Galapagos to French Polynesia

After our "incident" with the Parks folks we thought it may be wise
to leave that night.

Night 1
01-16.4S, 90-29.6W COG 253M

We had a light dinner and a power nap and pulled up the anchor at
10:00 pm. We hate leaving in the dark. At least it was a very easy
place to leave. Just pull up the anchor and head west, then dip a
little south. Nothing to hit for 3000 miles!

As we pulled the hook it was windless so we planned to motor for
a bit to get south and pick up the trade winds. About 10 minutes
out of the anchorage it started to rain, just a light drizzle.
Great!!

After about 30 more minutes the wind picked up to about 12 knots, we
were able to sail it in a close beat. The sea was flat so we were
really moving along managing to sit between 7 and 8 knots for the
whole night. Apart from the rain it was excellent sailing - fast and
flat. Reverie was really having a great time.

We on the other hand were struggling to get into the passage groove.
We normally leave in the morning and have all day to sort ourselves
out. Jo was having trouble sleeping and Jason managed to pick up a
cold from somewhere! - First one in 3 years!. bring on the Codral
cold tabs!

The rain continued on all night, the air was also really damp so
even having side screens in the cockpit everything was damp or wet
from the rain, not a great night to be outside!

Day 1

At around 8am the rain eased off and we started to dry out!! Boat
speed was still up in the 8's but we could feel the wind starting to
back around behind us which will slow our progress as the wind
pressure will ease. Listening in on the Pacific radio net there
seems to be some odd weather out here, some guy about 400 miles in
front of us has wind from the North East!?! - what the!?

At around 10am we were much dryer, there was a little sun out and
our speed had fallen right off. We were sailing at around 5 knots.
So in went the jib and out came the big spinnaker. As soon as it
went up we were off again back in the 7-8 and sometimes 9 knots.
With flat seas, a full main and the big kite we really moving, it
was great!.

Cooked a great omelet for lunch and watched a really bad movie
"Heart Break kid" with Ben Stiller - Avoid!!

4pm the wind died and we were back to plodding along in slow
motion!. We have moved our course to get more south hoping that the
wind will come up some more. There is also a lot of dark clouds
around so it would be good to get out of this and into some clear
air. It will be an early dinner tonight and hopefully we both can
catch up on some sleep! Looks like our 24hr run will be about 150
miles. We will start tomorrow doing a noon to noon run rate.

Night 2

Wind fell off a little and the rain came in again and stayed with us
for most of the night. We were able to keep up some nice boat speed
but we seemed to have picked up a current heading the wrong way, so
our speed through the water is quite good but our speed over the
ground is less that great!.

Day 2 Position 02-23.9S, 093-59.5W COG 242M speed 7knots

Looks better today than yesterday, rain has gone and the wind is
still from the south. Seas quite flat so it's making the upwind sail
quite nice.

Not bothering to fish yet, we will wait until the weather is a
little more "sunny", and we are both still a little tired getting
into the swing of night watches.

Yesterdays run rate was 150 miles, nothing to
get excited about, hopefully we will find our way out of this
counter current. We really want to be averaging at least 170 miles a
day so we have some work to do ahead of us.

Wind was quote solid all day, which was nice, still lots of cloud
cover around, but we can see it is starting to get thinner. The
boats ahead of us are now in clear air so we have that to look
forward to!!

The last time we did this passage on the first Reverie each morning
we'd wake to see the deck covered with flying fish, this time no
flying fish but lots of squid? good size too, just a touch bigger
and we may have to cook them up, this morning we had 11 on the deck!

Night 3 (4:41am) 3-00.5S, 096-04.3W COG 238 SOG 6.2Knots

Still got this bloody current, wind has moved around to the east and
is blowing in the 20's boat speed is much the same as we don't want
to push it too much at night, we will worry about that in the
morning. Trying to get a little more south to see if there is any
favorable current down there.

Clear night!!!, lots of stars out so looks like tomorrow will be a
sunny day lets cross our fingers for some favorable current. Looking
at the weather fax that just came in we should have 15 knots from
the SE for the next few days, that should make some great sailing.

Day 3,

Wind stayed up all day today which was great, unfortunately we
still had the current against us which was taking a little more than
a knot off our speed over the ground. Sky was clear, it felt like we
were in classic trade wind sailing conditions. Tried fishing a
little but we decided that if we caught anything we really were not
in the mood for the messy job of chopping it up and dealing with the
mess.

We also noticed that there was a petrol smell inside the boat, very
slight but it was there. Looking at the jerry cans in the back
locker we found one of the jerry cans with petrol has developed a
small split in the bottom, maybe 10mm long, it looks like we have
leaked a couple of liters out of the can. Some of it was caught by
the foam pad the jerry's sit on, the rest has evaporated away or
made it's way into the engine bilge area. We managed to drain the
petrol into another jerry can and do a clean up on the areas we
could get to, the rest will have to clear itself through time as it
slowly evaporates away, hope it does as it's not a great smell to be
around.

Moving into the night, the wind has dropped off a little so our
speed tonight will be a little slower than we want., but it's
comfortable, and makes our watches easy. If it follows the trend it
should pick up later on in the night as it's done this most other
days.

Current position 03-35.1S, 097-31.4W COG 249, SOG 6 knots

More coming soon......

J&J

Galapagos Islands

Santa Cruz, Academy Bay.

Great town, but less than great anchorage. Academy bay is a large
bay with the opening pointing towards the south east, right about
where the swell comes from, so it's not the flattest anchorage. You
need to put a stern anchor out to keep the boat pointed into the
swell otherwise you will go nuts as the boat will roll from side to
side.

So why come here? The town Santa Cruz / Puerto Ayora is awesome!,
oddly enough it's a little like Byron Bay on the east coast of
Australia. Lots of bars, restaurants, surf / dive shops, internet
cafe's everywhere, lots of tour operators. It's also the home to the
Darwin Institute where they continue work looking into evolution
following Charles Darwin's theory's.

There are a couple of surf breaks just on the outside of Academy bay
so when the swell and tide is right the local and any visitors are
out having fun with the seals.

There is lots to do here, but we decided to just chill and enjoy the
town. Eating out is a great deal, very inexpensive and you get
enough to turn you into a sumo wrestler. So we spent a far bit of
time in the local eateries. After 6 days at sea, eating out tastes
extra good!

While we were here we also met up with the guys on the Australian
boat (Perth) "Sabalo" they arrived the same time we did. We first
met them in Colon Panama so it was good to see some friendly faces.
There are three on board and are all keen surfers so the surf break
outside the bay was going to get a visit from them.

While in Santa Cruz we stocked up on lots of fresh vege's ( the
supply ship arrived while we were there) filled up with fuel, wow
cheap fuel US$0.28 a liter!! wish we had bigger tanks! We also
found that our engine start battery was close to dead so we had to
get a new one. Outside of this it was just enjoy the town and some
of the local sights.

One night whilst talking with the guys on Sabalo they told us they
read in their cruising guide that with our clearance into Academy
bay we were able to stop in "Post office bay" on Santa Maria
island - about 30 miles south of us. This sounded great! As most of
the Galapagos is a "national park" boats are very restricted on
where they can go, so this sounded like a great idea and we set up a
plan to sail there and have a dinner and movie night.

The night before we were to leave we heard a call on the radio from
another Australian boat that we met in Panama, "Polly". Colin had
just arrived ( 8pm) after a horrible trip down from Panama, it took
him 20 days! Poor guy, he had engine troubles and a few other
problems, being by himself on the boat there was little he could do
but wait for the wind and unfortunately go slow.

He was coming into Academy bay somewhat disabled, very tired and by
himself, with that it was quite rolly and dark. After a while on the
radio and using Reverie's radar we were able to guide him into the
bay and get his anchor down. He did an awesome job sailing into the
bay, getting the anchor down and dealing with the sails. Not sure
how long "Polly" will be in the Galapagos for but we guess as soon
as he sorts out his engine problems he will be off.

After doing our final preps and clearing out of the Galapagos for
passage to French Polynesia we were off. Reverie left at about
midday, Sabalo left about 7am!! Madness! On the way out we passed
a massive fish feeding area, the water was boiling with activity,
little fish jumping out the way of the bigger fish. We were excited
and we had two lines out, this was our chance. But nothing, not
even a little bite on the lines!!

BUT!!! about 30 min later BANG!! off went one of the lines, we
were both excited, pulling in the line we had hooked a nice Yellow
Fin Tuna about 2.5 ft long. After chopping and filleting and packing
him up we put the lines out again to try our luck some more. This
time BOTH lines jumped !!, the fish on the port side line
unfortunately got off but we managed to keep the other one - Another
Yellow fin, same size as the first! As we were cleaning up the mess
off the back of the boat the line still in the water went off
again!, in it comes and another Yellow Fin, what a day three good
size fish all in the space of 2 hours!

We had the lines out for the rest of the trip but it all went quiet.
Luckily as Jason was getting over chopping up fish, and tuna bleed a
lot so the back of the boat was a bit of a mess and needed a clean.

Arriving into Post office bay was great, there were a few other
boats there (all tour boats) and Sabalo but best of all it was dead
flat! We got the hook down at about 5:30 pm, spoke to Sabalo and
decided to move the dinner movie night to the following night. That
night we had some fresh tuna on the BBQ, and a long sleep without
the boat moving around like we were in Academy Bay. The next day was
not what we expected!.

Around 9am we (and Sabalo) were visited by the National Parks Patrol
folks, they were not happy that we were in Post Office bay - We
weren't sure what the issue was, the cruising guide said it was ok
and it was published in 2006!, either way they were not happy and
took our clearance papers from us ( we need these to arrive into
French Polynesia). We were then told that we both must follow them
around the corner to the islands main Port! ( didn't even know there
was one!). Now we were getting concerned and also felt like
criminals being escorted into Port by a patrol boat!

We arrived put the anchor down (another rolly bay) why do they put
the towns where the anchorage sucks!. Aside from this we were all
feeling a little nervous. What were they going to do? It was an
innocent mistake made by incorrect information ( they change their
rules in the Galapagos quite often, so it is impossible for a
publication to stay accurate). They could have said that we were
not allowed to be there and we should leave, which we would have
done. But no, we were escorted into town.

We managed to get a water taxi to pick us all up and take us into
the dock, from there we went to see the "Parks" people.

The office was a run down little building - more like a shed in your
back yard. It was full of about 6 guy's all giving us the bad looks,
there was also the Navy guy dressed in his uniform. He was young,
and appeared to be looking for someone to try and enforce his
authority upon. In his top pocket he had our Zarpe's our clearance
papers, he
was holding onto these like they were the keys to our lives.

After talking with the guy in charge ( via Caleb, one of the crew on
the other boat "Sabalo" who luckily spoke a little Spanish) we were
told that the matter had to be referred to the "boss" back in Santa
Cruz. We would find out the following morning!. The result was to be
either a smack and they would let it fly or they would fine us, if
they were to fine us the amount could be quite high and it would
require us all sailing back to Santa Cruz - and they would have to
escort us!

We left the office all feeling quite like the hardened criminals
that we were and all quite nervous. All we wanted to do was pick up
the anchor and leave!

The anchorage we had here was not too bad, a little rolly but lots
of sea life around, huge turtles swimming around the boat, and lots
of seals taking a lot of interest on the swim step on the boat.

While we were ashore Jo looked back out to Reverie and saw something
on the dinghy ( we store our dinghy upside down on the deck when we
are sailing). Jason looked out and could see something also, we
decided that it was most likely a pelican. When we got out to
Reverie what we saw was not a "pelican" it was a bloody big seal!
This thing was huge, he climbed up on the swim step, then made it
into the cockpit, up onto the seats, along the side decks then up on
the dinghy! Once we got on the boat we chased him off, thank god he
didn't want to take a look down stairs, we have no idea how we would
get him out!

The following morning (Friday) at 10am we jumped into the water taxi
and went back into town ( well it's not really a town more like a
camp site with houses - only 106 people live there so there isn't
much) . Off we went to the office to find out our fate.

This time there was a different guy in the office behind the desk
and none of the others were there. This guy was really nice, he
thought that since we didn't get off the boats and we only put the
anchor down there was no big deal. Unfortunately the matter was
taken to Santa Cruz and now had to be resolved there. He was on the
phone for quite a while trying to find out the outcome, but found
out nothing. We ended up waiting for a few hours and left with no
mor information on the outcome. He did say that he would call us on
the radio at 12:30pm and let us know what's going on as he thought
he would know by then.

Right on 12:30pm the radio jumped to life, we were told that we ALL
were to come into the office at 2:30pm! - Sounded quite ominous!
When we got in the office it was full again, including the navy guy
with our Zarpes in his top pocket! They had some papers for us to
look at and sign. It was in Spanish so we were not sure of the
complete
details but it was a statement of the events. We were then told that
we needed to document down in our own words why we were there. We
did this and felt that all would be good. Our friendly Parks guy
went out for a while and came back with the town doctor who speaks
excellent English. The doctor gave us a full explanation of what
was going on. It looks like we will not be fined BUT they highly
recommended that we leave that night ( after dark!) not why we had
to leave after dark but she said that if we are still there in the
morning we will probably have to be escorted to Santa Cruz and pay a
fine!.

So it looks like we were being kicked out that night! Leaving in
the morning would be nice but we were glad that we were able to
leave!

We had a few quiet beers and decided that we'd pull up the anchor
around 10pm.

More to come.....

Cheers!
J&J

Panama and South West

Panama!,

If you didn't know Panama city and Colon were in the same country
you would never believe it if it was mentioned. The two could not be
more different.

Panama city is up market, classy, full of some very tall high rise
buildings and a LOT of new tall apartment buildings. You can also
get just about anything in Panama so that's a good thing for people
setting out across the pacific.

Under normal circumstances we arrived in the anchorage in panama
city right on beer-o-clock, ( we seem to be timing our arrivals
quite well in this respect).

The anchorage is very busy and we are forced to anchor way out in
the back of the fleet between another two Australian boats, both
from WA, Fremantle. Our line handlers will stay on Reverie for a few
days while they explore Panama city and take a break from Colon.
But more importantly it's time for a celebration and off to dinner
with the crew and the guy's on "Lady Sara".

Our time in Panama city was going to be limited as we spent so much
time on the other side of the country and we were already behind our
schedule so we had a quick plan to top up on some food items,
DVD's, completing a few boat projects, top up on fuel and get some
sushi.

After a few days we were ready to leave for the Galapagos about 900
miles away to the south east. First stop was the Perlas Islands.
With no wind we had a still 6 hr motor to the island of Chapera,
right where we anchored 3 years ago!, where they had just finished
filming one of the series of "Survivor". Not this time and what a
difference it was. With no TV audiances to show the pristine beaches
to, it had become the home to a LOT of rubbish, plastic bottles and
bits and pieces were everywhere, not a pretty sight. Nevertheless
it's still a lovely spot and with a 6m tide when you go ashore you
really need to think about where you put your dinghy, as it could
either be a long way up the beach if the tide is going out or a long
swim out to it if the tide is coming in!. With the tide all the way
out there is a lovely long wide beach, when it's in there is no
beach! just trees to the waters edge.

We came down here with Peter and Clare on Lady Sara, they will leave
in 1 to 2 days. Their plan is to head up to Costa Rica, then sail
over 4000 miles to Hawaii, then sail over 2000 miles to Alaska, they
will then make their way down to Canada, Vancouver for the winter
where they have rented an apartment in Whistler for 3 months!!! -
very envious!! Alaska would be awesome, oh, so would Whistler for
3 months!.

Thursday morning Lady Sara make their way out of the anchorage for
Costa Rica, 2 hours later at 9am Reverie heads out in windless
conditions. We will be heading south to the southern most island and
anchorage in the Las Perlas Islands "San Jose" where we will do the
final preparations on Reverie before sailing to the Galapagos.

With very little wind we drift with the current and take a slight
help from the motor to make the 25 mile trip south. With the huge
tides in the Gulf of Panama, there is a lot of water moving around
between the Islands, with this it always seems to carry a lot of
flotsam. For a lot of the way we are dodging huge trees, planks of
wood, large areas of rubbish and foliage floating in the water.
Handy that there are a lot of birds around here as they use the
floating logs as rest points in the water. So in a lot of cases all
we see are half dozen or so birds standing on the water with their
legs high and dry as the resting log sits on or just below the
surface. So we just start looking out for bunches of birds
standing up in the middle of the ocean.

Later in the afternoon ( Beer-O-clock) we arrive in San Jose. Only
one other boat in the anchorage but we are there with thousands of
birds, they are everywhere!, the long beach is teeming with them
standing around all having a chit chat to each other, we have never
seen so many birds in one spot, quite awesome.

After 2 days in San Jose the weather looks ok to head to the
Galapagos. There is a strong LOW that has been right in our path and
we have been waiting for it to move west or dissipate, it's finally
moving west, not much, but enough such that we wont cop too much
head winds off the eastern side of it. The last few days have been
looking like a 800 mile trip with head winds all the way, but things
are on the improve and we can make a go of it.

The ITCZ (Inter Tropical Convergence Zone) the Doldrums, is looking
a little wide right now and is sitting about 1/3 of the way down,
when we get to it we can expect it to take a while to get through
(24hrs). The forecasts and Satellite images show that there is a lot
of what they call "convection" through the area so it looks like
squalls, rain, thunder and lightning are in order for the ITCZ.
Bugger it! we will deal with it when we get there.

Sunday morning around 9am we pull the anchor up and head out. Jo
steers Reverie out while Jason listens to the radio as there is the
Pacific Net on at the time and we want to hear what boats are seeing
insofar as weather while enroute to the Galapagos. Pretty much what
we are expecting, very light conditions.

We are lucky that Reverie has the extra taller performance rig which
gives us a little more sail area, it's certainly going to be handy
on this trip.

Heading out of the Gulf of Panama is brilliant. The water is FLAT,
dead calm, not bad for a start! Around us is the most amazing sites
we have ever seen. Usually we have dolphins hanging around the boat,
swimming, jumping and enjoying themselves. So far no dolphins BUT
the water is teeming with Manta rays and all around us they are
leaping out of the water spinning around most of the time almost two
full loops. They land with a huge splash, they are all around us and
it's just amazing. They are probably getting about 10ft out of the
water. Now they're not the most elegant jumpers. Dolphins jump out a
lot, they all have rehearsed the "Flipper" jump, where they jump
out and come back in nose first, make no splash and keep going.
Manta Rays are not built for jumping, so it looks like someone is
below the water surface just throwing them up in the air, there is
no style in the take off and certainly not the landing. But it looks
great, huge black and white discs ( black on top, white on the
bottom) jumping out all around us!

Day 2 Panama to Galapagos

Wind was VERY light, Reverie was sailing a little and motoring a
little. ( lucky for the taller rig and the extra sail) managed to
hook a small tuna early in the morning but as we were having
breakfast we decided to let it go. We also were quite confident that
we will catch lots more fish!! - Fools!

The day was HOT, with a very light breeze so progesss was very slow
but at least forward, also had a good currrent pushing us south so
that helped.

Filling the day was easy, food, few episodes of the series"LOST"
check the fishing lines, change lures, bang out some emails. Catch
up on some sleep from the lack of the night before.

Day 2 Night.

This was an interesting night, as we were clearing the area around
panama where the ships make their way into the Gulf of Panama before
moving up to Panama City for their Transit to the "other side" there
is quite a bit of ship traffic to keep an eye out for.

About 2am. Jason on watch, we picked up on Radar a small boat about
8 miles out in front, they were tracking across our bow and should
be no problem, their speed was about 8 knots.

As time went on it looked like their course was changing!, they now
seemed to be tracking right at us!, At about 5 miles dfistance we
changed course by about 20 degrees to make sure there was plenty of
room between them and us. They changed course again! back on
tracking right on us, Now the distance was about 2 miles. We made
another course change 45 degrees!, the bugger changed his course
again, by this time he was less than 1 mile away. We changed course
again, killed all our lights and gassed the engine, not sure of what
was going on!!.

Jason jumped on the radio and announced their position, course and
speed and asked what their intentions were, no reply!. A few tries
of this and still no response! The gap between us was now growing,
it seems that they were limited to about 8 knots but their course
had not changed. Out in front we noticed that there was a BIG ship
crossing our bow about 5 miles out. We anounced on the radio that we
were a vessel being persued by what we beleive is a fishing boat,
gave their position, speed etc... No response BUT within 5 minutes
of this call the boat did what looked like a 180 degree turn and
went north! We kept our lights out and speed up for a few more
hours all the time tracking the boat on radar until it was off the
screen!!.

Who knows what was going on, maybe they were fisherman, a bit bored
and thought they would have a bit of fun in scaring the gringos on
the sailing boat " it worked" but maybe it was more than that?

Day 3

Bit more wind today, but very squally out in front and behind.
Looks like we will be in for some rain and maybe wind.

Fishing lines were going ok, we had a sail fish playing with one of
the lures for a while, he never took the big bite though. We think
he was teasing us!

Two hours later we looked at the line and the whole lot was gone!!.
Hook, lure, leader line!. Picked out another lure and we tried
again!

Squall approaching, looks like we will get some rain, right now we
are trying to pick which side of it to sit. We had it pass us just
on our port "left" side. Got a nice little shove from it, little
rain which was great to wash the salt off the deck and all the
Panama grime. Unfortunatly it didn't last very long and we were soon
stuck in light winds.

We were quite happy as we were on track to make the trip faster than
we did 3 years ago, which was 7 days, looks like we may do it this
time in 6.

Day 3 night.

Quiet night, light wind, LOTS of lightning out in front and to the
left of us, but it was all a long way away. Seas were really flat,
just like the start, flatter than a marina!.

Day 4

Right now we are in the ITCZ (doldrums) NO wind, lots of cloud,
today will be interesting.

Lots of action on the fishing lines in between the rumble of thunder
coming from all directions. Seems to be all around us but luckily
not on top of us!

Out far on the horizon we can see a break in the cloud, it looks
like the end of the ITCZ where we can expect a change in the wind
direction, this would mean that we are in the southern hemisphere
weather systems even though we are still north of the Equator.

MASSIVE squall coming up from behind, this would be the biggest
squall we have seen, We have the radar on a 12nm zoom meaning that
from the middle of the screen to the top it is 12 miles. Well this
squall filled up the whole screen - it was about 20 miles long and 8
miles wide!!!! Holy crap!!, we were really expecting to get
hammered by this one. As it approached the rain built up quickly,
such that the sail bag was filling faster than it could drain, Water
was bellowing out over the sides. Wind was up but not too much only
to about 25 knots. Looking at the radar it looked like the squall
was not passing us, it just seemed to hit us then the leading edge
would slowly dissolve. So within an hour the entire squall was
gone, nowhere to be seen, infront or behind!

The clear weather line out in front was now over us and it was
looking great. Clear skys, stars coming up and a light breeze
filling in from the SW!!

Day 5

Big day today as we will cross the equator!, except it will be at
about 10pm!. So much for the beer and pizza party we were planning.

Wind is up and we are having a good sail, slow but moving forward to
the Galapagos, it's quite hot and no boat traffic to be seen.
Listining to the radio nets that are coming up in the morning we
hear that there are a few boats close by. We are positioned more
west than any of the others which seems to be playing well for us as
we have current on our side. The other boats took a more south
course and seem to be getting stuck in a north setting current
(the Humboldt current which runs northwards up the coast of south
America).

Our water temperature is quite warm so we are in the right spot, if
it starts to cool off a little then we will be touching the edge of
the north setting current.

Really getting into the LOST series!, as the going is quite slow,
we are watching a few episodes a day of Series 1. We have
celebration plans for the Equator crossing but were too engrossed by
LOST. When we checked our position we found we were already in the
southern Hemisphere!! Whoops! better get back to the series as
something BIG is about to happen!!!.

Wind is up now and we are beating into a solid 15-20 knots from the
south, so the going is a little bumpy, we are sailing quite high at
around 30 degrees and the boat is doing a great job as we eat
up the miles. Our plan of being quite west of the rhumb line is a
disavantage here as it causing us to sail much higher into the wind
than if we were further east. But we are still making much more
speed than the other boats so it's not too bad.

Around 7pm the wind backs off a little and moves more east, this
makes the sailing really nice, we can ease off the sails a little
and maintain good speed. Looks like we will arrive tomorrow
morning!!

Day 6

Great sail through the night, Reverie was really moving well,
comfortable, good speed and steady wind. We are in sight of the
Galapagos as the sun comes up.

Sailing down the island of Santa Cruz we see a few other boats also
arriving.

We swing into Academy Bay at about 7:00am, drop the hook have a
coffee, breakfast and relax.

Total trip took us just under 6 days, not great speed but a big
section of the passage is windless so we were delighted with the
time we made.

Cheers!
J&J

GUNS fired!, speed boat chases, explosions!

Panama,

We arrived into Panama after a great calm sail down from Jamaica.

Panama hasn't changed much, well Colon hasn't, it's still a dump,
crime, run down buildings, run down everything for that matter. It
would certainly rank as the most run down unpleasant place we have
visited.

We arrived on a Friday night ( later afternoon - right on beer-o-
clock) so that was ok, we sat on Reverie having a quiet beer
looking over the smog and enjoying the fumes coming out of the 100
or so ships that were here waiting to transit the canal or who have
just come through from the Pacific.

Saturday we were right into the provisioning for the long pacific
leg. Colon is not a bad place to provision, good food and good
prices so we were into it. Monday we would complete the clearance
formalities and get the boat "measured" for the canal transit.

Tuesday we were measured, paid the fees. We would find out later
that day when our transit would be.

Tuesday night we were on the phone to the transit office to find out
transit date - What a shock 3 weeks!!!!, we were thinking it
would be 1 week at best! So Tuesday was not a great day - it was
only to get worse!

Wednesday morning we woke up to the crisp smell of smog, stepped
outside, something was wrong....

THE DINGHY, where's the bloody dinghy!!!! some prick stole our
dinghy!, another yachtie saw them driving off with it and their
panga ( local fishing boat), they came at dawn, cut our line and off
they went with it.

Losing your dinghy is like losing your car, we were without a
car, and couldn't get off the boat. Had to wave down passing boats
to get a ride into the dock to work out what we do next.

The Local panama canal security folks, were able to recover the
dinghy, without the engine, fuel tank, oars etc... it had a few
holes in it as well, thanks to the marvelous efforts of the
fisherman in trying to sink it after they removed the items they
wanted. Shows their intelligence, if you try and sink an inflatable
boat you need to put holes in ALL the tubes and in the double floor
not just two, so their was still enough air in the dinghy to keep a
small car afloat!

After a few phone calls and emails it looks like the insurance will
cover the engine and other items! - thank god! We then spent the
next couple of days repairing the dinghy and trying to source a new
outboard, and after a couple of days we were up and running again.

Back to bad ugly Colon, there are benefits to looking like this. One
is that Movie producers like the look of it!.

Yep movies!!, James Bond. Now we are both big Bond fans so finding
out they were filming a lot of the scenes for the new Bond movie,
"Quantum of Solace", here in Panama was real exciting. Even better
was that the filming of alot of the action boat scenes was being
done not far from where we lost the dinghy. So once we had a new
engine we were off!. We anchored with about 30 other boats. All were
being used for "props" in the boat scenes!!

This was fantastic, being right in the middle of the action scene,
filming was great, we had "bad guys" zooming past us chasing James
Bond ( his double), boats jumping, explosions, this went over and
over again. The work these guy's put into this was incredible, 7
weeks of filming for about 4 mins of film! There was even more
excitement when the "real actors" were driven out to the set to do
the close up shots. All the women in the anchorage were glued to
their Binoculars watching Daniel Craig in action!

Will Reverie be in the movie, good chance. Will Jason or Jo, doubt
it but you never know, hopefully any footage won't end up on the
editors floor.

One morning, Jason was coming out of the shower, naked as you are,
inside the boat walking from the front cabin to the back cabin, and
right outside the windows in the hull looking in ( well it looked
like it) was the camera crew (about 25 people)!, They were filming
the bad guys just as they were about to take a shot at the hero,
Bond. Jason quickly made for the towel just in case the film gets a
new XXX rating!

The filming went on for a few more weeks. This was great as we
needed something to do while we waited in Colon for our transit
date. We couldn't really leave the boat to do any inland travel as
there is always a small chance that the Canal authorities might move
you up the line! and we were keen to get through to the Pacific.

Good news!, we were moved up a few days for our canal transit!, We
called the transit office every day in hope for another move but we
only had the one move. Lucky for us, there didn't seem to be a lot
of schedule changes so we were grateful.

Our transit day was fast approaching, we had 10 old car tires
wrapped in garbage bags hanging all around Reverie, and 5 fenders,
just in case there were any mishaps while we were going through. All
we needed now were 2 more lines ( you need 4 lines of 125ft long -
we had two already on the boat), we were able to rent these from the
Panama Canal Yacht Club ( in Colon) for $15 each. Once the boat was
sorted all we needed to do was fill up with extra booze and food for
the transit. When you transit you need 4 "Line Handlers" + the
Captain, so we needed three extra people. We picked up a young
English couple from a Catamaran "Rahula" and one other Swiss Guy -
Christoph from his beautiful 48ft Halberg Rassy. We first met
Christoph in the Canary Islands! He arrived in Panama 4 days before
our transit from Cuba. Poor Christoph had a 6 week wait to transit!!
Madness!!! - He could sail up to Jamaica, spend a month there and
sail back and still not miss his date!

Transit date March 31 was upon us. Around 8pm the Advisor arrived
on the Pilot boat ( the Advisor will guide us through the Canal).
Our first phase will be to "Up Lock", where we move Reverie into
three locks one after the other that lifts Reverie ( or any ship for
that matter) up to the Gatun Lake.

There we will spend the night before another Advisor will guide us
through the 28 miles of Lake Gatun before we "Down Lock" and enter
Pacific waters. Our up locking went fine, lots of waiting though,
we went through with two other boats "Lady Sara" and "Pauleric". So
on the way up we were rafted up next to Lady Sara, great boat and
great couple Peter and Claire on board.

Once in the Lake, around 11pm, we tied Reverie and Lady Sara around
a large shipping Bouy for the night - Time for a mid transit
celebration!!, Drinks went on till about 2am when it was time to hit
the sack and get some sleep for the next day of motoring and down
locking.

Deep asleep I was dreaming of a stadium and all this cheering!, not
sure what it was, as I very slowly woke up opened my eyes the
cheering kept on going!!, odd it would go quiet then start up, then
go quiet again!. Well the howler monkeys were right into it this
morning, these little guys make a hell of a racket, hence the name,
one yells out then they all join in, then they stop and wait for
someone to start the yelling, it's a very bizarre sound and bloody
loud! Panama has a LOT of really cool wide life, Howler Monkeys,
and others, Toucans, Sloths, loads of weird stuff - Much like
Australia I guess. But Australians don't think our stuff is that
weird - Do we??

Later than we expected, around 9am, the pilot boat turns up with our
Advisor for the day. We have "Manuel" we had a "Manuel" also last
transit, great guy, this one was awesome - we really lucked out
here. Lady Sara got "Captain Cooper" total jerk, full of himself
and quite incompetent. Which is not ideal for us as while we are in
the locks ( after our 28 mile motor) all three boats will be tied /
rafted together again, with Lady Sara in the middle, this means that
their pilot will be in charge of all of us for the actual down
locking. We felt sorry for Lady Sara as you are with these guy's for
a long while and he was someone you wanted to minimize your time
with.

The second phase of the transit went without a hitch. Very hot up in
the lake, our down locking went fine with a few "interesting
moments" no thanks to Captain Cooper. Jason however was getting a
little worked up over the Captain on
"Pauleric". The way it works when you are rafted together, is that
we on Reverie work our lines to keep us in position in the lock when
the water comes in and goes out of the lock - Basically we keep
"Pauleric" off the wall as they are on the other side of Lady Sara,
"Pauleric" through their line work and a bit of engine work keeps
Reverie off the wall of the lock chamber. Well the Captain and crew
on "Pauleric" were not really paying enough attention. They were
more concerned in video recording the event and taking photo's, with
little attention being paid to the situation at hand. So we had to
throw a few glances and words to get them to stay by their wheel and
lines and pay more attention, after all they had Reverie in their
hands!

But Peter on Lady Sara who was basically steering all three rafted
boats did an awesome job, it was quite stressful for him and he did
a stellar job at bringing us all through.

We are now back in the PACIFIC!!!! in Panama City. Yippee!!!!!

More from Panama soon!

Cheers

J&J

Jamaica to Panama

It took us three more days after reading the news of John to muster
the guts to make a run at the sail to Panama.

We pulled out Monday March 3rd morning at about 5am. The weather
looked good,
15 knots from the NE and forecast to drop as we get closer to
Panama. Crap
thing was it was raining and it's no fun leaving at 5am in the
rain - but we did.

We had about 25 miles of solid upwind sailing to get around the
eastern point of the island, once we were there we would be able to
run off and make the trip on a beam reach.

As the morning was less than pleasant, rain, up wind slog, still the
lingering feeling of John. We both decided to make a stop on the way
south.

About 35 miles south of the corner of Jamaica is a small ( VERY
SMALL)
sandy cay and a few reefs called the Morant Cays.

With the wind and swell direction we figured that we could make a
stop here for the night, anchor in the calm lee side of the sand
bank and reef and have a nice first night out.

We arrived in the Morant Cays about 3pm. Not much there, two big
sand
banks, and a reef. Not an ounce of vegetation. But to our
amazement
there were people living on the sand bank!! Only three ( fisherman)
god knows how they do it. The sand bank would be 200m long and maybe
50m wide!!

We motor around looking for a spot to drop the anchor. It's still a
bit lumpy as the sea is managing to get over the reefs and is
curling around the "anchorage". We drop the hook in about 4m of
very clear water. It takes a LONG time for us to get the anchor set,
lots of noise coming up the chain meaning that there is a lot of
rock / coral down there, finally it sets.

Jason decides it may be worth jumping in the water and having a look
at the anchor to make sure it's hooked in ok - last thing we want to
do
is drag in the middle of the night!

Getting down to the anchor he finds it lying upside down just
holding on... have to do something here...
So with Jo on the boat driving the boat forward to take the load off
the anchor, Jason is walking the seabed with a 30kg anchor in his
arms over to a big rock that he can hook it under. Would have looked
quite odd seeing someone walking barefoot holding their breath with
a big anchor in their arms.

But job done and we are hooked in well for the night.

After sorting the boat out one of the fisherman comes up in his
little boat and asks if everything is ok!, lovely guy he seemed
concerned for us which was really nice. Wish we had some cigarettes
to give him (they all like to smoke over here).
He is on his way and we settle in for a few episodes of Seinfeld,
early dinner and sleep!

Next morning the wind and sea looks a little more friendly, we make
a move around the civilized hour of 9am!, (after a coffee and
breakfast of course).

It was a little troublesome getting the anchor out of the rock as it
was well jammed under, but after a few goes - left then right we
were
free and on the way to Panama.

Day 2:

Well so far (knock on wood) we couldn't have asked for better
conditions, the sea state is very mild, the wind is around 15-20
knots and we are averaging around 8 knots. No squalls, and so far no
kookey seas.

Coming down this part of the Caribbean you need to think of the
shoals, the shallow patches of water. Now when we say shallow here
we don't mean 3-4 meters, we mean 300-400 meters of water.

There is a current running here of about 1 knot to the west, the
average depth we are sailing is around 3000m (3 km!) so when you
have a "shoal" of 300 meters rising up from 3000m there is a lot of
water that has to go somewhere and it usually goes into waves and
current in other directions. So as we are sailing we are zig zaging
down to avoid running directly over the shallow areas.

Just passing one now (in the next two hours) it is 387m coming up
from 2917m! We are in the deep areas and hopefully we will find a
nice bit of zooming current being deflected from it. Yesterday we
were moving over the ground at close to 10 knots, but only through
the water at 7!. as we skipped off the edge of another "shallow"
area. It was really neat looking at the GPS with 9+ knots on it and
the water around the boat barely moving.

At the current rate we should hit Panama in about 24 hrs ( at midday
Friday 7th March).

Day 3: 5:00pm March 6th.

Well we didn't pick any favorable current as we passed the sea
mounts. Actually a small counter current, about 1/2 Knot.

Getting MUCH warmer in the boat than in Jamaica, currently 30 deg C!
inside - Air con would be nice.
Wind and seas are much the same, 15 knots and quite calm seas!!
Starting to see some more ships as we get closer to the
entrance of the Canal.

So far we have totally lucked it with the weather, the wind has been
so light that we've even had to turn on the engine a few times.
Looks like
it'll be a squall free evening as there is not a cloud in sight out
in front. We settle down to our last dinner under way and then get
into our last night of night watches...YAY!!!

Day 4: 4:30pm March 7th.

Last night was A VERY calm and beautiful night!

Still haven't hooked any fish and we have just started to enter
shallower water as we approach the Canal wall, we've got an hour and
a bit to go. Just had a big strike, but the poor fish got away
leaving only his lips and a few teeth behind...
Overall it's been a great passage with light winds and VERY calm
seas, so not what we were expecting, we fluked the weather this time
once more! (Last time coming down to Panama in 2005 it was just as
calm).

Gotta run, the entrance is approaching......and there are BIG ships
anchored off everywhere, looks like we'll have to dodge our way in!

Cheers
J&J

Yeh Mon Jamaica!!

Jamaica,

What a wonderful place!

Before we arrived we hit the books and internet researching what
Jamaica has to offer, what it's like etc. One impression was that
there seemed to be a lot of "advice" on how dangerous it is, "crime
is rampant", it's a VERY poor country with a current of resentment
towards "white" people. Other people we spoke to expressed concern
about going to Jamaica!

Interesting thing is that most of the people telling us how bad
Jamaica is were heading off to Venezuela! Hmmm..

Our impressions of Jamaica, certainly where we are in the north east
quadrant of the Island could not be further from the "advice" we
were given.

The place is fantastic, the people are VERY friendly, show no ill
feeling towards "whites", visitors, themselves or anybody for that
matter. We would walk into town and feel under no more threat than
any other Caribbean island. Jo would head into town to the local
market by herself and feel fine. Of course we get the looks, and
the occasional "hey white man" but it hasn't been in a
threatening or derogatory manner. After all we are "white"!

In all the eastern Caribbean islands only two would we feel safer
than Jamaica, that being St Barts and the BVI's! We've certainly
been in far more dodgy places in other parts of the eastern
Caribbean for sure, recalling that once in St Lucia we even slept
with the boat locked up. ( We think that's the norm now in most of
the eastern islands).

Jamaica is quite poor though, but no poorer than most of the
other Caribbean Islands, infact it comes across as more affluent
than Fiji and certainly Tonga. The main Captial city Kingston is a
real city, glass buildings, shopping centers etc. Kingston has it
all, a big contrast the the "country" areas.

Jamaica is wonderful with the rhythm of reggae music playing
everywhere, chicken and pork cooking on BBQ's in the streets, and
school children dressed in perfectly ironed uniforms walking the
streets.

By far the most dangerous part of Jamaica is the roads, they suck!,
determined to destroy any car's suspension and displace all but the
stongest necks and backs! Some work really needs to be done here.

On our second day in Jamaica, we were visited by Rachel, the
immigration officer. Rachel sat in the cockpit filling in the
documents for our visas quietly singing to an old Bob Marley song.
Once she was done we were all cleared in and officially in the
country.

We ask the marina office staff about the security situation, how bad
is it - not knowing yet!, They give us a smile and say "its ok Mon,
there's no crime here in Portland ( the district where Port Antonio
is).

The marina at Port Antonio is now called the Errol Flynn Marina.
Reason is, just off the marina there is a small island which used to
be owned by Errol Flynn! called Navy Island.

There is a lot of history here in the north of Jamaica, Ian
Flemming used to come here to write his James Bond Novels, his old
house is still here called "Golden Eye" and a few of the James Bond
Movies were filmed here as well, "Dr No", "Live and Let Die". There
is even a beach here called "James Bond Beach", Mr Fleming
certainly made his mark on Jamaica. Noel Coward also used to have a
house here called "Firefly".

Not far from Port Antonio are two awesome beaches. San San beach and
Blue Hole. San San is a small cove with a great little beach and
lots of coral. There are houses perched right on the water and it is
very spectacular. The beach scenes from the movie "Cocktail" were
filmed here in San San. Blue Hole, is a natural wonder, it's a
small bay open to the sea, and at the end of the bay the water drops
to 280ft deep where a natural fresh water spring pumps fresh water
up
from the depths into the salt water above. The movie "Blue Lagoon"
was filmed here. ( we thought it was done in Fiji! - but no it was
done in Jamaica!).

So while we were in Port Antonio we did a few boat things, met a
bunch of folks and got to know the locals. On the dock working as
"day workers" on arriving boats were Mike, Presley, Fire, Donovan,
and the "Fat Man" - Steve. These guy's help with your lines and
docking and are allowed to work on boats while in the marina. We had
Presley polish all the stainless steel on Reverie and WOW what an
awesome job he did, even shined the threads on the life lines and
rigging turn buckles!

The following day we took Presley up to "Boston" (not Boston in the
US) but Boston in Jamaica, the Jerk captial. What is Jerk? it's the
spice mix they use in their BBQ's, it's hot and spicy and tastes
fantastic. The taxi ride up to Boston was a killer. What should
take 10min took 30min, we were in this car that no other country in
the world would call roadworthy, all the suspension was gone, the
tailgate was held shut with duct tape, breaks questionable, steering
looked very loose and the driver more concerned about chatting than
dodging all the massive holes in the road. But we got there on one
piece.

We expected Boston to be a town, but what we found was a section of
a road filled with small shacks with fires in them cooking chicken,
fish, pork, lobster and bread fruit ( brought to Jamaica by the
British from Tahiti to feed the slaves - Mutiny on the Bounty fame).

A few beers, some jerk pork, chicken and fish and we were back in a
taxi to Port Antonio, this taxi was a little better but the driver
was
#%^&#ng crazy, thought we were going to die! it wasn't just us
Presley was quite nervous as well!

In the Marina we were next to an American boat, an Island Packet 38
called "Carioca" on board was John, just him, he was planning on
sailing around the world alone!. He kinda got stuck in Jamaica for 2
months and was getting ready to leave when we arrived. As the
weather didn't look right he took a few more days to leave for
Panama. Right where we would be going in a week's time. It can be a
tough trip down to Panama, takes about 3-5 days ( depending how fast
you go) you have the full trade winds right on your side with the
Caribbean rolling into the same side, so unless you are lucky you
neen to plan on it being windy with a stong sea running.

John Pulled out Sunday Feb 24th morning about 6am, looking at the
weather it looked like he was in for a nice trip, the forecast
looked like 15 knots from the NE all the way to Panama.

Five days after John left we were getting Reverie ready to go, wind
was up a little as was the rain squalls but we were ready to move.
When we reach Panama we will transit the Canal and sometimes there
is a wait, usually 1 week but sometimes it can move out to 5
weeks!!!. We thought we would check Johns website for an update on
his trip down to Panama and if he mentioned anything about the
transit wait as he should be well there by this time.

Logging into his website www.adventurecarioca.com

we were shocked
to read his ordeal. On the 4th day he had some engine problems,
while looking at the problem it seems that he may have been "knocked
down" he unfortunately dislocated his shoulder and was unable to fix
the engine or manage the sails on the boat. With what must have
been a terrifying night he had to abandon Carioca to be rescued by a
Ship coming up from Panama. John is alright but Carioca was last
seen quite submerged in heavy seas.

When we read this we both felt sick in the stomach - what an
ordeal to go through and to leave your boat, killer decision. We
read this the day before we were to leave for Panama. We couldn't
leave, it just felt all wrong.

More soon.

cheers

J&J

Puerto Rico to yeh mon- Jamaica!

After leaving Ponce we decided to spend an extra couple of days in
an anchorage on the west coast of PR. This would be a great takeoff
point for our trip to Jamaica,and also we both had terrible
hangovers after our last party night in Ponce.

So we sailed into a large very protected bay, dead flat, and dropped
anchor. Within minutes of setting our anchor a Canadian woman zooms
over in her dinghy and proceeds to tell us that we may have dropped
anchor on a submerged wreck in the bay. We were aware of the wreck
as indicated on our charts and we were both pretty sure that we
didn't drop anywhere close, we both couldn't be bothered moving,
coffee and breakfast was much more our agenda so we told her thanks
for the info and we'll deal with it when we leave in the morning.

So then she started with her "welcome speech", oh boy she was
talking to us like we were school children or something...she called
herself the "Dock Mum" and tells us that she takes it upon herself
to approach each new boat when it arrives to give them info. Jo
notices that Jason is starting to get a bit itchy at this point, he
hasn't had a morning coffee yet, and she won't stop talking,
explaining where laundry is, supermarkets, marine stores, internet,
cafes, bars, happy hrs...we tell her we are only here for the day
and that we don't really need to do anything but get rid of our
hangovers, but she continues on and on. From the way she was
talking we thought that she must have been here for quite some time
but later found that she'd only been here less than a week! Lucky
for us she was heading East to the Virgin Islands, and we were
heading West. She was a little too much for that hr in the morning!

Coffee and brekky is underway and we have a fantastic view of this
beach town called Bouqeron which is one of PR's most popular
vacation spots. The beach has loads of towering palm trees and a
mile of white sand and clear shallow waters, lined with beach bars
and restaurants...oh no here we go again and it's Saturday! Music
started up around 10am and already in the street people on vacation
are walking around with beers in hand (not a good look at that hr)
and street vendors selling clams and oysters in little shacks on the
roads.

We both tell each other that we will behave and we opt to eat out
for lunch instead of dinner to avoid getting caught up in evening
happy hrs and the like. We find a great restaurant on the
waterfront and have one of our best meals in PR. For the first time
in a long while it rained and BOY did it rain...lasting a good hr
maybe more. During this time we were watching Reverie from the
restaurant swing in every possible direction ...thinking to
ourselves that if we did drop anchor on the wreck we would
definitely be well hooked by now....oh no Jo notices Miss Canadian
arriving in the restaurant, we engage in intense conversation so to
avoid her eye contact. The restaurant is jam packed and she
recognises some other people and is on her way, and we are in the
clear! Time to leave for a long walk on the beach before heading
back to Reverie to prepare the boat for our 3 day passage to
Jamaica.

We wake early, there is no wind and the sea is glassy and flat, we
hoist the dinghy on deck and pull up anchor which comes up
surprisingly quick, no snag on the wreck, but alot of dark mud that
we hose off before leaving. The first part of the trip is to cross
the Mona passage, which is a stretch of water between PR and
Dominican Republic, DR. It is renowned for it's rough seas and
fluky winds and overall is said to be a difficult and uncomfortable
passage. We tell ourselves it's only 85 miles how bad can it be,
and Jo says that there is no way it can be worse than the Gibraltar
Straits and that she's not too fussed. We get out a few miles and
through the binoculars we can see no evidence of lumpy seas, there
still is no wind, we are motoring with 2 reefs in the main and can't
yet pull out the jib due to lack of wind.

It's now 11am and we are still motoring, NO WIND, the sea has a good
swell running, but without the wind they're not breaking and it's
all really pleasant, we hit the first drop off from 15m to 400m, the
fishing lines are out in anticipation. Soon after we hook our first
fish, hook being the key word here, not catch, as a larger fish bit
our's in half as we were trying to bring him in, bugger!!!

Still NO WIND, it's now lunchtime which is the usual time for the
winds to be building and what we'd noticed sailing around PR was
that by 2pm they were at there strongest. When 2pm comes we have
about 10 knots of apparent wind and get the jib out which helps our
speed and by the end of the day the engine finally gets turned off.
We obviously fluked the Mona passage and were grateful for it!

The passage underneath DR and Haiti was mostly calm, had a bit of
confused seas in some spots, but overall it was an easy 3 days. On
the morning of what would be our last sailing day we hooked a good
sized Wahoo which provided about 16 large fillets, so we were busy
with fish factory in the morning which made the time go very
quickly. Our arrival timing is becoming spot on as Jo check's the
chart and tells Jason that we'll be arriving into the Marina at
about 4:30pm....giddy up landfall drinks!

The arrival into Port Antonio Bay was absolutely spectacular,
Jamaica's coastline is very lush, green and mountainous due to the
Blue Mountains being located on the east coast. The Marina is
expecting us as we have a berth reserved, and there are locals
waiting to take our lines. Jason does and awesome job of backing
Reverie into a tight spot, and we are tied up within a few minutes.
Within a minute of berthing the Quarantine guy is on the boat doing
his inspection, he is extremely friendly and the inspection is over
real quick. Next the Custom guy jumps on and we fill out the
customary paperwork and he has a beer with us once we've finished
with the formalities, no fees yet which is surprising. We are told
that Immigration will see us in the morning and that we are free to
leave the boat. Our first impressions is that everyone is super
friendly! We decide to hit the Marina Restaurant for dinner as it's
a 2min walk away and plan to explore the town in the morning.

Cheers
J&J