Black Squall

Panama to Galapagos Islands – Sailboat Adventures with Darwin

Plumb on the equator and a few degrees south of Panama lie the Galapagos Islands, nine hundred nautical miles to the west. Out of the Gulf of Panama and into a great bowl of swirling currents and counter currents, acting as a great collection point for all kinds of floating detritus, she must pass to reach these evolutionary famous islands. Notorious for calms, squalls, electrical storms and generally fractious sailing weather this will be another good test for her and crew. She revels in the feel of the Pacific, the initial excitement still with her, and with a moderate SSE breeze on her port quarter, she makes a good 6.5 knots, heading westward down the forever shimmering golden path to the sun.

The second evening in light airs, she overhauls the other yacht she noticed at Balboa. Unable to contact her by vhf the two captains enter a hailing contest across the gently heaving water, and it is established that this vessel is also heading for New Zealand via the Galapagos. Her crew are quite excited about this as it implies the possibility of sharing of companionship, adventures and resources. It is to be two days before their radio is operating again, by which time they are both well out of vhf range and there is no further contact after losing sight of them sometime during the night.

Several days pass and she holds her course fair for Santa Cruz. Intermittent squalls during the day and amazing electrical storm displays at night hold the intense attention of the crew. Lightning of the forked and flashing variety is constant and surrounds them around the complete 360 degree horizon. This performance is accompanied by thunder of varying intensity, structure and duration depending on the distance. If one listens carefully, a certain rhythm begins to emerge and the captain on watch and in the dark begins to conduct his very own ‘Thunder and Lightning’ polka. She thinks he is acting out some strange midnight ritual to placate the Gods (not too far from the truth!) and adds it to her list of unfathomable human eccentricities.

One monstrous extended flash is so long and intense and, coupled with an extra heave of the deck as she trips over the crest of a wave, the captain almost loses his balance. Whilst stumbling around the cockpit attempting to regain his equilibrium, he is interested to note that he can actually see the colour of things during such an extended blaze of light.

It is on one such other similar moonlit night watch, the captain, glancing over his shoulder into a disappearing rain squall is transfixed by a rare sight. There, sitting dead centre of the fast retreating raindrops, and between them and the moon behind him, is a perfect Moonbow. This rare phenomenon is created exactly the same way as a daytime rainbow with this particular one forming a perfect hoop from sea surface to sea surface, absolute even brightness all the way round, with the bands quite distinctly separated. They are not in colour, just various shades of grey matching the daytime rainbow band sequence. Night light has not sufficient strength to activate the colour cone receptors of the human eye so they don’t recognise colour. Staring with wonder, it goes through the captains’ mind to rouse the others, but rather selfishly decides to let them sleep on. If he woke them and they were anything less impressed than he, then it would diminish his own satisfaction and fulfilment of witnessing one of natures’ marvels – what a privilege to view this unique spectacle.

Next day, in very little wind and sliding over the long gentle rollers, she senses that something is afoot. A lone Booby circles her mast endlessly and eventually is joined by its mother. The baby Booby is obviously exhausted and the mother, with encouraging sounds shepherds it closer to our ships’ swaying mast. The technical mastery of alighting on her swaying and rotating truk is beyond the youngster and having bent the vhf aerial to a strange angle, settles for a crash landing into the pulpit rail. Settling there for a couple of days it gulps down the odd flying fish that have miscalculated their flight path out of a wave and landed on the deck. During this time the Booby does not move and our crew are amazed at the quantity of guano deposited on the foredeck. This dries rapidly in the tropical sun and even with constant flushing away, leaves a nasty stain.

Two days of this is enough for our captain, and he shoos the bird away finally, and it takes off in a westerly direction accompanied by its mother who has re-appeared. Later that afternoon, our young friend is spied drifting past in the calm, perched on what appears to be driftwood. On closer inspection it turns out to be a large sea turtle sunning itself on the surface and acting as temporary host – what the Booby does when the turtle submerges was never revealed, as they slowly bob away astern and eventually disappear out of sight into the blue haze.

All this time her engine has been running as all wind has deserted her. With a two knot current pushing against her nose, progress is painful. Sometime during the night however, that big hand moves to her stern, and she feels the immediate effect of being gently pushed along. As far as she is concerned she is still travelling through the water at the same speed, but she is happy for the captain as he often chides her that it is the speed over the ground (SOG) that matters. As they close land this after current builds to three plus knots, so with the engine cruising at around sixteen hundred rpm, her SOG jumps to eight knots – the captain is happy and starts singing to himself again, particularly now that the necessity of beating that other yacht into port keeps sneaking into a corner of his mind. She knows she can run the legs off it anytime, but with no radio contact and the vagaries of weather, doubt has a habit of creeping in.

With eighty nautical miles to go to make landfall, life on the surface and above, multiplies exponentially. Birds begin appearing from all points – many flights dip past and overhead in all the hues of browns, blues and white imaginable. Booby’s come and go in legion, flocks of various gulls and later in the afternoon the first Frigate bird is spied, high up and gliding gently, huge wings outspread, flash of red at throat, giving the impression of a reconnaissance aircraft. Several high and lazy circles later he breaks off and glides away into the lowering sun, no doubt reporting back to base. Dolphins reappear in great numbers, gambolling around our little ship to the strains of sucking and blowing her captain is extracting from his harmonica. Flying fish, wings whirring and flashing in the sun, are popping out of the waves everywhere and large pelagics’ repeatedly and vigorously strike at her trolling lures, causing them to give up their grip on the line and depart evermore. The plethora of extraordinary life on and around these islands they are all looking forward to seeing, with high expectation, is closer to becoming reality.

Under full sail now, with a fine breeze on her port beam, she reaches toward her destination in high tearing spirits, and allows her crew to gambol around her decks – she is feeling good, so she guesses her crew should be allowed to join in the excitement of making landfall after nine days at sea. She is beginning to understand their stimulation comes from not only the expectation of a new landfall, but also a break in the routine of ongoing shipboard life.

‘Land ho’ the cry goes up and all eyes instantly swivel westward. A high flat, steely layer of cloud has climbed up from the west, but right on the horizon, dead ahead, a dense black and jagged tooth protrudes from the silver surface.

‘Full marks,’ she thinks, ‘this crew really is shaping up’, and she lets them congratulate one another again, knowing full well that she would have brought them here anyway!

Extract from my ebook ‘Voyage of the Little Ship ‘tere Moana’ downloadable from my sailboat2adventure website for sailors.

About the Author

Vincent Bossley is a sailor and publisher living on the Northern Beaches of Sydney, Australia. He has his own www.sailboat2adventure.com website for cruising sailors, sailors planning their lifetime adventure, armchair sailors, virtual sailors and indeed anyone who has ever dreamt about sailing off into the oceans of this beautiful planet of ours. He offers an extremely useful package of \\\\\\\’101 Dollar Saving Tips for Sailors\\\\\\\’ gleaned from his experiences that could save the voyager many hundreds or maybe thousands of dollars during their voyage. Included is his 135 page download illustrated ebook \\\\\\\’Voyage of the Little Ship \\\\\\\’Tere Moana\\\\\\\’ of his own four year sailing adventure to many of these tropical paradises. Also FREE is the \\\\\\\’Ten Top Tips\\\\\\\’ to look for when purchasing your dream sailboat by internationally renowned marine surveyor Mark Clarke. Vincent is passionate about getting budding sailors started on planning their own odyssey. You can visit him anytime on his www.sailboat2adventure.com website.

Other books written by Vincent can be viewed and purchased at Amazon’s ‘Kindle’ eBookstore, Smashwords, Barnes and Noble, Apple iBookstore, Sony eBooks, Kobo Books and Scrollmotion by typing in Vincent Bossley, author.

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