Adventures

After a successful/crazy ass haulout in Panama and help from our new crew member Robbie, we left Panama City and sailed/motored over to the Las Perlas (an Island Group) for a couple days of chilling out and snorkeling.

Not exactly sure of the day of the week, but I do know it was around one in the afternoon when we hauled up the anchor and headed off for the Galapagos.

The first 3 days were spectacular. We had 20+ knots of wind on the stern and gust to 30. The boat was absolutely flying along. At times we only had up a double reefed mainsail and still cooking along. Robbie learned why I do not flinch at the price tag of our Hydrovane wind-vane. That thing was steering us down some big ass square waves like a champ.

With three people on board everyone was well rested and well fed. Robbie was an awesome crew member. It’s nice to have crew that knows what the hell to do on a boat and that we can trust to run it when both me and Tawn are off shift and crashed out down below.

Sometime on day three or four of the passage the wind died on us, but left some really gnarly humped up waves behind, so instead of wallowing around in that crap we decided to motor and let the seas mellow out a bit. 12 hours later the wind was back and we had another day or two of sailing. Unfortunately the wind started coming out of the South West and that combined with current we were getting pushed way north of our rhumbline. About 100 miles north of the Equator the wind died completely so we motored the last 2 days to the Galapagos.

I did a quick update on us crossing the Equator, but what I did not mention was that we actually crossed it 3 times. The reason…….? Robbie was not fast enough with his camera to capture the exact 00.00.000 moment on the chart plotter, so we circled back so he could get it. He fucked that up again, so we circled back one more time. :)

Once we actually got to the Galapagos, Jason and Christy of Hello World fame joined us (by plane) for a couple weeks of sweet Galapagos action.

We did some inland touring and scuba diving with them.

Here are some pictures of one of the dives we did while they were here.

Here is the gang (Robbie, Tawn, Jason, Christy, and me behind the camera). We took a dive trip out to a place called Kicker Rock.

Kicker Rock (Far!)

Kicker Rock (Near!)

This is me and Tawn on an (yet another) Awesome beach

This is a sea lion pup

This is sea lion poop. In case your’re wondering, it is not the pup’s poop. Not to my knowledge at least.

It’s CB and Jason underwater! If you want some awesome video of Jason scuba diving and looking at stuff, you should ask him to show you his video. It is an incredible bit of film making. Think selfie……for 32 goddamn minutes.

Here is Christy, she also has some riveting footage, in fact. I think we captured her filming here.

This is Tawn, giving a big thumbs up. Why? She thinks she is filming video footage, when in fact, she took 581 stills. There may have been a slight misunderstanding of the camera instructions.

Roooooobbbbieeeee!!! He didn’t fuck up any video. Why? Cause he dropped his phone in the water somewhere in Mexico prior to joining us. Dodged a bullet there Robbie.

The following video is a very quick and ugly edit of what I thought were some of the best parts of the videos we all took while diving together here in the Galapagos. Enjoy?

In all the confusion that was our time in Panama City….we forgot to post about the Panama Canal. Before getting to Panama City we had signed up on a website that people who are transiting the Panama Canal use to find crew. When you take your boat through you need 5 people on board minimum (4 line handlers and the person steering). We were asked by s/v Saoroni to help them go from the Atlantic side to the Pacific. They had started cruising in 2006 leaving New Zealand and heading the other way around the world. They are now headed home. Anywho…early on the morning of the 16th of February we took off on a bus to head across Panama to Colon. Since Panama is so narrow, it was only a 2 hour bus ride. We met up with our boat and headed out that evening to transit the first part of the canal. Here are some pics.

We met up with Saorani at Club Nautico…quite the upscale establishment??? Whaaattt! Luckily, none of those boats are Saorani.

The first day we locked through the first set of locks called Gatun Locks. They consisted of 3 locks going up from the Atlantic side to Lake Gatun. We took on our pilot for that day on the Atlantic side. His job was to coordinate the three boats we would go through with and the timing with the lock operators.

The locks were no wider than the Chittenden Locks in Seattle, but much longer. Fun fact…the current locks are not big enough for the Super Panamax ships. So until the new locks are finished (which should have been in 2014) the Super Panamax ships offload onto the older Panamax ships at each end of the canal because only the Panamax ships can fit in the locks. More fun facts…instead of building the new locks to allow for even larger ships to be built in the future…they built them to the exact dimensions of the Super Panamax ships. How´s that for progress :-)

2014 was 100 years of the Locks being open…thus the reason they probably wanted the new locks to open that year…not sure what they were thinking…they are not even close this year!

These super powerful locomotives are attached on each side of the Panamax boats as they go through the canal. Apparently in the beginning the ships would lurch forward when the locks were equalized and bust through the front locks killing everyone below. They used to use huge sleds with horses….I would have liked to see that. Everything about the Panama Canal was an amazing feat in engineering.

We were three boats rafted together and suspended in the middle of the locks with a bow and stern line on each side. The trip up we were wedged in with this behemoth. Not quite sure what that name is all about??? Oh yeah…this is Sue, she is Geoff’s sister who flew all the way from England to help them go through the Locks.

Since sailboats generally move slower, we spent the night rafted up to a huge bouy in Lake Gatun with the other 2 boats. Had to get up bright and early at 0 dark thirty they next morning to make the 25 mile treck across the lake and down through the next three locks to the Pacific Ocean.

Lake Gatun was quite beautiful with lots of tributaries and islets. Nothing like I expected. Basically it is a man made lake. 2 large rivers feed into the lake that made the canal possible. No other boats are allowed on the lake due to the safety of the canal traffic, but also because the navigation is foul. There are full size trees still standing all along the route through the lake. Pretty weird looking.

There is a lot going on in the canal zone once you exit the Lake and start through the cut. Lots of dredging, constantly appparently due to silt build up.

It is a little overwhelming to see the size of these ships when you are only a few boat lengths away from them.

Some of the hugest equipment on the planet is being used in the canal zone right now.

This picture doesn´t quite capture the size of these dump trucks. But we could hardly even see the pick up next to one of them. This is the area of the new locks. They are building terraces along the cut to keep the sides from caving in. It is impossible to explain how much earth is being moved daily by these machines.

The Locks on the Pacific side consist of the Pedro Miguel locks (2) then the small lake Miraflores and then the big lock down to the Pacific Ocean Miraflores Lock. There is a viewing platform at the Miraflores lock that allows people to observe the locking process. There is also a webcam that we tried to get a screen shot of us going through, but lost the page due to internet or operator error:-)

CB and I in Moraflores Lake.

These locks are really old…100 years as I said earlier. When they made these locks the engineers knew next to nothing about the use of concrete in such big projects. When they poored these walls they did not use any rebar or reinforcement. This is just pure poored concrete…guess a little stress crack here and there is expected.

This is how our three boats were anchored in the locks. Apparently it is uncommon for just recreational boats to lock through alone. It is made very clear that we are a nuisance and these locks are for ships. But this day there were so many recreational vessels that they made the exception….it isn´t cheap to go through the locks, so maybe they made their per lock quota on this many sailboats:-)

Finally the Pacific Ocean…the Bridge of the Americas welcoming Saoroni back to her waters!!!

It was an amazing experience to go through the Panama Canal, if nothing else to mark it off the bucket list. But it made me realize how big of a deal the Seattle Locks are as well and what that engineering feat must have been like back in the day.

Our friends Jason and Christy came to visit us while we were in the Galapagos. Much fun was had and much shit talked. Mostly Jason let us know, on a daily basis, how upset he was about our poor preformance in the blog post region. Well Jason, you got your very own blog post…enjoy my friend :-)

I can almost feel Jason giving me this look right now!

I’m not sure who keeps track of these things. There has to be an official list somewhere. But, as of 6:57pm Friday 13 March 2015 could someone in charge please add Tawnya L. Midkiff, Robbie F. Robertson, and Kevin (CB) L. Midkiff to the list of official ShellBacks!

For those of you who do not know all things archaic and nautical. A Pollywog is a lowly sort of human that has not crossed the equator on a boat. Once one of these pitiful creatures has somehow managed to accomplish this feat they are elevated to Shellback status.

I’m not entirely sure what sort of benefits come with this, but at a bare minimum I should get 10% off (or at least free refills) at Long John Silvers for the rest of my life. Soooooo…..suck it landlubbers!