Panama to the Galapagos

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?