Into the Pacific

We left the Las Perlas Islands, in early April and had a generally pleasant sail. The wind was gentle and the sea fairly flat. I could sleep reasonably well, so didn’t get tired or bad tempered. The bananas began ripening too quickly so we had them raw, fried, frittered and baked as bread – I even tried drying them but the air was too damp and they just went rotten. We had some periods of no wind at all and had to motor, but that was good for the batteries anyway. On the eighth day, distressingly, ‘George’ the autopilot (despite the new motor) began, once again, to play up from time to time. Mostly, it worked well and we thought it must be lack of power.



On day nine a scruffy little white bird landed in the cockpit and remained with us for three days. We named him Egg – he looked like an Egret. His first day he just stood there looking exhausted, swaying on his skinny little legs to the motion of the boat, and tucking his head under his wing for long periods to sleep. His feathers were dirty (it looked like oil) and when awake he would try to clean them. He ignored us (and all offers of sustenance) completely. On the second day he accepted a little water and shortly thereafter spat a clot of something onto the teak. After that he improved markedly and became positively friendly, climbing onto Mike’s lap at one point. Unfortunately we had nothing suitable in the way of food, so though he would investigate our offerings, he rejected them all. On the third day he flew up and perched on the steel arch at the back of the boat and that night he disappeared. He was almost a pet by then and we were sorry to see him go and worried for his survival.

On day ten we crossed the Equator and celebrated with a tepid beer (the new 12 volt fridge had long since been switched off), splashing a little overboard as our obligatory offering to Neptune and/or Poseidon. We heard some yachties had huge celebrations - for many of them this was their first time ever to cross into the southern hemisphere. It was less of a big deal for us, having grown up down that end of the globe.



On the twelfth day we made landfall at Baquerizo Moreno (Wreck Bay) on San Cristobal Island. Our electronic charts, perfect in so much of the world, were up to 400 yards off out here, and we had to ignore them when close to land and use eyeball navigation only. There is a reef outside Wreck Bay, over which the incoming waves were breaking heavily as we arrived, and we had a few terrifying moments trying to steer clear of them. Once in, it was a good safe anchorage and full of yachts.

Wreck Bay - Forever bottom right

The Port Capitan was charming, though confused when we didn’t produce a Zarpe (which is the official check out paper from Panama). I’m afraid to say Mike had by now become a bit of a cowboy about such things, particularly after our debacle with the Americans. We’d heard that checking out of Panama was a long-winded and costly process, so he simply decided not to bother. When the Capitan asked “donde es el Zarpe?” we looked puzzled, shrugged our shoulders, waved our arms about helplessly, saying in our best Spanish “no se, no entiendo, no Zarpe!” hopefully giving the impression that the Panamanian authorities had slipped up somehow. We kept this up for about ten minutes, laughing hilariously, whereupon he gave up in frustration and processed our papers anyway. Well, what was his alternative? Send us back to Panama for the Zarpe?



We hate paying to enter a country, and nearly didn’t go to the Galapagos as we had heard it was very expensive. The cost of checking in was US$56 for the boat and $30 for Immigration for the two of us, expensive but less than we had been led to believe, certainly within the average cruiser’s budget, and definitely worth it for the pleasure of stopping in this exquisite place. We were given 20 days to remain in the archipelago and told we may visit the island of Isabella but not Santa Cruz. We could have chosen Santa Cruz as our check-in port, but having not done so, we were forbidden to go there. The logic of this eluded us, but that’s how it was. Those boats that had particularly wanted to visit Santa Cruz, had made it their landfall.