Puerto Ayora, Galapagos Islands, Ecuador

We are, finally, incredibly, south of the equator! We crossed it after dinner one night about two weeks ago and celebrated with a token-sized toast of amaretto, then John went to sleep and I pulled out my nightlight and book and settled in for the 8-to-midnight watch. Having reached this nautical milestone, we are now supposed to get our ears pierced, or pierced again in my case. Or perhaps we get tattoos now. No, that’s in Polynesia.

New York

When John last wrote we were working in northern New York, aka the North Country. On March 1st we packed up and left, reluctantly leaving behind friends & relatives, jobs, a cozy (if tiny) apartment and all that magnificent snow-covered scenery. We spent a hectic week on Long Island at my parents’, packing, shopping for boat things and visiting people--apologies to my parents for not visiting with them properly!-- and John went to Ohio for a few days to see his own relatives. We also tried hard to sell a very used car.

The car--actually, it was more of a truck--story deserves telling. This was the 13 year old Toyota 4Runner we’d bought last November to take north. The guy who sold it to us was a Long Island cop who’d only owned it for a month or so and who swore the fresh bloodstains in the truck bed were from a deer he’d shot. But despite these, er, red flags and the truck’s rather advanced age, it ran perfectly well (if you ignored the lousy mileage) and we were happy with it. In fact, in four months of heavy commuting in the most challenging winter conditions imaginable, that truck did a lot more for us than we gave back. I confess I personally drove it into one or another of the trees on our icy, unpaved driveway at least three times, and one time the driver’s side door was badly dented by a deer crossing the road (revenge, possibly?). Needless to say, selling the car was going to take some finesse. We worked on the ad copy for some time, trying to get at that car buyer magazine je ne sais quoi, and after several false starts came up with something like this: "86 4Rnr rd rem-tp 4c efi 115k ps db aw cd and several very large dents".

There were a few bites. We got the first call the day we arrived at my parents’ and it was a fair indicator of things to come. (It’s a good thing, incidentally, that my parents themselves were away at the time. The fact that we’d advertised in free car buyer weeklies whose distribution reached metropolitan New York meant a potentially huge number of strangers descending on the Newton household--it would take time to warm my parents to this concept.) The first call came from somewhere just outside the city, the language an indeterminate foreign tongue with English words tossed in here and there for emphasis. I answered the caller’s questions as best I could, though he was fairly impatient with me. After some discussion we arrived at several conclusions, namely that I had a car to sell, that he wished to buy a car much like the one I was selling, and that he thought our asking price of $2000 offensive. "But we’ve listed it as $2000 firm, can’t you see that in the ad? You don’t have to buy it!" I insisted, but he indicated that he would come see it in spite of my folly and we would, perhaps, work something out. The best part of the conversation was when he asked for directions. As they began to get complicated I could tell he had stopped taking notes, and suddenly he announced, in surprisingly good English,"I tell you: you will bring car to me!" Eventually he did make his way to us, accompanied by his brother, and they barely glanced at the truck before starting in on the haggling process. When we wouldn’t, they left. This, as I say, was a pretty representative example of our luck, and when we’d still had no success a week later, we arranged for John’s mother & stepfather to keep the truck. (This way we can use it again next time we work in the U.S. and in the meantime it will have a loving home.)

Golfito, Costa Rica

We flew back to San Jose, Costa Rica on March 10th. There we met two friends we’d invited to sail with us, Barak and Melissa, and proceeded south to the sweltering but pleasantly situated gulfside town of Golfito, temporary home to Saros (remember her?). We arrived with high hopes for coastal sailing but within a day or so saw that a broken shaft seal would force a change of plans. This news was accepted graciously by our guests, and with considerably less equanimity by ourselves. Fortunately, things worked out possibly even for the better, as the helpful staff at Land-Sea Services (who’d been looking after Saros) redirected us toward can’t-miss tourist activities like jungle lodges and safaris, ocean kayaking, and surfing--beginner’s surfing, anyway. Melissa turned out to be quite the birder, to the edification of the rest of us. We became so engrossed in bird-watching on one hike that we almost collided with a sleeping fer-de-lance (which, by the way, blinds in 30 minutes and kills in hours). On a similar note, we won’t soon forget the look on a fellow tourist’s face at one rather pricey resort when he discovered a scorpion crawling on his leg. (We probably wore similar expressions after learning at that same resort that the mosquito netting over our beds--the netting we’d neglected to use--offered protection not from mosquitos at all but from falling scorpions who’d been nesting in the palm-frond roof above us.)

After M & B had gone, we had a series of setbacks (see updates 1-4 for more extensive discussion of, and a variety of examples of, setbacks). The first was the mysterious self-destruction of the propeller shaft’s rubber seal, which we’d installed not so very long before. The good news was that we’d brought a replacement with us from the U.S.; the bad news was that neither John nor the excellent local mechanic we hired was able to remove the coupling which attaches the prop shaft to the transmission and must be removed in order to replace the shaft seal. But did this frustrate our stalwart mecanico? Not at all, he simply pulled out his blow torch and torched the thing to pieces! And before we could properly protest--the coupling had been working just fine, thanks--he quickly fabricated a new one in his shop. (We used his services later for a broken dinghy outboard shut-off lever and he fabricated one of those, too, and indeed seemed to have a limitless capacity to make whatever he needed! This is a skill we hadn’t seen much of in the U.S. and we were highly impressed.)

The best news of all was that John was somehow spared the necessity of diving underneath the boat for the reinstallation, despite early predictions to the contrary. Now normally, as you have seen, we are willing to get a little wet for the sake of a boat repair, but here the water quality presented a slight problem. For most residents of Golfito, sewage management consisted in using the bay as a giant toilet bowl: everything from dinner scraps to paper trash to broken furniture to, como no?, toilet waste and even soiled diapers was dumped directly into it and handily flushed out into the gulf with the turning of the tide. What this meant for the possibility of enjoying a swim off the side of the boat was: what are you crazy??? Now it happened that, as one U.S. expat put it, there existed a moment shortly before high tide when the water was "almost inviting." John, realizing a dive would probably be necessary (to prevent the bay and all its contents from entering Saros during the shaft seal replacement), thought he’d wait for just that moment. Meanwhile, unaware of John’s preferences, the mechanic had arrived at that point in his repairs where John’s presence underneath the boat was desired. John tried to protest--mind you, the tide was now in full ebb--but I thoughtfully suggested he at least look at the water before rejecting the idea completely. He did, and was back in half a second with the suggestion that I might also like to have a look! Peering reluctantly at the water, I couldn’t help but see what had grabbed John’s attention, the thing that put an end to even the most hypothetical idea of getting into this foul water: perched atop a large, hideous, yellow-brown slick of unmentionably awful scum, nestled in the evil substance’s exact center as if it belonged there, was the lid of a toilet. The installation of the shaft seal was completed without John’s assistance.

The other major mechanical failure announced itself exactly seven minutes after we weighed anchor on April 2nd, in our first attempt to leave Costa Rica. There we were, our paperwork cleared with Customs, fuel and water tanks freshly filled, the pantry overflowing with food, and only one day past our scheduled departure date! Something had to go wrong, and mercifully we didn’t have long to wait for it: a copper coolant pipe sprang a leak and the engine temperature soared. Cursing and threatening to throw the engine overboard--we are becoming so familiar with this particular rant that we may well make good on it some day!--we made our way back to our little corner of Golfito’s harbor, ordered a new coolant pipe and a spare for good measure, and hopped a bus for Panama for a few days’ escape. (We are fond of Panama for several reasons, among them the city of David, where we can see new American movies for $1.50, stay in a nice hotel for $15, and buy high-quality goods, also at reasonable prices. Of course, there are plenty of other things to like about Panama: the people are friendly, the vegetable markets excellent, the countryside lovely, and, best of all, the tourists not yet present in overabundance--shhhh, don’t tell anybody!--except in the Canal Zone.)

We got our replacement coolant pipes, but that in itself is a story. (If you’re wondering, by the way, why we didn’t just ask our "excellent mechanic" to make one for us, he did try but it turned out the pipe ends were of the "press-to-fit" type, making duplication of the exact shape essential, and next to impossible, so we turned instead to the source, Volvo.) This package was the third of three we’d had to wait for, and in the process of all the waiting we did we became very cranky about Costa Rica’s handling of imported goods. We already knew that importation duty could be so enormous that those wishing to use foreign cars or boats invariably go to extreme lengths to move their vehicle out of the country periodically so as to technically avoid "importing" it at all. We knew also that even small packages from out of the country are typically held in Customs for indefinitely long periods, and then taxed to the tune of 70%! We were aware, though, that in most countries, cruising sailors legally avoid such taxes by labeling imported boat parts as "Parts for Yacht in Transit." Our first package and importation experiment, a new PVC water tank, cost us $50 in import duty, plus nine days’ waiting, to import via DHL; the tank itself had cost under $70. In investigating the possible cause of this failed experiment, we learned that the "Parts for…" label had been omitted by the sender. Confident of success the second time around, we urged the sender of our combination sun-awning/rain-catcher to remember the label. She did, and again we waited over a week and were charged the 70% duty!

At this point, we were equally put out by the expense and the slowness of package delivery in Costa Rica. For delivery #3, the coolant pipes, we followed some radical advice and had the package sent via the U.S. Mail (Express Mail) instead of DHL. It is just possible that this method would have worked, in fact it came very close to working, but for one chance occurrence: the postmaster in San Jose was struck with an inexplicable curiosity as to the precise contents of the little package we were waiting for, intriguingly described by the U.S. Postal Service as "copper pipes." His exact words (I had the privilege of speaking with him in person later): "I ask myself, ‘Pipes? Pipes is not going to a family. Pillows is going to a family. Pipes maybe is for drogas.’" And so he set the package aside for Customs inspection, and there it sat for over a week until someone thought to notify the Golfito P.O. that it was there. The very sympathetic local post office staff expressed dismay as they told me the situation, and it was soon clear that I would have to go to San Jose myself to see what was up.

I was so relieved, though, finally to be able to take matters into my own hands that I actually had a lovely time on my little excursion to San Jose. The flight there was interesting. The plane was a tiny 12-seater, deftly flown over gorgeous scenery by two women who both looked about 18, one of whom I’d taken to be a flight attendant as she collected my ticket. They both had cute, bouncy little ponytails, big earrings and lots of make-up, and both chewed gum! I might not have noticed them at all, deeply absorbed as I was in Patricia Highsmith’s "Strangers on a Train," but the two sixty-something sportfishermen in front of me couldn’t stop staring and making cautious little comments about them. "My," said one, "Those are very young ladies flying this plane, did you notice that?" "They’re doing just fine now, aren’t they, yessiree," said the other. Their observations, and my own, disturbed me at first. I recalled how transparently sexist it seems when older patients in the emergency department continually remark on how young I am for a doctor, though I am actually several years older than most of the house staff and almost a decade older than some of the students. I strongly suspect the male physicians don’t hear this comment nearly so often, because what it typically means is really how young and female I am. (As one octagenarian put it, on meeting me, "Well well, a little girl doctor!") Am I therefore sexist myself, in being surprised at who I found flying the plane? Possibly I am, if girlishness--in the form of ponytails, etc.--failing to inspire my confidence is the same as sexism. However, it is unlikely that boyishness in pilots (baseball T-shirts, cowlicks, rough language and more gum-cracking) would fare any better with me. More likely, what I was noticing about them was not their being female (and young) but their being childish-looking--lacking the sophistication we expect from professionals. This distinction would probably be lost on the two gentlemen in front of me (and on some of my patients), but now you will say I’m being ageist! In any event, the two very-young women handled the plane just fine, and this in itself is remarkable because, as I learned afterwards, the more experienced pilots in Costa Rica fly the bigger planes; the smaller ones are flown by the junior pilots, you know, for practice.

In San Jose I had all of four hours before the last flight back to Golfito, so I planned accordingly. First I claimed my package, paid a very small sum to Customs (under a dollar), and had a brief chat with the man, quoted above, who’d decided to detain the package. I was so grateful at not having to pay a 70% tax--in that sense, this delivery had been a success, leaving aside the matter of the roundtrip airfare--that I managed to hold my tongue when "drogas" were mentioned, and departed without offering my opinion that the odds of finding drugs in a package mailed from a Volvo distributor in the U.S. to an American in Central America were actually quite slim. Next I found myself a wonderful cabdriver who happened also to be a mecanico and took me to San Jose’s own Volvo distributor to look for a new starter. (Maybe I forgot to mention it: our starter had recently signaled a request for replacement.) There I had a very nice surprise indeed. It just so happened that there was one Volvo MD11C starter in stock, and this lonely little starter had lain forgotten on a shelf in this store for eighteen years, all the while bearing its original price tag. The cabdriver had the pleasure of translating this news to me--I really do speak Spanish, but I still have quite a time understanding it!--and he was positively beaming when he told me it would cost me a mere $100 (the current price is more like $800 or $900). I filled the last hour getting my hair cut, then headed back to Golfito, this time in the capable hands of a little girl pilot and a little boy co-pilot.

Around that time, we found ourselves unaccountably ready to leave again, all packages having been safely received, all repairs completed, and John’s 4-day bout with fever, chills and joint aches diagnosed at the local hospital as a mild virus (complete blood count and thick smear were fortunately both normal). On April 20, still only a mere three weeks past our scheduled departure date (longtime followers of this site will note how impressive this is), we left again! (And to save you the agony of nervous anticipation: things have gone smoothly since then. Of course, there’s always tomorrow.) We spent the first couple of nights at anchor in the Golfo Dulce just outside of Puerto Jimenez, not far from Golfito, enjoying a steady, cooling breeze, the lovely shoreline, and relative privacy--only one other occupied boat. Then we jointly took a deep breath and headed out into the Pacific, on a southwest course for Costa Rica’s Isla del Coco, 400 miles away.

 Isla del Coco, Costa Rica

You may remember Isla del Coco from the opening shots in "Jurassic Park." It is the largest uninhabited island in the world, and its dense rainforest does look as if it might still contain a raptor or two. It is not easy to get to: there is no airport, and it is awkward to sail to from southern Costa Rica because of contrary winds and currents. There are, however, a couple of dive boats that make the 36-hour trip from the northern end of the coast, and the trip is well worth it for the divers; the diving at this island, we were told, is the best in the world. There are enormous numbers and varieties of fish and other marine creatures; we heard incredible tales every day of the divers’ adventures with bevies of manta rays, pods of hammerhead sharks, and hordes of hosts of other things. There are two ranger stations on the northwestern end of the island, a handful of rangers, a few sailboats at a time in the only two semi-protected anchorages, and the two dive boats, and that’s the extent of civilization on this 4- or 5-mile-long national park in the middle of the ocean.

For us the island served as a respite from the unfavorable conditions we’d just faced during four days of motor-sailing, and provided a limitless source of drinking water. (Our plan of collecting rainwater has dried up, so to speak, as we enter a local dry season.) We did a bit of snorkeling, although there wasn’t much to see in the shallower depths. One day we hiked with some other sailors and a park ranger along an active riverbed which snaked up the slopes of the island’s mountainous interior. We crossed and re-crossed the river, balancing on, and sometimes slipping off, treacherously wet rocks, until we reached a large waterfall cascading into a pleasingly cold natural pool where we swam for a while.

There are a number of waterfalls on the island, and until recently one of them, at the edge of the anchorage, provided cruisers with drinking water, by way of a hose leading down from a 50-gallon drum set on a ledge in the middle of the water stream. The hose was missing when we arrived, and a ranger told us that fishermen had absconded with it but that we were welcome to the water at the ranger’s station. John couldn’t get over the theft of the hose. We’d just read an article about the island, and in the article there was an actual photograph of the hose hanging invitingly down from the waterfall. The day after we arrived, John took the dinghy back to the waterfall, still hoping, perhaps, that the hose would appear. What he found instead was a tiny, frightened deer trapped in a shallow cave set into the steep rocky slope near the waterfall. He couldn’t coax it out, nor could he navigate the breaking waves at the mouth of the cave and rescue the poor creature. When he got back, he radioed the park rangers and later that day we watched three of them, two of whom were very large men, carry out the rescue operation. First, one of them stripped down to his bathing suit, waded over to the cave and, by his approach, scared the deer into swimming from the cave. Next followed a prolonged chase scene, in which the two men in the boat and one in the water tried to corner the now terrified animal into running up the bank, or swimming in the appropriate direction back toward calmer water, but it couldn’t negotiate the steep wall, nor did it seem to have any sense of direction, heading off toward the ocean with great determination each time it eluded its pursuers. Finally, with an air of getting down to business, the rangers managed to seize their quarry, and as they motored back to the station, the three men gently but firmly held the little thing down so it wouldn’t escape again. Back on land, they set it loose and it was gone before we could see which way it would go. Mission accomplished, and water hose quite forgotten.

The other cruisers we met in the anchorage included a young couple, recently married, spending a year sailing the Pacific in the most perfect cruising sailboat we’d ever seen, a 46-foot Sparkman & Stephens design; another couple, retired at the ages of 49 and 42, two children already safely in college, the couple’s lives a perfect contrast to our own which always seem to have barely begun, incipient careers only temporarily interrupted (and short-term work just around the corner), the question of children still under construction, and even our sailing itinerary far from settled; a 40-ish Slovenian named Roman on a very large (70 feet, I believe it was) sloop, covered with the names of various sponsors, who explained that he was the first Slovenian to sail to the Antarctic and around Cape Horn, and will be the first to circumnavigate the globe; and a French family of six on a catamaran.

Meeting other cruisers is somewhat different from meeting just any travelers, in ways that are difficult to define. In our travels thus far we’ve met a number of non-cruising tourists we particularly liked and won’t soon forget, and we’ve certainly met cruising sailors we h iser, we nevertheless are likely to have in common a willingness to make certain sacrifices for sake of a lifestyle that enables us to see the world by the most immediate means possible, and often this is a sufficient basis for an interesting conversation, at least. There is also the fact that we meet one another in or near our respective homes--our boats--and therefore seem to learn more about each other in a short time than we otherwise would. All of which, of course, can be a good or a bad thing, depending, but so far, on the whole, more a good thing.

This update feels as though it might be getting rather long, and I haven’t even brought you up to the Galapagos yet! But if we’re going to leave 4- and 5-month gaps between entries, the least we can do is satisfy your craving for new information to the point where you realize you wouldn’t actually mind if we waited quite a while before writing again. That said, the Galapagos Islands are really all there is left to talk about. We left Isla del Coco on April 29th. The first two days out, there was very little wind and we mostly motored. This, by the way, was the extent of the "doldrums" we’ve encountered so far, to our surprise. The doldrums, the wind-poor region a few degrees of latitude in either direction from the equator, moves gradually northward around this time of year, and if we’ve timed things right, as we head south from the Galapagos, which are on and just south of the equator, we should not have far to go before we’re past the pesky doldrums again.

On the third day out from Coco, we faced nasty conditions, the wind blowing straight in our face, sailing impossible (with the set of the current, and the contrary wind, tacking to windward could easily have failed to take us anywhere near the Galapagos) and motoring horrible, because of this thing Saros does when confronted with waves on the nose: she stops and falls off, starts up again slowly, stops and falls off again, over and over till both of us are seasick and depressed! So we motored, because we had no choice, but it was very bad for morale, and on his night watch during this period, John got to thinking, which is always a bad thing to do while seasick, especially while depressed and seasick. What John realized, or thought in his unhappy state that he’d realized, was that Saros was just not up to the task of crossing oceans. Not only did he rule out the possibility that she could successfully carry us beyond Australia and across the Indian Ocean, but he seriously doubted whether we would even make it to the Galapagos! We were having to motor moderately hard, and with our fairly light-displacement 35-foot boat we only hold enough fuel to carry us 500 miles or so. The currents and winds were seriously threatening our abilities, and we were only at the beginning of our first ocean crossing.

The following morning the wind shifted, the current seemed to stop fighting us, and we were able to sail almost exclusively for the remaining two days of the trip. With the improved motion of the boat, and our soaring speed (in a relative sense, that is), John’s seasickness resolved, the gloom evaporated, and only a trace of apprehension about the boat’s abilities remained. (Later, when we discussed the motion problem with other sailors, they thought our sails might be the problem, and this gave us hope for a less drastic solution to the motion problem than selling the boat!) Inexplicably, I now became seasick, which is unusual for me to begin with, and particularly odd with the easing of the boat motion. But on the 5th day, the sailing was excellent, both of us felt well, and we even managed, as I say, to swallow a small quantity of amaretto as we crossed the equator. At dawn the next morning, we arrived at Puerto Ayora on the island of Santa Cruz, in the Galapagos.

Galapagos Islands, Ecuador

We were quite enchanted with the little town of Puerto Ayora, tourist-driven though it is. And for the first few days here we didn’t roam far. We wandered up and down Avenida Charles Darwin, read in the shade at an outdoor restaurant called "Pippo’s," explored the Charles Darwin Visitor’s Center and tortoise hatcheries, and dragged our folding bikes to shore in the dinghy, for a ride around the town. We rode to the edge of Bahia Tortuga, a protected area of volcanic rock, dry brush, cactuses and small trees leading to a lovely white-sand beach with crashing surf. We took the 30-minute walk to the beach along a walkway constructed of cement bricks, with low walls of volcanic rock, which greatly impressed John for the effort it must have taken to construct, and the pleasing outcome. Along the way we had our first up-close encounters with Galapagos birds--the Galapagos mockingbird was one we later identified--and were fascinated by their apparent lack of concern with our presence. We lay on the beach for a while, talking to a German college student staying in Ecuador for a few months to work on a photography project. He was photographing tourists, and tourists only, for a photoessay on the island-tourist’s search for paradise. He took a few pictures of me, with my permission. I commented that we were not exactly in search of paradise, but that the Galapagos fell neatly onto our sailing route from Central America to New Zealand and that while here we would take a guided tour to see some of the famed marine animal life the islands offered. He seemed not to hear, and I think he really did believe that we, and all the other tourists, were helplessly drawn to islands in our desperate search for paradise.

After a few days’ consideration and much discussion with other cruisers--all of the cruisers we’d socialized with at Isla del Coco managed to find one another again in Puerto Ayora--we selected a tour boat and signed up for a 4-day cruise. We’d known in advance that cruising sailors were discouraged from taking their own vessels around to the different islands, if you consider a fee of $200/person/day plus the cost of hiring the requisite guide to accompany you discouraging, so all that remained when we’d arrived was to choose from among several dozen tour boats of varying size and quality. The Lonely Planet’s Ecuador & Galapagos guide had given us some useful tips. First, there was no point in going all the way to the Galapagos Islands and not taking at least a 4 or 5 days’ tour with stops at the more interesting islands. Second, the low-budget tours were indeed low-budget, offering transportation, meals, a bed to sleep in, and a tour guide, but in boats that might be in failing health, their itineraries subject to change without warning, the meals just tolerable, the showers simply seawater in a bucket, the tour guides only minimally knowledgeable about the biology of the islands. For $85/person/day, a "low-end" but not "bottom-end" price (visiting the Galapagos is not cheap!), we found ourselves a fairly clean, very comfortable 48-passenger boat with air conditioning, hot, freshwater showers, unlimited drinking water, reasonably good food, and very knowledgeable, pleasant, bilingual guides. Plus, no rats or roaches! The boat was big and fairly fast, and we chose it in large part because the itinerary--which didn’t "change without warning"--included two islands, Isabella and Fernandina, that are less frequently visited, being farther away, and sounded especially interesting to us for their volcanoes and several of their animal species.

We boarded Tropic Sun at 6pm on a Sunday, had our orientation and our first meal, and luxuriated in our air conditioned cabin with its large picture window looking out over the sea and islands. In the morning, we had traveled 8 or 9 hours to the far (western) coast of the Galapagos’ largest island, Isabella. The daily plan included 2-3 hours of slow hiking each morning with or without snorkeling at the end; lunch on the boat while she traveled to the next spot; an hour or two of siesta after lunch; another few hours of hiking and snorkeling at the new location; dinner; after-dinner socializing. It was the ideal cruise, as cruises (I imagine, not having done this before) go: lots to do, plenty of exercise, enough but not too much food, a pleasant crew, and an interesting mix of passengers. But, though I can’t speak for John, I wasn’t in it for the cruise, and the islands we visited were simply unforgettable.

All of the Galapagos Islands were formed by volcanic eruption, and Isabella and Fernandina consist of, collectively, 7 volcanic peaks; the one on Fernandina is the youngest and most active, and last erupted in ’95. The ground in most places we hiked consisted of one of two forms of gunmetal grey-black volcanic rock: slabs and chunks of flat-topped, layered rock, grinding and clinking against one another like giant shards of broken ceramic as we walked over them; or longer, less fragmented stretches of parallel ropey ribbons--this type is called pahoehoe; the other one I’ve forgotten. Most of the rock, especially the first type, is patterned with tiny air spaces left behind by rapid cooling--John says I may have this backwards, but we have no way to check at the moment, sorry. Most of the rock is basalt, formed by flowing lava rather than volcanic explosion, and this accounts for some of its more interesting features. One of them is the lava tube, big enough to walk through--we haven’t visited any yet, but may take our bikes to see some today--and formed, says the Visitors’ Center, by the rapid passage of large air bubbles through molten lava, or possibly, says our Lonely Planet guide, by the rapid passage of hotter, less viscous lava through an area already beginning to cool.

The beauty of the Galapagos for me lies in their vast, stark stretches of broken, black rock; silent but watchful volcanoes in the distance; episodic clusters of bright green-yellow foliage; their sparse but integr gs about removing sand and soil from our feet before returning to the boat. One island is home to the fur seals (though probably only by choice); another, the giant waved albatross; there are 11 subspecies of giant tortoise, each in its own location; and three distinct species of cactus also existed in discrete locations, by and large.

The truly fascinating thing about the Galapagos is the animals’ nearly complete lack of fear of humans! Wherever we went, we had to remind ourselves not to approach too closely, because the animals would simply have let us! In fact, the massive collections of marine iguanas were very hard to avoid stepping on--though nobody actually stepped on any. At one spot, we walked inland and saw several giant land iguanas, wonderfully primitive-looking beasts with permanent grins on their otherwise stony faces. Nearby, we strolled among the even larger land tortoises, who, though shy, didn’t run away but simply went "indoors" until we’d passed. At the shore, particularly on Fernandina, my favorite of the islands we saw, we were struck dumb by the variety and proximity of so many unusual creatures. We watched slate-gray marine iguanas, many up to three feet long, emerge from the sea after a day of hunting, and sprawl out over sun-baked rocks, often two or three lying one on top of the other in a happy heap. We watched lava lizards catch rides on the heads of the iguanas. We saw a family of red-beaked American oyster-catchers, the parents taking turns keeping a hatchling warm. Red and yellow Sally Lightfoot crabs scuttled across the wet volcanic rocks. Best of all, we saw dozens and dozens of sea lions, basking in the sun in family units, or darting in and out of the water in a nearly endless appetite for play, or so it seemed, interrupted only occasionally for feeding and sunbathing.

We also loved the snorkeling. On the first snorkeling trip we discovered that we were the only passengers with wetsuits, and the water was very cold. We stayed in for quite a long time, swimming around a small island, and when we couldn’t see any other snorkelers after a while, we occupied ourselves happily with a sea lion and her two pups, who swam with us and seemed to be showing off their large repertoire of underwater tricks. When the guide finally picked us up in an otherwise empty boat, we learned that the others, all freezing cold, had been back on the boat for some time. Over the next few days, we snorkeled at various beaches, where the water was warmer, but still we were happy to have brought the wetsuits, and the others continued to gaze longingly at them each time. We saw a few unusual varieties of tropical fish, and I saw one smallish shark and a couple of penguins underwater, but the best thing about the time spent in the water was being able to cool off--but not, of course, too quickly.

At the end of the trip, we had been introduced to a number of interesting people and to a wide array of lifestyles. Patty, a pleasantly quirky journalist from Alaska, was vacationing--or maybe working, she couldn’t quite decide which--in Ecuador briefly, but seemed fairly content to be a sometime traveler whose home base was definitely Alaska. (We enjoyed her company and conversation at dinner and on hikes very much.) At the other extreme were the many travelers we met, ages ranging from low-20’s to high-30’s at least, quite possibly even a majority of our fellow passengers, who’d actually left jobs on a long-term basis to travel! I found this interesting, and wondered if the Galapagos simply don’t make a reasonable travel option for the typical 2-week vacationer. Either that, or record numbers of people are leaving jobs nowadays for the sake of travel. Probably at least the latter is the case, but why? I myself am "conflicted," as they say, on this matter, being torn between interest in my work and interest in the world I know nothing of. For now, I want only to continue as we are doing, provided we can find frequent work to pay our living and travel expenses, keep our skills up, and simply because we miss working when we stop. I am quite aware of the obstacles we will face when we attempt to re-enter our original professional tracks some day, but if we didn’t make this compromise, we would still be back in our apartment wondering what this life would have been like.

As I’m sure these updates make clear, what it is like changes all the time, and there are long periods of agonizing waiting, many afternoons spent chasing the tiny shade spots in the cockpit so as not to fry to a crisp, and would likely be considerable boredom if it weren’t for the vast numbers of books we brought with us. On the plus side, we’ve learned how to sail in open ocean, one of us has learned Morse code and how to cook, the other can fix almost anything electrical or mechanical on a medium-sized sailboat, both have learned Spanish (sort of), we’ve met all sorts of people we wouldn’t have otherwise, and we’ve learned everything we can about how things work in several different cultures already--and we’ve only scarcely begun to get anywhere. So we’re going to keep at it for a while…next update from French Polynesia!

Saranac Lake, New York

Happy holidays, all! John here. When last you heard from us we were in David, Panama, about to take a quick trip inland to Boquete. Boquete is a beautiful, lushly forested, mountain village dominated by Volcan Baru, a large volcano straddling the border between Panama and Costa Rica. Coffee is the main industry, as it grows extremely well in the rich volcanic soil. We stayed three days at some cabanas run by expat Canadians and would be happy to go back some day.

Very soon after leaving Boquete, we made our way uneventfully to Golfito, Costa Rica, where we had arranged to leave the boat at a dock for our trip back to the U.S. It’s currently typhoon season in the Pacific, so we have until March before we can venture west to the Galapagos and French Polynesia.

In Golfito, we spent a couple of weeks “putting the boat to bed” and getting our things ready for the flight out of San Jose. Saros now sits at a dock owned by two North American expats from Santa Barbara. They will do things like run the engine occasionally to keep it lubed, open the hatches to air out the cabins, and keep a close watch on security.

The exodus to the U.S. was quite an operation as we had vast amounts of stuff to bring back, not the least of which was 30 lbs of Erika’s medical textbooks. The final tally was two backpacks, three duffles, and eight cardboard boxes. This made each step of the 3-day voyage from Golfito to San Jose to New York a bit of a logistical trick, since one doesn’t ever want to leave any portion of the stuff unattended in a taxi, by the bus, or on the street.

Once we had arrrived at Erika’s parents’ place on Long Island, we only had a few days before Erika started work upstate. So we quickly went about finding a car, eventually settling on an ’86 Toyota 4Runner. We needed 4-wheel drive as we are spending the winter in Saranac Lake, New York. The town is a few miles from Lake Placid (remember the winter Olympics) and nestled in the High Peaks region of the Adirondack Park.. We are renting a one-room apartment over a garage. Though small, it is nicely appointed, comfortable, and very isolated in the woods down a quarter-mile gravel road. We look out over a lake and have a view of the sunset over the mountains.

Erika is busily working at the local medical center, and (after a three-week job search) I am now back working with computers at a local non-profit training association. They are an international company that does business training seminars, but the work environment isn’t nearly so button-down as I would have expected. We’re quite pleased that the transfer from cruising back to working went fairly well. I think we’re getting the hang of the nomadic lifestyle. We’re thinking that continuing to mix cruising with working each year may be the way to do it. Erika was certainly eager to work again, and even I, as morally opposed to work as I am, was a little restless to get my hands on the latest computer software and earn a little money. In the future we won't go so long between jobs, having tried it once, and will be trying to get work along the way as we cruise.

So here we are until March, cozily living in our cabin in the woods, driving our 4-wheeler pickup, anticipating the turn of the millenium, taking stock of our first 13 months of cruising and eagerly looking forward to setting off across the Pacific. Here’s wishing you all the happiest of holidays and good luck for the new year!

Georgetown, Cayman Islands

Hi folks. John here. Well, it's been four months since we last updated our position, at least as far as this website is concerned. Sorry about the silence, but we couldn't bear to post another update from the U.S. As you can see from the title, we have now made it out of the country, so we can finally show our faces.

St. Augustine Refit, cont'd

When last we posted, the boat was on the hard at Oasis Boatyard in St. Augustine Florida, undergoing a refit. The details of that undertaking will be omitted here, on account of their generally soporific nature. Still, we can't resist mentioning our highly successful draft-reduction project. The numbers that came back from the naval architect indicated that we could proceed with our plan to remove the bottom third of our keel, as long as we put back a good portion of the weight we removed--in the form of lead bulbs on either side of the shortened keel. The same naval architect has a small workshop where he builds small racing sailboats and he offered to cast the necessary lead bulbs, using some lead from our keel (although the keel was once cast iron alone, a 6-inch lead extension had been added at some point). Anyway, after much turmoil, effort, laughter, misery, and education about the metallurgy of cast iron,  Saros now draws 5'7" instead of 7'4" (her former draft when fully loaded) and seems to sail precisely the same as before. For the full technical story see The Saga of the Keel.

We re-launched Saros and left Oasis boatyard in mid-April, moving about a half mile upriver to the dock of a local carpenter. We intended to have two carpentry projects done there. In our tiny aft cabin, we had a little vanity sink with a mirror. In two years we'd never used the sink. We did, however, need a lot more storage space for food, so we pulled out the vanity and wanted to build pantry shelves. We also hated and hoped to replace the headliner in the main cabin. (You might think we would call this the ceiling, but on a boat, the "ceiling" is what lines the walls and the thing overhead is called a "headliner." Don't spend too much time on this one.) It was covered with a soft grey felt material that 1) mildews, 2) is easily damaged, 3) attracts and holds dirt, and 4) is almost impossible to clean. The carpenter informed us that professionals call the stuff "monkey fur." There are a lot of clever little touches on our French-built boat, but we really wondered what they were thinking when they chose this material.

Anyway, in St. Augustine, the carpenter only had time to do the new headliner (a nice white, easily cleaned formica, with new teak trim strips) and a couple of other minor jobs. So our pantry remained unfinished. We planned to look for another carpenter along the way to Key West.

 St. Augustine to Key West

We left St. Augustine at the end of April and continued south along the ICW, passing Cape Canaveral and stopping briefly in Stuart, Florida. From there we rented a car and buzzed down to Ft. Lauderdale to check on getting our life raft serviced. We also determined that we had a very good chance of being able to navigate the Okeechobee Waterway, which runs from Stuart to Ft. Myers via Lake Okeechobee. With our newly truncated keel, draft was no longer a concern, but there was a bridge on the Waterway that was officially 49' off the water. Our mast, as best we can measure, extends 50' 6" or so off the water. Some 10" of that is a navigation light on the top, which is more or less removable. We checked with the Corps of Engineers and determined the water level in the Waterway was such that the bridge height gave us an even 50'. And with that, we elected to proceed.

When the moment of truth arrived, we stopped the boat and I went to the top of the mast and unbolted the light. I then motored the boat forward at dead slow while Erika went out in the dink to watch and take photos. The theory was that if I was about to hit, she could warn me off (or at least get some great shots). As it turned out the mast cleared the bridge, but by so little that we were both utterly convinced it was going to hit. For a long time afterwards we continued to stare behind us at the bridge in disbelief.

In due course, we arrived in Ft. Myers. The main reason for taking this route was that my maternal grandparents, and my grandmother's parents, live in Ft. Myers, and we wanted to see them before leaving the country. This route also allowed us to avoid a long sail potentially to windward along the Florida Keys. In nearby Punta Gorda, we located a carpenter willing to do the work we needed done, at a marina which offered free dockage for the duration of the job. While visiting my relatives, we pulled out my grandmother's sewing machine and I learned to sew! I made a piece of canvas we'll use to catch rain, and a big mosquito net to throw over the cockpit. Unfortunately, the machine stopped functioning while I was using it, so I wasn't able to finish the weather cloths for the cockpit. I swear it was nothing I did. In fact, I was even getting pretty good at using it when it croaked.

In mid-May, we said our goodbyes and left for a pleasant overnight passage to Key West. Along the way, we determined that the new inner forestay I'd rigged needed additional support; I'd suspected it might. As it turned out, both the deck fitting and the mast needed backup. What this meant was some custom welding for the deck support; we would also need to install running backstays. As soon as we pulled into Key  West, we set to work tracking down and ordering what we needed.

Key West & Dry Tortugas

Key West was fun, despite the ongoing refit & mechanical issues. We continued our survey of public libraries of the East Coast. Key West's is quite large, has free internet, and crisp air conditioning. Key West also had a couple of places where we could get cheap, tasty lunches.

We became friends with an adventurous couple we had first encountered back in Atlantic City, NJ. Jerry & Trina sailed south from New York in winter on a 16-foot trimaran kayak with sails. They hadn't actually sailed the whole way to Key West--a portion of the distance they had the trimaran shipped--but their adventure, which included a month of camping in the Everglades, made ours look like we'd taken the QEII from Boston to Key West. Maybe not; the QEII would probably have arrived on time.

On what we figured would be our next to last day, we took a slip in the marina in order to do some work that required AC power (for tools). In the process of motoring back to the anchorage the next day, we realized we had a serious problem with the throttle. It could barely be moved. [For an account of our seemingly endless engine problems see The Saros Mechanical Nuisances Page.] We had a mechanic take a look at it and learned that nothing was broken, but that there was an impressive degree of corrosion where the throttle lever entered the engine block. The cause of the corrosion was actually sort of interesting. Our engine is located immediately below the galley sink. We had packed the storage space around the base of the sink with spare bottles of dish soap. Over time, several of these flimsy plastic containers had apparently developed cracks and let liquid soap escape. The soap had flowed down along the metal sink fixtures, under the sink, and on down along the sink drain hose which enters the engine compartment on its way out of the boat. Once inside the engine compartment, the soap was absorbed with great efficiency by the open-cell foam insulation lining the top and sides of the compartment. After that, all it took was a little water dribbling down the outside of the sink and the soap would come to life again, dripping willy-nilly all over the engine! The soap removed much of the anti-corrosive paint from the engine--almost as though it were designed for the purpose--and the rest is history. Fortunately, we were able to get the throttle unstuck in a couple of days with a penetrating oil spray (Blaster ®, a mechanic in a can) and we have modified our soap-storage arrangement. Not so fortunately, the soap reservoir in the engine insulation is there to stay, but at least it will remain dry as we have sealed all the leaks above it.

After two weeks in Key West, and our very first experience "clearing out" (at U.S. Customs) we sailed to the Dry Tortugas. Yes, the Dry Tortugas are U.S. territory, but you can't clear out from them. In fact, these tiny islands are worth a visit precisely because they don't offer much of anything except natural beauty. The main exception is Fort Jefferson, an enormous, round, brick fortress complete with moat, designed to be a Union fort in the Civil War. The fort was never used as such, and became a federal prison before being abandoned; in the 1960's it was designated a national park. Part of the reason it was never used is that the engineering was faulty: the freshwater cisterns cracked and allowed salt water to enter, and the cannon ports were reinforced with iron, which promptly rusted and disintegrated, and led to unsightly bulges in the surrounding brick. In spite of its decrepitude, the building, which encloses almost an entire island and has a large, grassy central courtyard, has a serene beauty and is haunting to wander through. The snorkeling at the Tortugas was also very good.

Naturally, any visit must be accompanied by an engine problem. After arriving at the Tortugas, we found two leaks in the raw water system: one from the pump itself, the other from a copper conduit running to the heat exchanger. Fast becoming something of an amateur mechanic, I took the pump apart and found the failed seal. I then flew back to Key West on one of the seaplanes that visits the Tortugas, ordered the parts, waited the couple days for them to arrive, and booked passage back to the Tortugas on one of the catamarans that ferry visitors to the island. While in  Key West, I got to hang out with Jerry & Trina a lot more (which was fun) and sleep on a shell of a steel boat that belonged to a friend of theirs (which wasn't fun). I was grateful to have someplace to crash, though. The alternatives were either a little risky (the youth hostel, at $18/night) or expensive (hotel, at $60/night and up). I also took advantage of the opportunity to round out my tool collection, as it was beginning to look like the potential engine problems were infinite and we would have to be able to handle them ourselves.

Dry Tortugas to Cayman Islands

In due course, we managed to depart the Dry Tortugas for the Cayman Islands. Because it was (and is) so late in the season, we had to deal with the fact that every 5-8 days, a "tropical wave" rolls across the Caribbean Sea from east to west. These waves are low-pressure troughs, from which tropical storms and hurricanes can develop. Fortunately, most of them don't develop further, but even simple tropical waves pack major thunderstorms. We watched the weatherfax to see when a wave had passed our longitude and then left immediately following one. The idea was to get to the Caymans before the next wave, also visible on weatherfax.

The early, downwind part of the passage was pleasant enough, but the wind was light and we motored often, which of course used a portion of our limited fuel. Then, in the Yucatan Straits, we began to feel the big, choppy swells from the southeast. These continued to build as we began to make our easting along the south coast of Cuba. With 17 to 25 knots from 120º (east-southeast), along with steep, 10' swell, our progress toward the Caymans (at 150º) was slow. We ended up making long tacks, sometimes motorsailing, to the south and east-northeast.

After a few days of this we were pretty tired and our fuel supply was running low. It was also clear that we weren't going to make the Caymans before the next tropical wave rolled across. Our first encounter with tropical thunderstorms was scary but manageable--furl the headsail, hand steer, and shoot along under triple-reefed main, as close to our course as possible. It was even a little fun, since we could really scoot for an hour or so in 30-40-knot winds. Eventually we begin to approach the Caymans: 80, 70, 60 nautical miles to go. We hoped to arrive before sunset, but we were starting to worry about the motor. At some point it had started to vary in rpm's, and to lose power. We suspected we were running out of fuel and that the problem was either air in the line or low pressure. We put our last reserve jerry can of diesel into the tank.

Just as the sun got low, a really big set of thunderstorms rolled in. One minute we were going along in 20 knots of wind, the next we were laid over 60º, the wind howling, the triple-reefed main luffing wildly as we abruptly released the sheet. Nothing like the gusts we'd felt in earlier squalls, this wind was unrelenting. The genoa track remained submerged on the leeward side and the boat refused to head up. With the boat at such a steep angle, our top hatchboard, which a moment earlier had been resting under the dodger, suddenly slid off the boat and we watched helplessly as it floated away. Erika brought up my harness and I crawled forward through the dodger to drag the mainsail down. The wind continued. Back in New England the previous June, Erika and I had been caught in a surprise gale that we learned the following day was 45 knots with 15-foot seas. This was worse--at least 50 knots, we guessed, though the waves were still the 10-13 foot swells we'd had all day. (The wind would have to go on for some timebefore the waves would significantly increase.) We thought about getting the storm trysail flying, but I wondered if the present wind was too much even for that. I also remembered that I had stupidly not rigged sheets for the damn thing, and this made getting it flying a major difficulty.

With the main down and the wheel locked the boat began to drift downwind. The engine no longer functioned. We both went below to figure out what to do next. At that point, Grand Cayman was still over 20 miles away--to windward--and not getting any closer. We would soon be out of VHF range. We could choose to drift until the weather calmed, by which time we would be out of radio range. We would then have a long upwind sail to reach Georgetown, and, without the use of the engine, would not necessarily make it. Furthermore, we hadn't seen a weatherfax in a couple of days and had no way of knowing if the weather we were experiencing was isolated or not, or if the tropical wave we had been attempting to beat had developed into something worse (tropical depression, tropical storm, hurricane). If the weather worsened, our safety would be seriously compromised by the loss of the hatchboard. In any case, we were quite taken aback by the fury of the storm as it was.

We did consider abandoning the idea of getting to Georgetown and instead heading directly to Providencia, a small, Colombian island off the coast of Nicaragua, and a good resting point en route to Panama. But this would mean another five days at sea without a working engine, and still didn't address the current weather situation. We also (again, stupidly) didn't have a harbor chart for the Caymans, so we didn't know if the harbor entrance could be easily negotiated under sail alone or would require a working engine for maneuvering. This meant that even if we got to Georgetown, we would probably have to call for a tow anyway.

We decided to hail Georgetown on the VHF and at least let somebody know we were out there, and in some distress, though not in a life-threatening situation. We also wanted to see what the options for a tow were. We talked with Port Security, then Customs/Police. We learned that there were no options for a commercial tow and that Customs/Police handled anything like this. After some discussion, it was decided that although we didn't consider ourselves in imminent danger, they would prefer to tow us in.

By the time they arrived, the weather had eased considerably and I had rigged a towing bridle. As they approached, they asked us to check the decks to see if any lines were in the water. Surprise, surprise, the starboard jibsheet was indeed over the side and firmly wrapped in the prop! Looks like we'd found part of our engine problem, anyway. The tow into Georgetown was long but uneventful and the very professional and friendly Cayman police put us safely on a mooring by 5 a.m.. Exhausted, we fell into bed, only to be woken up several hours later by two formally-attired immigration officials who had made their way into our cockpit and were eager to get down to business.

Serene Georgetown Harbor

After clearing in, and receiving the doubly interesting news that the cost of a tow in the Caymans is normally $500/hour but that we would be charged nothing because of the life-threatening (their word, not ours) nature of the circumstances, I dealt with the engine. First I dove the prop to clear the line. The hull showed some small cracks around the base of the propellor strut, but the strut itself was intact and stable. Then I tried to start the motor--very bad sound. I looked at the motor. Mmm, something looked odd. Hey, the whole motor was too far back. YIKES, it wasn't connected to anything! It seems we'd sheared all our engine mounts, the little blocks of rubber that support the motor. The entire motor had slid back five inches and the coupling was up against the shaft seal. The problem was thus rather simple, though potentially disastrous. We had only to lift the 400lb motor out of the way, replace the mounts (if we could find any), put the motor back and align it with the shaft. Oh, and hope that the shaft wasn't bent.

So here we sit in the Cayman Islands. What can we say about the Caymans? They are a British Crown Colony, which means driving is done on the left and the governor is appointed by the Queen of England. The island economy appears to be built on two things: diving and financial services. There are something like 800 banks on the island, along with lots of other financially-oriented legal institutions, e.g., "captive insurance companies," whatever they are. The island has virtually no taxes, as part of its overall strategy of providing highly confidential financial services to the very rich.The diving economy relies on the amazing reefs which surround the island, and the exquisite clarity and warmth of the water. There seems to be a diving charter boat business on every corner, along with hundreds of incredibly expensive dive resort hotels. Much of the rest of the island consists of similarly expensive condos and estates for the mega-rich, presumably bankers and tycoons looking for someplace safe to hide themselves and their money from their countries' governments.

If you haven't gotten the point yet, this situation has resulted in the Caymans being the most exhorbitantly expensive place we, at least, have ever seen. (Airport cafe prices now seem quite reasonable by comparison.) We wondered at first how the working class on the island survives at all. It turns out that to some extent even the Cayman islanders (who voted to become a Crown Colony in 1962) are part of the fun. For example, foreigners who wish to run local businesses must cede a portion of the business to a Caymanian silent partner. The practical minimum wage is around $6.00 CI ($7.20 US) which is, remember, tax-free, which means the de facto minimum wage here is about $14 US/hour. Also, health insurance is by law included with employment, and the island has essentially full employment. We bumped into the driver of the minibus we usually take ($1.50 CI per person) at the fuel dock where he was fueling up his modest 36-foot sportfisherman. No wonder he was always smiling as he drove the bus. All this ignores the situation of the not insignificant numbers of Jamaicans (documented and undocumented) who do most of the scut work here.

So this place seems to be a poster child for unrestrained capitalism, which make us uneasy. We can't shake the feeling that the Caymanians have made a deal with the devil, by which they've given themselves the highest income in the Caribbean, but lost their souls. Small signs point to a disturbing lack of any concept of collective good. The public library is excrutiatingly small and lacks even a restroom, let alone internet access. Sidewalks exist here and there, but they are not continuous anywhere, which rather limits their usefulness. (We've been informed, however, that any new building projects are now required by law to include a strip of sidewalk at the edge of the property.) Everything costs money, even things that are typically gratis. Restaraunts and shops have signs indicating that the restrooms are for customers, but others can use them for $1.00CI ($1.20US). Don't even think of asking for free refills. A business next to a CI Marine Park, according to its sign, is attempting to charge for snorkeling from the nearby shoreline. It remains to be seen if, as development continues and land becomes even more scarce, housing prices everywhere will become prohibitive even for locals.

OK, progressive politics aside, the Caymanians themselves are cheery and engaging characters. All the officials, and the crew of the boat that towed us, were warm and friendly, while maintaining a reassuring professionalism. Our thanks go out especially to the captain and crew of the Cayman Protector (the boat that towed us). We've also met a couple of pairs of veteran cruisers: a Kiwi sailmaker and his Dominican (Republic of) wife & their two daughters, and a young couple from South Africa on a trimaran.
The Future
We've decided that it's just too late to expect to venture out into the Pacific this year. We'll head south to Panama as soon as we can, transit the Canal, and head up to the Pacific coast of Costa Rica. With all the repairs, and the slow progress, we're going to need a cash infusion, so we'll either work in Costa Rica or back in the U.S. for a few months, and plan to head out across the Pacific in the spring of 2000.

Bye for now!