We took the shuttle bus back to Guayaquil yesterday, and spent a sultry night back at Ecuahogar. I don't recommend this place--it is too run down with no apparent effort at maintenance.

We sent Nicki and Phil off to the Guayaquil airport at 5:30 this morning. Rather than call a reputable taxi for us, they sent us out on the street to wave down our own taxi. One of the 20 reasons I don't recommend Ecuahogar in Guayaquil.

We haven't heard from them, so assume they are safely back in Melbourne by now.

Dave and I took the 9:45 Reina del Camina bus to Bahia, arriving at about 3:15pm. We are glad to be home!

Now we start our final preps for leaving for the Galapagos.

Labels: Ecuador, Ecuador Inland

We have spent a couple of days sightseeing around Cuenca. Both Nicki and Dave came down with the 'touristas' so we've passed on some of the more strenuous stuff. We have all been enjoying our 'vacation'.

Dave and I took the 'Cuenca City Tour' on a double-decker bus. It is a 2-hour drive around town past the major sights (mostly churches). The last stop is the church up high on the hill overlooking the city. We didn't get much in the way of pictures, because we took our tour at night.


The next day, while Nicki was hanging out in the hotel with 'stomach issues', Dave and Phil and I hiked out to the Arenal Market. This is a HUGE open-air market in which they sell everything from shoes, to plasticware, to fish, to veggies, and even 'Cuy' (guinea pig). But we never found any handicrafts. They may be there, but we did a 'random walk' through the market for about a half an hour and didn't find them. This market is mostly for locals, not tourists.

On our walk out there, we passed the Flower Market and yet another 'Christmas Parade'.

And of course we visited some churches. There is almost an old spanish-style church on every street corner here. The big one on the square is so big that we had a hard time capturing the whole thing. The white one is the first church in Cuenca, circa late 1500's.

Labels: Ecuador, Ecuador Inland

We had a great Christmas Eve and Christmas day. We shared Christmas eve dinner with the owners of our hotel (Casa Ordonez). It was very nice of them to invite us to eat with them, and quite a homey touch.

We had a great american-style Christmas breakfast (included in the room price) and then went out to walk around town. Most things are closed, but we did get to go into the big cathedral (amazing) and walk along the 'waterfront' (more like a babbling brook). By afternoon some of the shops had opened up and we went gift shopping for a few of Nicki and Phil's friends. Dave also bought me a nice pair of handmade earings for Christmas.

The evening was capped by a nice Christmas dinner at a local restaurant, the Eucalyptus Cafe. It caters to 'gringos' and does a great job at it. They had Christmas music in english (on CD) and then some live local music for an hour. Very nice.

Today we head out for the Inca Pirca ruins nearby. More to follow.

Labels: Ecuador, Ecuador Inland

One of the things I love most about the cruising life is the support community, and this is why we missed Bahia so much.

Dave Teaches a Class on Water Pump Repair
Our world is one of shared adventure/shared adversity. So we become nearly instant friends with the other cruisers in an anchorage. At Puerto Amistad, there is a 'palapa' built specifically for the cruisers. A palapa is a Central American word for an open air thatched hut. But this one has a power plug every 2 feet, so no matter how many computers, iPods, cell phones, etc one brings ashore, there are enough outlets to plug everyone in.

The palapa is a cruiser's meeting place, away from the bar, where we can bring our computers in, hang out and use shore power and faster wifi, exchange books, music, DVD's, travel stories, maintenance issues, etc. Not a day goes by where there isn't a long discussion about some important issue... everything from renewing visas in Ecuador, to buying batteries, to outboard motor problems.

For example, a boat here called Dream Caper is looking for new batteries. Over the past couple of weeks there have been discussions on (a) reviving their old batteries (b) shipping heavy stuff into Ecuador (c) the merits of sailing back to Panama for batteries (d) Locating deep-cycle batteries for sale in Ecuador (e) The merits and downside of AGM batteries. I think they finally settled on buying Chinese AGM's via Quito. No Golf Cart batteries to be found here, unfortunately, and they don't want to go back to Panama.

As another example, we were having waterpump problems. We had several discussions ashore about our pump issues, and discivered that the boat next to us, Victoria, is also having water pump problems. So when Dave sat down with this box of spares to take apart our water pump and repair it, Kim and Pierre from Victoria came over and got a lesson from Dave in water pump repair.

Another boat, Amigo, is having his Perkins Front End taken apart by the local diesel mechanic. Dave wants to watch, just to get any tips from the mechanic on attacking the front end of a Perkins diesel.

Another boat is working on dinghy repair. We had been monitoring their progress and hoping to borrow a smidge of their 2-part glue to re-glue one of our oarlocks. But it turns out they don't have enough glue for their project... so ensued a long discussion on (a) whether they could bring glue back in their luggage from their trip home (b) the chances of finding the right glue in Ecuador (c) the merits and pitfalls of using 5200 Fast Cure instead.

Someone has a computer problem... word has gotten around that I'm a 'computer wizard', and any time I'm in the palapa, I get consulted on the latest computer issues (my computer runs too slow, my mouse jumps around when I turn my GPS on, Maxsea can't find my charts, Maxsea won't recognize my GPS, will xyz program run on Vista, what about Windows 7, etc). I have been repaid several times--never in cash--but usually with a bottle of wine or a nice meal.

There is also a "pay it forward" mentality here...I help you, you help someone else, they help someone else, and we all get that warm feeling.

And yes, here like every other anchorage, there are some "lost sheep"... people who's boats and mentality are totally unprepared for the cruising life... While WE were spending hours in Panama City doing maintenance and hunting down spares, they were hanging out in the Balboa Yacht Club drinking beer.

Those people tend to end up in remote ports with broken/inadequate gear, no tools, no spares, and no know-how. They are the bane of every anchorage, but we help them too. (Actually, we end up helping 2 or 3 times, and then ducking around the corner when they come ashore !!)

Labels: Ecuador, Maintenance

Even before we got into Puerto Amistad, we got ourselves on the 'need diesel' list. Things change so frequently in Ecuador that we wanted to get topped off as soon as we could.

We opted NOT to fuel up at Puerto Lucia Yacht Club's nice easy fuel dock... their price for 'foreigner diesel' has gone up to a whopping $3/gallon. This is partly because they are trying to recover the cost of all the extra equipment they had to put in, to be able to legally sell diesel to foreigners. Mario, the PLYC manager, told me they had spent over $100K to comply with the permitting process to be able to sell diesel to foreigners.

Diesel in Ecuador, on the street corner, sells for about $1 per gallon. This is so cheap compared to prices in neighboring countries, that some 'fishing' boats opted to start transporting diesel instead of fishing. So the Ecuadorean government declared that NO foreigners could buy diesel. At All. This was a couple of years ago, and you can imagine the gasps that swept through the cruising community. The wind is so light and flukey in this area, that even most budget cruisers opt to turn their motor on rather than roll around in a sloppy sea. We arrived in Puerto Amistad last February literally on fumes, because of our long windless passage down from Costa Rica.

When the government declared that foreigners couldn't buy diesel, there WERE ways for an enterprising cruiser to GET diesel... usually involving handing your portable tanks to an Ecuadorean and having them go buy it. But this kind of felt like cheating, and 'clean wake' cruisers didn't like to go around the system.

What has evolved in Puerto Amistad is a legally permitted process whereby (accompanied with lots of paperwork), Puerto Amistad buys the diesel in a portable tank at the gas station, and pumps it into your tanks from their launcha. Puerto Amistad is working on a more permanent solution, but for now, they are still using Carlos, a big lancha, and what looks like a big black plastic water tank with a small electric fuel pump. The overhead is low, and so far, so is the price. We bought 91 gallons at $1.50 per gallon. A savings of about $120 over fueling up at PLYC.

Part of the checkout process when you leave, is documenting how much fuel you came with, how much you bought, and how much you leave with. More paperwork!

Labels: Ecuador

Today is the SEC Championship game, and our team, the #1 ranked Florida Gators, go against the #2 ranked Alabama Crimson Tide. We are, of course, rooting for the Gators. We are not sure we'll be able to watch the game, but we're going to try.

The owner of Puerto Amistad, the cruiser facility where we are, is from Alabama, so he's committed to trying to get a video feed off the internet. We're just not sure how we'll do. It might also be televised on the Ecuadorean cable, since it is such a big game.

Labels: Ecuador, Florida Gators, USA 2009

Nov 26, 2009. After an oh-dark-thirty start from San Mateo, we arrived at the 'Waiting Room' waypoint for the entry into Bahia de Caráquez at 9:45. We had to motor the whole way, as the early morning winds were non-existent.

Though we have been in and out of Bahia once, and have waypoints from several sources, we thought it prudent to pay the $30 for the Puerto Amistad pilot to take us in. We had been emailing them for several days, apprising them of our progress, so they were ready for us. They even answered us on 69 from the bar at Puerto Amistad when we called!

Carlos, the pilot, finally made it out to us at about 10:15, so we ended up going in at just before high tide. We saw 7.5 feet at the lowest, but our high tide was a fairly low high tide. (A week later, the high is more than 2 feet higher). The tide reference used here is the Ecuadorean Navy site: http://www.inocar.mil.ec/mareas/mareas.php. This corresponds also with the free tide program WxTide32, for the tide location Rio Chone.

With calm winds and seas, and Carlos aboard, our entry over the bar was uneventful. Carlos took us right to the mooring that Puerto Amistad had saved for us and helped us get tied up.

By noon we were all secured, and I was below making Pumpkin Pie! We had one can of pie filling we had brought from the U.S. But that wasn't enough for 2 pies, so I got some Ecuadorean pumpkin pieces in the market before we left PLYC, and cooked them down (an easy process, and it tastes much better than the canned stuff).

They turned out 'not bad'. It's the first time I've cooked a 'totally from scratch' Pumpkin Pie since our isolated Thanksgiving in Tobago oh-so-many-years-ago (about 1995).

Puerto Amistad had invited not only the cruisers, but a lot of local Ecuadoreans to their Thanksgiving feast. I heard they had about 120 people there--with 6 Turkeys, some Pork Loin, and a bunch of cruiser and Puerto Amistad-supplied side-dishes. Tripp and his wife gave nice 'Thank You' speeches in both English and Spanish, explaining the Thanksgiving tradition in Spanish to the Ecuadoreans.

It was great fun for us to be with a bunch of other cruisers again. Though at the end at Puerto Lucia, we did have a few cruisers there, we've REALLY missed the cruising social life. We sat with our friends from Neos, who we last saw in March 2008 in Bocas del Toro, Panama, on the Caribbean side.

Labels: Ecuador

Thursday Nov 26. We spent last night at the small open anchorage of San Mateo (S 00 57.267 W 080 48.367)

The wind was howling (~15-20 Kts, which is howling for Ecuador) and the seas were up, as we rounded the two capes and peeked at the anchorage from offshore. We could see waves breaking and only 2 fishing boats. It didn't look like much of an anchorage in the conditions. But we decided to go in and take a look anyway. We also prepared to divert to Manta, another hour further along the coast, in case we needed to.

The anchoraged turned out to be perfectly acceptable. We found a nice spot, good holding, seemed like sand, in about 25 feet, behind and slightly shoreward of the two fishing boats. What we had seen breaking from offshore was a small reef extending from the point, that gave a little extra protection to the otherwise open bay.

While the wind was blowing (afternoon and early evening), it kept our bow mostly pointed into the chop and swell. After the wind dropped, we did roll a bit whenever we were beam-on to the swell, but not too bad. By morning, both the wind and seas had dropped to nearly nothing--with just the gentle long Pacific swell left.

We left the anchorage at 4:30 am, in the dark. There were fishing boats about, but all the ones we could see were lit. We kept a good bow watch until it was sufficient daylight to see well from the cockpit (about 5:30am).

Labels: Ecuador

We have had a really fun and adventurous year, visiting Chile, Peru, Argentina, Colombia, Ecuador, Germany, France, California, Florida, NC, SC, Georgia. Plus getting a huge amount of maintenance work done on Soggy Paws. But it sure is good to be back on board, in the water, and cruising again.

Even though we are a bit on a schedule, and the wind is light, we managed to sail for most of the day yesterday. Our light air 'Code Zero' sail is invaluable in these conditions (without having to deal with the complexities of a spinnaker). We anchored overnight at Isla Salango, using waypoints from the Ecuador Cruiser's Handbook http://svsoggypaws.com/files/EcuadorCruisers2009.pdf We will stop tonight at San Mateo, and then get a very early start on Thursday morning, to be at the 'Waiting Room' for Bahia de Caraquez at 9:45am to be piloted over the bar.

We have a small stuffing box leak and a very small transmission oil drip, but neither is serious and both are fixable. (The 'stuffing box' is the hole where the prop shaft goes from the engine out to the prop. It is stuffed with some magic stuff that lets the shaft turn but theoretically keeps the water out. It is always a delicate balance between 'too tight, and there's too much friction', which is bad. And 'too loose, and the water comes in', which is also bad.

Dave is happy with the engine, though a little stressed by a couple of drops of transmission oil in his clean white bilge. But he is optimistic that he can stop that. We ran the engine for about 2 full hours yesterday, and Mr Perkins sounded good.

We have a few more chores to do on our 'must do before setting out for the Galapagos' list, and we are hoping to fit in one more adventure in northern Peru, and also see a little more of Ecuador. Daughter Nicki and her significant other, Phil, are coming for a Christmas visit to Cuenca (Ecuador). And then we set out for the Galapagos around the 6th or 7th of January. Our Autografo (cruising permit) for the Galapagos is 'in process'.

Can't wait!!
-----
At 11/25/2009 12:55 AM (utc) our position was 01°35.56'S 080°51.68'W

Labels: Ecuador, Maintenance, On Passage

The last thing we did before we left Puerto Lucia was pay our marina bill and pick up our Zarpe from the agent.

Finally the agent who handled our clearance in, and 2 extension requests, and our clearance out, got paid his $183.50 fee, plus a fee of $45 to the Port Captain for the zarpe.

After all the stories we'd previous heard about boats in Salinas overstaying their 3 month 'limit' (a limit imposed only by the Customs man in Salinas, and not elsewhere in Ecuador), and the troubles they had leaving. But we had been very proper with our paperwork (the extension letters). It turned out to be a non-issue for us.

In general, other than the cost, we are VERY VERY happy with our stay at Puerto Lucia Yacht Club. It is a top-notch facility, and we thought the cost somewhat reasonable for the level of service, just a little high for Ecuador, and for a typical cruiser's budget.
-----
At 11/25/2009 12:55 AM (utc) our position was 01°35.56'S 080°51.68'W

Labels: Ecuador, Maintenance

I can't believe Dave sent Ignacio up the mast to re-run our spinnaker halyard.




But he had fun up there, and we managed not to drop him.

He's a really fine young man, and we are sorry to have to say goodbye.

Goodbye Ignacio!!

Soggy Paws Looking Pretty Good

Labels: Ecuador, Maintenance

We were supposed to go in first thing in the morning, because that's when the high tide was. But we're on Ecuadorian time, so finally about 11am the lift came. We were afloat by 11:45. They didn't drop us. There is no water coming in any of the wrong places. The engine works. The bottom paint survived the lift. What more can you ask for?

Tomorrow we leave for Bahia de Caraquez. We plan to arrive there on the high tide at 11am on Thursday, just in time for Thanksgiving Dinner!

Labels: Ecuador, Maintenance

After complete disassembly of the back end of the engine (to repair a leaky rear main seal), and some preventive maintenance on the ignition, Dave got it all back together again. No parts left over, either!


And better yet, we fired 'Mr. Perkins' up and he roared to life. Yay!!

The first time we tried, Dave had forgotten to switch on part of the ignition cut-out circuit, and as I listened from down below to the engine turn over and not start... my heart sank. My job was to sit down below with a hose jammed in the intake, to let cooling water flow while the engine was running. So I couldn't tell what was going on.

But once all the switches were in the right place, it started right up. We ran it for a couple of minutes while Dave checked things out. Other than needing to tighten one belt up, everything's ready for our early morning launch.

Labels: Ecuador, Maintenance

We got our liferaft repacked for an unbelievably cheap price of $170.


Almost all boats carry a liferaft. This is a $3,000-$4,000 investment that you hope you never use. I have never even seen our liferaft, except in a brochure. Ours is a Revere Offshore 6-person raft.

Life rafts are required to be 'serviced' every few years. You take it to a certified facility, they open it up, blow it up, make sure it still holds air, and change out the perishable supplies. In the U.S., it's a big deal, and costs a lot of money, between the labor rates and the regulations as to what the can and can't do.

But all 'overseas' repackings are not created equal either. A friend in Panama had theirs done and it cost them about $1200 (!!). So we were pretty careful in asking questions about what the costs were before we took our raft in for servicing. At most places, there is a fixed price for the repacking, and then a price for each item that might be changed out. It is wise to not just compare the fixed price, but also look at the supplies price list. There can sometimes be a huge markup on the supplies.

There are 4 companies that we found that said they could do it in Guayaquil (the big city a 2 hour bus ride away). All of them are certified by some well-known liferaft company, NONE of them are certified by our manufacturer (Revere). Dave finally settled on Parfi Engineering and Inspectors

Jofrey Parfi, the owners son, speaks great English, and offered to pick us up from the bus station and take us to his facility. One of our requirements was that they allow us to watch them open it up, blow it up, and repack it. Another was that we could choose what 'disposables' actually got replaced. Another was good English, so we could communicate easily with the personnel. A final requirement was the ability to vacuum seal the bag when they repacked it.

A Parfi Technician Inspects our Hard Case
We teamed up with fellow cruisers Steve and Josie from the British vessel Elysian, and took the 9am CLP bus from La Libertad. It was no trouble 'checking' our 75-lb liferaft in the bus's cargo bin. On arrival in Guayaquil, there was a guy with a cart waiting, and for $1 he carted the two rafts out to the pickup point. 5 minutes later, Jofrey drove up in his truck, and picked us up.

Within a few minutes, we were in their warehouse facility and opening up the rafts.









They inflated the raft with their compressor, rather than 'using up' our inflation bottle. Then they have to leave it inflated for 30 minutes and check the pressure, to make sure it holds air. While doing that, they inspect all the perishables, which in our case was batteries, water packages, and flares. We opted to replace the batteries and water packages and NOT replace the flares, which are very expensive. Our experience at New Years Eve, firing off old expired flares, was that even those 10 years out of date worked well. We also have an extra supply of flares in our 'ditch bag'.

We got to get in the raft and check it out, and notice where all the accessories were and how they worked. It seems like a very well-built raft, much bigger and heavier-built than our friends' raft. It comes with a waterproof instruction sheet, telling you what you need to do in the first few minutes of your adventure.

It turns out that the inflation/inspection was the EASY part. Getting the deflated raft back IN the package was what took all the time.

They had to re-fold ours about 4 times to get it in a small enough package. Then they put these big straps around it, and squished the crap out of it.


Then they had to put it in the vacuum bag, seal that up, and pump the air out of it (using an industrial vaccum cleaner!) And into the Revere bag and then back into the hard case.

We had to go run some errands, and so didn't get to watch them do the final couple of steps on our raft. But it took them a total of 5 hours to complete the inspection, get the raft sealed up, and finish the paperwork.

We are very satisfied with what Parfi did for us, and would recommend them to others who want to repack their raft before making the big jump.

Labels: Ecuador, Maintenance

One of the last things to do to finish our 'beautification' is to paint the scrollwork on the trailboards (those black things on the bow). That was my job.


We couldn't find gold paint, so we used silver instead. I hand-painted with a small paintbrush. It looked pretty good when we finished. The silver paint matches our grey canvas pretty well.

Labels: Ecuador, Maintenance

We put on 4 coats of bottom paint (plus some extras at the waterline and leading edges) in 2 days. Now we let it dry. We have a launch appointment for early Monday morning.

Today we take our 75-lb liferaft by bus to Guayaquil to get it serviced. More on this adventure tomorrow!

Labels: Ecuador, Maintenance

Well, all umpteen coats of epoxy are done on the bottom. We purposely used different colors as we applied layers. It makes it easy to see where you've missed a spot.


We've been white, red, blue, black, and now cammo-green.


Today we have them come lift us and move the blocks and stands around, so we can epoxy the places where they were. We're giving the epoxy time to dry really hard, and on Monday and Tuesday we'll put 4 coats of bottom paint on.

We couldn't get black bottom paint (our preferred color). I kind of liked the red, but I think we'll end up blue. Dave says he read that was the best color to keep from getting sunk by whales.


While the Stewart Yacht Services guys have been applying the epoxy, Dave has been putting the engine back together...bell housing on, the flywheel, pressure plate, transmission, and shaft coupling. He also worked on our starter, which has been a little cranky when trying to start the engine when it was hot.


Dave is also responsible for painting all the underwater bronze bits.


We have had Ignacio working on more varnishing, and he's now painting the 'trailboards'... the wooden (black) trim pieces on the bow, and our second spinnaker pole. (Note the Gator hat we brought back from the U.S. for him). We couldn't find any polyurethane paint at the local Ace Hardware, so we're using enamel. It should hold up for a couple of years.


And I have been working on finances... trying to get everything set so our financial lives will run pretty much on autopilot next year. We WILL be able to get internet in some places in French Polynesia, but it will be slow and expensive, and I don't want to have to spend all my shore time sitting at a computer.

I've also been provisioning... I've made 3 $250 trips to the grocery store so far. We generally spend $300-$400/month on groceries, and I'm trying to buy a year's worth of groceries!! Of course we won't be able to really carry a year's worth, so it's strategically buying and then carefully stowing.

Labels: Ecuador, Maintenance, Provisioning

We have finally started putting the first coat of epoxy on the bottom today. It took George's guys 2 days to get the waterline right (to Dave's satisfaction), and then another day to finish prepping around the new waterline.


It was raining this morning when we woke up, and we were kinda bummed. But it was just the typical Ecuadorean mist, and it cleared up by mid-morning. They started laying the first coat of epoxy on around noon. It doesn't look like we'll get a second coat on today, but at least we've begun!

While the Stewart Yacht Services guys have been working on the bottom, we've been doing other things, including putting the new name on.



Notice our Paws!!

We used SpeedySigns.com to design, order, and ship our custom vinyl lettering. I don't know if it is the cheapest place on the internet, but their interactive lettering tool sure was easy to use, and it was all waiting for us when we arrived in the States. Putting on the vinyl lettering is a cinch, too.

We have finally finished unpacking all the stuff we brought back with us.

Dave has already mounted the new swim ladder with brackets we brought back. And he's started working on putting the engine back together.

And then there's the socializing--several new boats are in the marina, so we've been trading boat visits and discussing boat projects and Ecuadorean travel. Eight of us got together and shared $2 taxi rides over to Pizza Express in Salinas for two-fer pizzas and beer.

Labels: Ecuador, Maintenance

With a lot of hustling and the help of a sympathetic 'External Relations' official, we managed to secure a 6-month Visa to stay in Ecuador.

It is unheard-of to get this done in one day. But when we explained what happened to the official--that we unexpectedly only had 5 days left on our visa, and 4 of those days were weekends or holidays, she went 'above and beyond' to get our application processed and signed all in the same day.

To make it happen, we changed our flight to Guayaquil from 11am to 8am (at a cost of $45 each), stashed our luggage at the airport in Guayaquil ($4/bag), and took a taxi straight from the airport to the government building. Fortunately, (a) We had a very clearly documented procedure that another cruiser did a couple of months before (See here) (b) We had our laptop with ALL of our documentation (c) There was a mall across the street with a passport photo place, copy centers, etc. (d) We had enough cash with us to cover the expense of the visas (e) We got a very nice, competent, and sympathetic official to help us out.

We had finished all the process... photos, copies, waiting in the queue at the MREE office, reviewing the paperwork with the official... by noon. She told us to come back at 4:30 and she *hoped* to have it completed for us (it requires an upper-level official to sign). We got back to their office at 4pm, and it was done.

The only thing we hadn't counted on was the 'registration' issue. We have to register the visa at another office. We managed to get there before they closed down, but the official told Dave that we needed some more stuff (some of the same stuff that we needed for the application). So we just waved it off--we have 30 days to register the visa.

The bus station was a mad house last night... it was Friday afternoon on a 4-day weekend. We did get tickets on the 5:30 'directo' bus to La Libertad/Salinas, though. And by 8pm were back on Soggy Paws.

Labels: Ecuador

Well, we arrived OK in Quito, all our luggage intact, with no extra fees or problems with our 'boat stuff'.

But just when we thought we had the Ecuadorean immigration situation figured out, we got another surprise. When we went thru Immigration in Quito, they only gave us 5 days!!

This is the remainder of the original 90 days we got when we entered in February. They permit 90 days per year on tourist visas. Period. Even though when we left, our passports from the previous entry said we had about 60 days left. That was because we entered into Ecuador once when the computers were down and they gave us a new 90 days. But the Immigration lady would not budge, not even to give us a few extra days because of the holiday.

We think we know how to get a longer stay visa--lots of paperwork, running around, and some money. But the problem is that Ecuador celebrates Halloween with a vengence. Monday and Tuesday are holidays (and Tuesday is the end of our 5 days). So we are scrambling to get to Guayaquil this morning to try to get the renewal process started before our time runs out and we get fined $200 per passport, on top of the visa fee.

We changed our flight from Quito to Guayaquil to leave earlier, so we have more time today to scramble around. Too bad we're lugging 200lbs of luggage with us (still trying to figure out what to do with it while we run around town).

Just the fun of being sn international traveler on a slow trip around the world...

Labels: Ecuador, Ecuador Inland

With only 2 days in Quito on this trip, we were having a hard time deciding what to do with our time. The weather was great so we decided to just walk around 'Ciudad Viejo' (old town) and experience Quito on a Sunday afternoon. It was a great decision. We hooked up with a solo Australian lady named Raylee--or rather, she hooked up with us. And took off with map in hand.


The Plaza Grande was totally packed... mostly with Ecuadorians just out enjoying a fine Sunday afternoon. They close down the central area to cars for a few hours, so it's very relaxing to just stroll the streets.

The Tourist Police were also out in force, watching over all the tourists. Downtown Quito can be dicey for unsuspecting tourists... pickpockets and all. Dave and I took the barest minimum--only what we could fit in secure pockets, and one of the things in our pockets were personal cans of pepper spray.

But Raylee had a big camera and backpack, and was warned twice by the police to be careful and carry the backpack in front of her. Fortunately, nothing happened.

The street performers were out in force, too. Musicians, artists, and just plain pan-handlers.



After we'd tired of walking around, we took a cab up to the Teleferico, a cable car to the top of a nearby mountain overlooking Quito.


It tops out at about 13,500 feet... the air is thin and cold and the wind was blowing. But the view was spectacular. We hiked around the paths at the top of the mountain and tried to figure out what we were looking at below us. We could see 3 volcanos in the distance, in different directions. And of course, the whole city of Quito below us.

The last stop was to see a couple of churches... the Basilica, the most recent large church constructed in this century, and the Compania (the Jesuit church). Unfortunately, both were closed on Sunday!

The best part... we managed to find our way back home (to the Secret Garden Hostal). We had a really nice time at happy hour, watching the sunset over Quito, and dinner on their 5th story patio.

Labels: Ecuador, Ecuador Inland

Well, we finalized the deal for almost $3,000 worth of Hempel brand epoxy product and bottom paint today... here's the plan:

2 coats of Low Viscosity Epoxy Primer. This is a thin 2-part epoxy that flows easily. It is supposed seal up the fiberglass and fill in the pin-holes.

2 coats of Mastic

2 coats of Coal Tar Epoxy

1 coat of Chlorinated Rubber. This is a 'tie coat' that preps for the bottom paint.

4 coats of Hempel Globic Bottom Paint (in 2 colors).

We are hoping this will seal up the fiberglass bottom, keep from having more blisters, and provide good bottom paint for about 4 years of cruising the Pacific.

I've uploaded our spreadsheet with all the detailed Hempel paint product numbers. Here All this stuff was provided directly by the Hempel dealer in La Libertad (near PLYC).

I know you Facebook-ers probably aren't interested, but our fellow cruisers might be. Those of you with questions... email Dave! He'll probably put a more technical post in his Workshop section of the website when he gets a chance.

For now, we've stored all the paint stuff in a locker under the boat, so we can start applying the stuff as soon as we return.

Dave With All Paint Packed Away

The Cats Supervising the Paint Organizing

Dave Checking the Hull Moisture Level One More Time

Labels: Ecuador, Maintenance

A new boat has been put in the vacant slot next to us in the boat yard. It is a wooden Ecuadorian fishing vessel, about 50 feet long.


We were astounded to hear the distinctive sound of a chainsaw coming from next door. Dave went to investigate and found them performing 'surgery' on the stern, below the waterline, with a chainsaw (and they are still at it today).


Because labor is cheap, and import duties are high, it is much cheaper to keep an old old vessel running than to try to bring in a new one from outside the country.


Just the beginning of their surgery. This picture was taken early yesterday, and they are STILL running the chainsaw. (More subsequent pictures below)

Labels: Ecuador, Maintenance

Ignacio Varnishing
We don't have much exterior teak left on Soggy Paws, but we try to keep what little we still have looking nice. This time, with the help of another cruiser, we found Ignacio to do our varnishing.

Our friend Cameron, the captain of Morning Calm III, met Ignacio while out surfing in Salinas. Ignacio is a young Ecuadorian who loves to surf.

Though Ignacio already has a 12-hour night job at the local 'fish factory', Cameron hired Ignacio to help him do cleaning and sanding on Morning Calm for a few hours a day, in exchange for a surfboard. And Cam told us that Ignacio was a really hard worker. So when Cameron had no more work for him, we took him on.

Though he's never varnished before, he's a quick learner and follows direction well. Dave has coached him through the steps to prepare the teak and apply the varnish, and he's done a beautiful job on Soggy Paws' teak, with minimal supervision. This has freed Dave and I up to continue working on other things.

Dave also had him clean the topsides and polish all the exterior stainless. He's quick but meticulous, and really a hard worker.

Ignacio speaks a little English, and is working hard on learning more. He has helped Dave with some of the Spanish vocabulary when he was trying to deal with other people in Spanish.

Labels: Ecuador, Maintenance

One of the things I (Sherry) have been doing while Dave is working on his projects, is getting ready for our big Pacific Crossing provisioning. We will be 9 months getting from Ecuador to Hawaii, in very remote areas. Where we will find provisions, they will be very expensive.

The first step was to inventory all the stores currently on board, and eat up, or throw out old expired stuff.

That included the Shake n Pour pancake mix that EXPIRED in 2005! (We tried one package, it turned out lead pancakes that tasted musty. We dumped them and had cold cereal instead). We checked all the cans, and took out the ones starting to rust or were well expired. These went into the 'eat or trash' stack. The rest were cleaned of roach poop and put back, with the oldest ones in front.


One can, a big can of peaches was obviously bad... exploded looking. That one definitely was trashed. Another can had too much rust on the can seam, and looked like it might be breached, so I trashed it. I carefully scruitinize ALL the cans we open... make sure they don't look 'puffy', look at the contents carefully and give it the 'nose' test. So far, we've managed to avoid any problems, even with stuff that is 'a little' expired.

Once each locker was unloaded, it was carefully cleaned, and fumigated. We bought 2 spray cans of RAID in Costa Rica that is absolutely lethal to the roaches, if you get it anywhere near them. (on the other hand, I have drowned a roach in a competing product, and it walked away).

So the locker first got RAID-ed and closed for awhile. Then when everything was dry, we sprinkled some Roach Pruf (powdered Boric Acid) in the nether reaches.

Then I loaded everything back into the locker, recording quantities and locations in my 'Where Stuff Is' spreadsheet.


I've also been combing the aisles at the local supermarket... trying new stuff, and seeing what's where. It's important to make sure we don't buy 20 cans of some Ecuadorian brand of something, and find out it tastes horrible.

I have also been reading other peoples 'Provisioning Tips for the Pacific' info on websites. One particularly good website was from s/v Ocelot

Ocelot Polynesia Provisioning Advice

This account is from 2004/2005, so the prices won't be exactly accurate, but the rest of the advice should be pretty golden.

So now I'm ready to start thinking about loading up for 9 months in the Pacific. We'll take advantage of the convenience of the local supermarket here in Salinas, before we leave in November. And do a final provisioning from Bahia de Caraquez, at the local fresh food market, and a 1 hr bus ride into the supermakets in the city of Manta) just before we leave.

Labels: Ecuador, Provisioning

While Soggy Paws continues to dry out, Dave has been busying working down his 'high priority before crossing the Pacific' and 'must do while hauled out' projects lists.

He spent a couple of days polishing the prop & other bronze underwater fittings, and installing a new zinc.

He has rebuilt several of our pumps... our galley macerator had gotten erratic, the forward head macerator wouldn't work, and several spare macerators needed checking. One extra macerator motor needed rewinding, so he took it into town to a motor guy, and got it fixed up for $12. Then he installed new bearings, shafts and seals in our two spare engine raw water pumps so they would be ready for quick replacement if needed.

He took our Monitor Wind Vane off, made some adjustments to the gear mesh play because when we finally got to use it on our trip from Costa Rica, we found the gears were way too loose. Then of course it had to be all shined up.

While he was at it, he also raised the swim platform about 10". It was too low and kept slamming right next to our head in the water, when we were trying to sleep in rolly Pacific anchorages.

And we've got new Boat Name and Hailing Port vinyl lettering on order back in the States with Speedy Signs.

He re-plumbed our 2 3700 GPH electric bilge pumps with new Tigerflex smooth bore hose. Now these emergency pumps discharge into the cockpit. While doing so, he found one of the discharge hoses was completely blocked with oyster-like growth. Hmmm... that's probably why it wasn't pumping water out! Then he replumbed our big manual pump with the same hose.

The details of his bilge pump arrangement are on our Soggy Paws Plumbing page, under Bilge Pump Engineering if you are interested.

The past couple of days he has been equalizing the batteries and tracing down a voltage drop on one bank. And so it goes. Next is a week of engine work.

Soggy Paws, Bare and Drying Out

Labels: Ecuador, Maintenance

We have been adopted by the local boatyard cats... I wonder why??? Since the first day when we were walking back from the bathrooms, and 2 of these kitties started trotting alongside us... "Oh boy, new people to feed us!" We have been feeding them.

These amazing cats can climb a 10' ladder, easily. And what's more amazing is, they can climb right back down again, as neat as you please.


So now, in the mornings when we go out to the bathroom, there are 3 cats sitting at the bottom of the ladder waiting for us. And we know when it's 5 o'clock in the evening... all 3 cats gather and wait for dinner.


If we're a little late for feeding time, Tripper, the boldest of the cats, will come on board to remind us. We have found morning cat prints all over the deck. If we want to keep the cats off, we have to prop the ladder out away from the hull with a broom handle.

Tripper Sneaking Aboard
We have been Skyping with friends on s/v Restless in Chile, who were here 2 years ago. They are cat people too, and are glad to get news of the cats, Tripper and Marie. They have been trying to talk us into taking them with us when we leave. I asked them why there are no cats aboard Restless...

Tripper, looking in at Restless in 2007
The cats also, in typical cat fashion, like to get in the middle of whatever project Dave is working on.

Tripper, helping Dave work

Labels: Ecuador

When we got back on Soggy Paws from 6 weeks in Peru, the boat was fine. Except the deck was completely befowled with bird-poo.

Dave spent about 2 hours scrubbing it down. But at dusk... the pesky bird came home to roost... on the top of our mast. It was a huge Man-O-War bird. We banged the rigging and it flew away. But during dinner, we heard a 'splat' on deck. Yup, he was back, and had just splatted Dave's clean deck.

So the next day, Dave made an 'anti-bird device'. He went up the mast and took down our wind arrow... it's the first thing to go when big birds start roosting on your mast. And then he made a template of the mast top, using an old plastic placemat.


The end result was a plywood 'cap' for the top of the mast (with a hole cut out for the light and lightning dissipator), that has long screws sticking up. He also tied a piece of string from the back of the rod that the masthead fly was on, up to the top of the trilight.

Update: August 10...So far (in 10 days), no more poopy birds!

Labels: Ecuador, Maintenance

The LAN Checkout Counter in the Lima Airport
It's not as chaotic as it looks!
Well, we are back aboard Soggy Paws at Puerto Lucia Yacht Club, near Salinas, in Ecuador.

We flew back yesterday after about 6 weeks in Peru. We saw a lot of interesting stuff, but still only covered about 25% of what there is to see in Peru. We hope to do another trip to see parts of northern Peru in November or December.

A View of the Cordillera Blanca (White Mountains) from the Airplane
The boat is fine--this is a great place to leave the boat. Very secure, and a nice dry atmosphere. Usually when we come back, there is a green film (mold) on everything inside. But this time, hardly anything.

Our task this month is to get the bottom finished up, and hopefully start working on some of the other 'must do' projects.

Labels: Ecuador, Peru Inland

Well, Soggy Paws is stripped down to the fiberglass and drying out in the nice cool dry air at Puerto Lucia.

So we are headed off to see some of Peru. We are starting in Lima, with our friends Eduardo and Anamarie. If Edy can take the time off work, we are hoping we can go together to visit the Huarez area of Peru. If now is not a good time for Edy, Dave and I will head off on our own to see Cuzco and the surrounding area.

We don't have a real concrete plan on this trip. Unlike our trip to Chile, where we almost had the entire 7 weeks planned out day-by-day. But Dave has been to Peru twice before, and we've got lots of notes from several cruising friends who've visted Peru recentl, plus the Lonely Planet. We also have the Bolivia section of the LP South America guide.. if we get a chance, we'll try to hit the high spots of Bolivia on this trip as well.

For a compact summary of where we went and where we stayed on our travels within Peru, see our Travel Peru page on the website.

Labels: Ecuador, Maintenance, Peru Inland

Clearance in La Libertad

The clearance here was easy, but expensive. PLYC arranged for all the officials to be here. We had 5 guys in our cockpit... 4 officials and an agent. We only had to pay $13 for 'Reception', but the agent gave us a 'bill' that we will have to pay on clearing out, for the following additional costs:

Zarpe: $43.50
Immigration: $15
Agent Fee $185

This is just for clearance from Bahia de Caraquez, and our clearance back to Bahia. Coming in from somewhere else, would cost a little more, I think. We DIDN'T have to pay a 'lights and bouys' fee, which we had already paid in Bahia (and could show a receipt for).

The agent fee is for a commercial agent to do all our in/out paperwork. (In Bahia, an agent is also required when entering or leaving, but Puerto Amistad acts as the agent and charges no fee).

I am not sure who bore the cost of getting the officials here... in Bahia you pay $60 taxi fare to taxi the officials from Manta. This fee is likely either the 'Reception' fee, or embedded in the Agent Fee.

We discussed with the Customs official, the one who has been making cruisers lives miserable here, our plans to stay at Puerto Lucia for about 2 months. This is the guy who has been using a rule not intended to apply to sailing vessels, to limit the boat stay to 6 months. (which, of course, can be extended if you jump through the right hoops). He agreed that we could stay 2 months (which would make our stay 'in country' over 6 months), and said that if we needed more time, we'd just need to write a letter explaining that we were still working on the boat. We won't know how this will all turn out until we leave, but we're not too worried about it.

Haulout

Costs to Haul Out, for our 44' Boat are as follows:

Travel Lift: $445.76 (does not include pressure wash)
Monthly Fee: $663.04 / mo (gets a little cheaper months 3+)
Liveaboard fee: $5/day
Water: Metered at $3/250 gallons
Elec: Metered at .25/Kwh

The 'Liveaboard Fee' only applies when we are actually on the boat. It seems high when added on top of Water, Electricity, and the monthly cost for the boat, but what it does is give us access to the BEAUTIFUL club facilities here.

I think dockage is the same as the 'on the hard' fee. And right now there are plenty of slips available. The prices are high for Ecuador, but the facility is first class. Is a great place to leave the boat safely.

Puerto Lucia Yacht Club

Wow, what a nice place. This is a full 'yacht club' complex, including about 10 hotel rooms, 2 restaurants, 2 pools, a sauna, 3 tennis courts, a fully-equipped gym, a computer room with internet access, a 24x7 gate guard and foot patrols. The $5/day liveaboard fee (which is NOT optional, if you are here), pays for access to all that.




There is a big mall right down the street, complete with 8-screen movie theater, food court, and a big 'Hypermart', which is somewhat like a Super Walmart... Ace Hardware, clothing store, and big grocery store in one.

We haven't yet had time to explore the town of La Libertad, but I know there is a great market there, where we can get fresh veggies and seafood for really good prices. It's a 35-cent bus ride from here, or a $1 taxi ride. And the beach town of Salinas is about the same distance in the other direction.

The Weather and Working Conditions

We have never had such a nice environment for working on the boat. Or living on the boat for that matter. The temp is a fairly constant 75F during the day, and a little cooler at night. There's usually a 10kt breeze. It is dry, no thunderstorms, or the hot muggy weather that's in Costa Rica, Panama and Colombia right now.

Stewart Yacht Services

Run by Canadian ex-pat, George Stewart, and his Ecuadorian wife, Marisol, Stewart Yacht Services is a do-all yacht services company that works out of PLYC. He comes highly recommended by other cruisers. We have George and his guys stripping Soggy Paws down to bare fiberglass, addressing blister issues, and then building it back up with a barrier coat and bottom paint.

So far we have found George very helpful and knowledgable, and his 'guys' very hard workers. We are paying George for good, experienced workers at the rate of $60/day, plus materials. George regularly ships stuff from the U.S. into Ecuador, and also knows all the local contacts for things like galvinizing chain, bottom paint, etc.

Immigration Issues

We were really sweating the 3-month tourist visa limitation, when we found we didn't get 'reset' on re-entry to Ecuador a few weeks ago. But since then, we know of one cruiser here at PLYC who successfully extended himself another 6 months (in Guayaquil). He documented the process for us, and we plan to follow his lead and do our own extension when the time comes.

Diesel Fuel

Getting diesel fuel has been a bit of a problem in Ecuador in the last few years. The problem is, they sell fuel to the people of Ecuador at nationally subsidized prices (the price is currently around $1/gallon ). Apparently some boats (maybe not cruisers, but fishing boats) were coming to Ecuador and filling up, and then going elsewhere and selling Ecuadorian fuel at a huge profit. So Ecuador made a law that prohibited selling fuel to foreigners. Of course, that was a great inconvenience for visiting sailboats, and there has been much said about the problem in the SSCA newsletters and online forums.

Now, 2 years later, things have settled out a little. Puerto Lucia has a permit, that they say cost them $100,000 in fees and surveys, to sell fuel to foreigners. The cost for 'foreign fuel' is around $2/gal right now. Double what the locals pay, but still substantially cheaper than surrounding countries.

Bahia WAS selling fuel under a temporary permit, for $1.50/gal when we arrived in Feb. But recently, they became 'unpermitted' (don't ask, we don't know). Tripp Martin at Puerto Amistad is working feverishly on formalizing an official permit. In the meantime, there is a 'workaround' so cruising boats coming to Bahia can get diesel when needed.

Ecuador is a great place, I can't believe there aren't more cruisers here. Even with the changing regulations and the high agent fee in Puerto Lucia, it's still a great place.

Labels: Ecuador, Maintenance

On exiting Bahia de Caraquez at high tide in the evening, the weather did not look very good. It was overcast and blowing about 12-15 knots on our nose. The exit was slow going out against the wind and the waves... we were only making 2 knots!

It was a little scary doing the exit... we had Carlos aboard to pilot us out, but waves breaking on either side and the depth going to 8'. We knew that once we went out, we wouldn't be able to go back in, if we thought the conditions were too bad.

Though the wind was fresh enough that we could have cracked off and sailed (t-t-t-acked!), we were on a schedule and so just put the reefed main up and motorsailed. Fortunately as we got offshore a little ways, the wind eased some, and it wasn't straight on our nose. So it wasn't too bad.

Through the night, as we navigated our way around numerous poorly lit small fishing boats, the conditions gradually got better. The afternoon winds eventually lay down and it became the nighttime calms. By our second watch, after we had rounded Cabo San Lorenzo and headed south, we were making good time, and the off watch person was able to sleep well.

The dawn revealed one of the fishing boats we'd been watching in the night... a shrimper. We'd been dodging them all night.

We also got a spectacular show from a couple of whales that were jumping out of the water. It's mating season and I think this guy was showing off.


By about 3pm, we were at our anchorage for the night, Ayanque (or Ayangue, depending on which chart you look at). 01*59.01’ S / 80*45.25’ W

It wasn't great, but probably better than anchoring along the beach in the open. When the wind was blowing, the waves were coming directly in the opening. Since our bow was to the swell it wasn't bad. But during the night, the wind quit/switched, and we ended up sideways to the entrance. But it was a gentle roll, nothing like the rockin and rollin we experienced at Cocos.

The next morning (June 11), we got going early, to get into Puerto Lucia early enough to get cleared in and get hauled out on the late afternoon high tide.

Labels: Ecuador

We are leaving Bahia de Caraquez this afternoon on the high tide... moving about 120 miles south to the Salinas area. By Thursday we should be at Puerto Lucia Yacht Club in La Libertad (a tiny town next to Salinas).

Why the change in plans?? We were surprised when we re-entered Ecuador by air, that we weren't granted a new 90-day tourist visa. What they did was look up our records in the computer, and just continued our 'clock' from when we entered in February. As of June 2, we officially have 68 days left. Our understanding is that the automatic tourist visa is only good for 90 days per year.

We do believe there is a legal way to extend our visa for at least another 90 days. But just to be on the safe side, we figured we should hustle down to Puerto Lucia to get our haulout out of the way. That way, if we CAN'T renew, we'll at least have our bottom job taken care of for next 2-3 years. We understand we cannot apply for the extension until our current visa is about to run out.

So we are scheduled to haul at Puerto Lucia on Thursday afternoon. We'll stay there for a few days and get things settled, and then I think we'll take off for another trip while we let the bottom dry out. This time our target is Northern Peru.

We hope to return to Bahia in about 2 months when we're finished with the boat work in Puerto Lucia.
-----
At 6/4/2009 9:20 PM (utc) our position was 00°36.38'S 080°25.37'W

Labels: Ecuador

Well, after 2 months in Chile and Argentina, and another month in the U.S., we are headed back to Soggy Paws today.

In our travels in the U.S., we flew 4500 miles and drove another 3000 miles, and visited people in 4 states. Dave managed to fit in 4 days of golf, and Sherry managed one race on her old racing boat, Fast Lane. We made at least 6 trips to Walmat, a few to West Marine, and several to Lowes, Home Depot, and Ace Hardware. We're carrying about 150 lbs of 'stuff' back to the boat with us.

The trip back sounds like a nightmare, but it really was a pretty easy flight. We flew Spirit Airlines from Orlando to Ft. Lauderdale and then to Bogota, Colombia. From there we took an Avianca flight to Guayaquil, Ecuador. All our luggage arrived intact.

The only hitch was that when we presented our paid e-Ticket at the Avianca counter for the flight into Ecuador, they wanted to see our return ticket. No amount of discussing would change the agent's mind. But she personally took us to the Avianca reservations counter, and made us a reservation for a return ticket... but it was only a reservation... not a paid ticket. (Note: never asked for when we arrived in Ecuador).

We spent 2 nights here in Guayaquil at the Manso Boutique Hotel, right on the Malecon. Though we had a list of recommended cheap hotels from other cruisers, we got this one off Trip Advisor and booked it via HostelWorld.com. Carrying so much luggage, we didn't want to arrive with no reservation. It is $40/night and in a GREAT location.

We take a bus this morning to Bahia de Caraquez, so we should be back on Soggy Paws by 5pm. We are so looking forward to getting 'home'!

Labels: Ecuador, USA 2009

Saturday morning we went out to explore the local market. In Bahia de Caraquez, it is 'downtown', and is a combined veggie, seafood, and meat market, with a few 'dry goods' shops thrown in.



After the relatively poor veggie situation in Golfito, Costa Rica, we are delighted to find plentiful and inexpensive veggies here. We bought a lot of veggies for just a few dollars. We checked out the meat and seafood markets, but didn't buy anything... we are still trying to 'eat down' our freezer, to get ready to go traveling inland.

The Seafood Market (Fish, Shrimp, Octopus, Crab)

Carving Meat



Ribs Anyone?
After we got through with our shopping, we found the Coco Bongo Hostel, a few blocks away. A friend had recommended their breakfast to us. So we ordered up a great breakfast (juice, fruit, eggs, fresh bread, coffee) for $2. We enjoyed chatting with the proprietors, Suzanne and Nick (an American and an Aussie) who gave us a lot of tips on touring in Ecuador. Their rooms look nice and are reasonably priced--we'd definitely stay here if we were land traveling thru Bahia.

Labels: Ecuador, Provisioning

This past weekend has been Carnival in Bahia. (aka Mardi Gras, the beginning of Lent). Being a mostly Catholic country, they celebrate Carnival as a 4-day weekend. We didn't participate much, but we enjoyed watching the Ecuadorians enjoy their weekend.

Bahia is a beach town. They say it's a favorite vacation destination for the upper class Quitenos (people from Quito). People in Bahia were afraid that attendance would be down this year, because the road between Quito and Bahia is impassable right now due to a huge mudslide a week ago.

But from what we could see, after a slow start, the beach was jam packed right up until Tuesday evening.

The Beach at High Tide as seen from Soggy Paws
We were out exploring the town and people-watching this weekend and got to see the start of 'the big parade' in Bahia. While we'd been walking around, we'd noticed people starting to sit down in the shade on the sidewalk of the main drag. We finally figured out there must be a parade somewhere. Though we decided not to wait for it, it ended up 'queuing up' right in front of Puerto Amistad.




They didn't have much music (except that which was emanating from various bars along the beach), but they did have an awesome drum section to accompany the parade.


At one point in the weekend, we were laying in our bunk with our portholes facing the beach... at 4am... and the music was still going strong from 2 different locations. Sigh... We closed our portholes and turned our fans on, and could still hear it booming over the water.

The other thing that has amazed us is the number of people they've been jamming on the car ferry. There are faster outboard motor-powered people ferries, with seats and all. But the car ferry lets people ride free. So it has been completely packed, in both directions, all weekend long.

Labels: Ecuador

Or... the 'great chain caper'.

Dave found out that there was a place in Manta, the big city nearby, that would do chain galvanizing. So he hustled around the anchorage and rounded up 2 other people interested in going together on a truck to take the chain in.

Then we started the big task of getting 3 boats worth of chain and anchors ashore.

Carlos and Evan Unload Our Chain from the Puerto Amistad Launch

Dave Pulls the Chain up the Seawall
At 0700, taxi driver Giovanni met us at the side lot of Puerto Amistad to load up the chain in his pickup truck. Then Peter, from Amigo, and his Ecuadorian girlfriend Joanna, and Dave and I loaded up for the trip into Manta.

The galvanizing place didn't look like much from the outside, but Dave went on an inspection tour and pronounced it a pretty impressive operation. They quoted us $1.30 per kilo (about $.60/pound) to sandblast, acid wash, galvanize, and clean up our chains and anchors.

Dave Negotiates the Price
The galvanizing place was only the first stop... both Peter and Dave had a list of things they were looking for in 'the big city'. Peter brought along the motor from his anchor windlass, which he'd burned out trying to winch himself up on the beach to paint the bottom of his boat. Peter was ecstatic that we found a guy that would rebuild his burnt out motor for only $30. He had envisioned having to replace his whole windlass for close to $1000.

The Motor Rebuild Guy
We also made stops at the Fish and Dive store (nice marine store/dive shop), the Setmabas liferaft repacking place, and several fishing stores, hardware stores and paint stores (looking for specific things). We went to the big mall for lunch at the food court. And the last stop was at the Supermaxi grocery store. Dave and I didn't buy much, but surveyed what was there, so we knew what we'd have available when it came time for our big provisioning. It was a big beautiful US-style grocery store.

The Manta Mall
The one thing on MY list was to try to find my blood pressure medicine. We'd struck out in Panama and Costa Rica and I was down to a few days supply. The drug store in the mall said they didn't have anything similar. But the drug store across from the grocery store had the exact Central American equivalent that I'd last found in Guatemala. I got a 60-day supply--enough to get me back to the States, where I have more waiting. No prescription required. Just write down what you need and purchase it. Only narcotics are regulated.

On our way out of Manta, we went by the port. Wow, what a HUGE number of fishing boats of all sizes. We also went past a 'carpenter's row' where they are building fishing boats by hand, the old fashioned way.

The Tuna Fleet
Boats Under Construction on the Beach

Labels: Ecuador, Maintenance

We made it to the 'Waiting Room' waypoint with plenty of time to spare. Notice the swell passing Soggy Paws just off our bow.

Conditions had moderated as the night wore on, so it was a very pleasant morning. We did quite a bit of motoring around while waiting for the pilot to show up, and saw pretty much steady depths of about 25' all around the waypoint.

We watched the fishermen setting nets while we waited for our pilot to show up.


We used these waypoints, from Puerto Amistad's website:

WP0 00º35.780S 080º28.300W Virtual Sea Buoy
WP1 00º35.805S 080º26.832W "Waiting Room" Anchorage

We also took the chartlet they had on their website and imported it into Sea Clear and geo-referenced it, as a backup in case we had to take ourselves in.

Fortunately, promptly at 8:40, Carlos from Puerto Amistad showed up in a lancha. He safely piloted us over the bar and around some pretty awesome rollers. It would have been pretty scary taking ourselves in. The $30 we paid to Carlos to guide us in was money well spent, we think.

Carlos, Our Pilot, Comes Aboard

Dave and Carlos taking Soggy Paws In

Breaking Waves!
We were never actually in breakers, but they were close abeam as we went in (much closer than this picture shows). We saw a minimum depth of about 8' (at high tide a few days after the full moon).

Vacation Condos on the Point

Inside the Bay

Approaching the Anchorage off Puerto Amistad

Carlos hustled off as soon as we were on the mooring, to round up the officials. The current procedure is for Puerto Amistad to call them and arrange for a taxi to bring them to the boat. And then Carlos ferries them out to the boat. It took a couple of hours for them to show up, but by about 4pm, we were done. Here's what we paid for the entry and check-in:

$30 Pilot Fee
$5 Health Inspection
$20 Immigration
$39 Port Captain
$30 Taxi fare (we split the $60 fare with another boat that was leaving)

Our Immigration is good for 90 days. The boat is supposedly good 'indefinitely'. Unlike the problems reported in Salinas/Puerto Lucia, where the Port Captain has been hassling boats about staying too long. The 90 day immigration won't be a problem for us because we plan several trips out of Ecuador in the next 9 months.

Labels: Ecuador, On Passage

The wind came up so unexpectedly and so rapidly, and was unforecast, so we weren't sure it was going to hold. At 4pm it was flat dead calm, at 4:15 we had 7-8 knots, and at 4:30 we had 10-15 (and later, almost 20 knots). The forecast said we should expect almost nothing.

We sweated keeping our speed up all night, as we had to arrive at the 'Waiting Room' waypoint by 1 hour before high tide. We figured if we could average 5.5 knots, we could make it. So we kept more sail up than we would normally under the conditions. At one point we were doing 6-7 knots (and cheering) in about 20 knots of wind. I had to switch plans for dinner as I hadn't planned on such a boisterous sail--we ended up with 'augmented leftovers'.

Later in the wee hours of the morning, the wind eased some, and we eventually had to turn on the engine to keep our speed up.

Just when we thought we were going to make the required arrival time with no problem, we got a call on the radio. "Vessel 6 miles off my beam, this is the survey vessel... Scan (something)". We had seen the ship on AIS all night long (we picked it up from 25 miles away and it was only moving at 4 knots). The AIS said we'd pass clear astern by several miles, so we hadn't worried about it.

What we didn't know was that he was towing a 6 mile cable that we had to clear also. So we had to turn away from our waypoint and head south for about a half an hour, to get around his towed subseafloor survey device. Then, it was clear he was approaching shore and would have to turn... so then we (I, mainly) worried whether he'd cut us off again. When we told him we were headed for Bahia de Caraquez, he said "Where?" (it is not labeled on the chart). But he was moving so slowly, we managed to get inshore of him before he passed by again.

The one good thing about the survey vessel was that we were pretty sure we wouldn't run into any fishing nets during the night. The survey vessel had two 'outrider' boats that were running interference for him, to move boats that didn't have radios. And we could see them heading off fishing boats.

Nets in the night was another thing I was worrying about! One boat had said they got tangled up in nets 3 times in one night. It would have been a bad night to have to go over the side with a knife in your teeth to clear a net off your prop!

After all my worrying, we arrived at the 'Waiting Room' about an hour before the required time. So we ended up just motorsailing in a racetrack pattern to kill time. Dave didn't want to bother anchoring.

We were amazed at the number of fishermen in open boats in the bay ahead of us. There were nets and fishing boats all over. So we hung out just beyond the nets.

Labels: Ecuador, On Passage

A great wind on the beam came up (unforecast) yesterday afternoon. We made about 6 knots all night under sail, and are now approaching the Sea Bouy off Bahia de Caraquez.

We crossed the equator at 22:44 last night, and Dave initiated Sherry, following the proper rites, as a Shellback. She is a Pollywog no more.

Sherry Toasting Neptune
-----
At 2/16/2009 10:22 PM our position was 00°00.00'S 081°04.22'W

Labels: Ecuador, On Passage

We are finally getting ready to leave Costa Rica! The fuel and water tanks are topped, the provisioning is done, we have paid our bill at Land n Sea, and we've checked out of the country.

Our plan is to leave Golfito today and stage at Puerto Jiminez (across the Golfo Dulce from Golfito).

Then we'll leave there early tomorrow morning on the outgoing tide, and head for Cocos Island. That leg is about 300 miles, so we expect to be there late Monday. We expect light winds and will motor if necessary to get there in a reasonable time. It looks like it may be blowing like stink north and south of us, but there's this light and variable zone right on the direct path from Golfito to Cocos!

Cocos Island (Isla del Cocos in Costa Rica) is a world famous dive destination. It is a closely-guarded national park, and we think it will cost us something like $100 per day to stay there and dive. Yes, that's a lot of money, but the only other way to get there is by live-aboard dive boat, at $5000 for a 10-day trip!

So we'll stay a few days at Cocos, and then head south for Ecuador. The Cocos-Ecuador leg is about 500 miles. Hopefully by going out as far as Cocos, we'll have a decent angle to be able to sail to Ecuador. But usually people say it is a choppy nasty trip with wind and current on the nose. We'll see.

We'll be sending in blog updates and position reports as we go, and you can watch it via the links on our 'Positions' page.

For you geographically challenged, here is our course in the bigger scheme of things.


Goodbye Central America! Hello South America!

Labels: Cocos Island, Costa Rica, Ecuador, On Passage