaward edge of the infamous Gulf of Tehuantapec in hopes of avoiding any of the frequent ‘Tehuantapeckers’ that blow southwest from the Atlantic over the skinny part of Mexico and generate winds to 40 or 50 knots and seas of 15 to 20 feet. The other common route, that many cruisers heading to Costa Rica use, is to travel south with ‘one foot on the shore’ keeping within 50 miles of the coast. That option would have added many extra miles and days to our journey so I opted for the seaward route. Once past the gulf we would turn south east, pass through the inter-tropical convergence zone (the ‘doldrums’) and make for the Galapagos Islands, just south of the equator.
We departed Acapulco at 1100h on US Thanksgiving with between five and ten knots of wind and calm seas. What wind we had was, naturally, coming pretty much from the direction we wanted to go.
On Nov. 28th we were motoring along with less than five knots of wind in a perfectly flat calm when we came into the largest school of dolphins I have ever seen. Now, it’s not unusual to have a few dolphins playing up near the bow of the boat, surfing the bow wave, but here were literally dozens of dolphins keeping us company, surrounding the boat in all directions. The water was so clear and blue that we all took turns standing on the bow watching them take turns surfing the bow wave below us eight and ten at a time. To test the theory that dolphins will come to the aid of a swimmer in the ocean I turned off the engine and jumped in. The dolphins disinterestedly swam off leaving me to wonder whether there were any sharks about that might be more curious about a swimmer in the ocean.
It was on this leg that strange electrical problems began to manifest themselves. The wind generator stopped putting out. The engine alternator stopped charging the batteries. The charge controller for the solar panels stopped working. The Inmarsat-C satellite terminal stopped receiving weather reports. The SG-2000 HF radio, always a spotty performer, stopped receiving weather faxes and couldn’t make contact with any shore stations.
I managed to restore battery charging by directly wiring the solar panels to the batteries. To prevent overcharging the batteries, I monitored the voltage and disconnected the circuit when the battery voltage indicated a full charge. With the current draw of the refrigeration at 40 amps for a couple of hours a day I did not have to disconnect the regulator often.
I later managed to fix the alternator by taking it apart and cleaning all the contacts. With the engine able to charge the batteries we could keep the fridge and freezer cold so we would not lose all our fresh and frozen food and we had electricity to run the electronics and lights. But the charge controller was fried and the wind generator was a mystery.
From Nov. 30 to Dec. 2 we caught the tail end of a Tehuantepecker that gave us good winds in the high teens and low twenties. The swells, from the northeast, were the largest we had seen yet, some of them up to twenty feet. This gave an indication of the size of the system that had generated them and made us thankful that we had stayed well to the west of the gulf. We took these big swells heading southeast on a broad reach resulting in a fantastic slow-motion roller coaster ride. It was thrilling to watch a big swell approach, feel the boat lift up ten to twenty feet atop the big comber and then drop down the same distance into the trough on the other side, only to rise up the next one six seconds later.
By 0500, Dec. 3 the system had pushed us to 7d 6’N, 96d 19’W and into the intertropical convergence zone (ITCZ), or Doldrums, a variable zone of flat seas, little wind, slight current, and frequent, brief thunderstorms between the boundaries of the northeast and southeast tradewinds. We went from conditions of high winds, great boat speeds, and fifteen foot swells to a flat calm, less than five knots of wind and boat speeds topping around out at two knots.
Without any weather reports it was impossible to tell the exact location and extent of the ITCZ so I was reluctant to motor through it and expend our limited supply of diesel fuel. We were carrying enough for about 60 hours of motoring, or about 300 miles, and needed to ensure that we had fuel in the tanks for motoring into the harbour at our destination. We drifted, sails slatting for two agonizing days, until 1000h Dec. 5, at which point I gave in and began to motor south. Within about six hours we had reached 4d 31’N, 95d 55’W and the wind went from 3.5 knots to 12 knots in the space of a few minutes. Apparently we had reached the southern edge of the ITCZ.
The winds were now from the north east to east and we had to beat into the wind to make our easting towards the Galapagos. The equatorial current was drawing us west and the winds were blowing from the east making it very difficult to make our way east towards our destination. Every time we tacked the boat would veer through almost 180 degrees because of the effect of the current. The boat took a pounding over the next several days as we close hauled into 15 to 20 knot winds and six-foot seas. Alarmingly, the rudder began to make a clunking noise as the boat plowed into the oncoming seas and launched itself off the backs of the large waves. Once among the Galapagos Islands the wind, ever fickle, came and went, usually straight on the nose and we were faced with a 1.5 to 2 knot current, also on the nose as we made our way southeast towards San Cristobal Island and the port of entry, Baquerizo San Moreno.
At 2300h, Dec. 10, after five days of beating and towards the end, occasionally motoring, we arrived, again in the dark, at Baquerizo San Moreno known in English, ominously, as Wreck Bay. The entrance to the bay is ¼ mile wide and 60 feet deep in between surf breaking on rocks to the north and a half mile expanse of shallow flats to the south. We followed the 60 foot depth contour in using the depth meter, confirming land mass locations with radar, and listening to the surf pounding on the rocks. We dropped anchor in about 30 feet of water in the middle of a mass of local fishing and tour boats; we finally got to bed around 0300h. The anchorage in Wreck Bay is exposed to swells coming in from the west and so is fairly rolly. Still, after almost two weeks at sea it was a relief to suspend the watch schedule and let everyone sleep for a long stretch.
The check in procedure was not too onerous here since we had a 30 day cruising permit that we had secured before we left the US from the Naval Attaché at the Ecuadorian Embassy in Washington via fax over a period of three months. The check in with the Port Captain covered customs and vessel clearance. The immigration clearance was in the local police station but the immigration officers spend most of their time at the airport so it was difficult to get our passports stamped in a timely fashion.
Rick was in a hurry to get back to the US so he could be with his daughter who was having a premature birth. So he was on a plane home within a couple of days of our arrival. We did manage to go for a two-dive trip before Rick left; the first was to a big rock with a wall dive where it was cold and murky and the last to a seal lion breeding area. The sea lions played with us by performing aquabatics all around us. We later went ashore to see the sea lion colony and the marine iguanas and boobies that share the small island. Stephanie, Mary and I spent the next several days sightseeing locally. All indications were that there were better facilities and provisioning over at Puerto Ayora on Santa Cruz Island so we decided to head over there.
