The Voyage of Spectacle

We are running around like chickens sans heads today as we prepare to begin our Pacific crossing tomorrow (yes, this all came on very fast, we know).  Alas, as of just this hour, an unexpected final repair has just arisen and may delay our Pacific departure (for you excessively curious mechanical nerds, it is a busted diode in our inverter that is causing the batteries to charge erratically … this may or may not be quickly fixable, but it is sort of looking like not).

Repair permitting, we will depart Flamenco Marina about noon local time tomorrow and expect to arrive in the Galapagos in about one week’s time.

In bigger news, we have added a crew member for the Pacific crossing … he is a 57-year-old Brit turned Canadian from Toronto named Ian McLean, our line-handler during the Canal transit.  He has crossed the Atlantic twice (but never the Pacific), once going eastbound in the North Atlantic in a 29-footer.  Although his politics are going to drive me absolutely insane, he is a very funny guy (especially when ridiculing French/Dutch buffoons) and we should all get on well.  For those of you who have seen too many Nicole Kidman/Billy Zane movies, take some solace in knowing that his passport both appears authentic and bears the same name he told us …

Holy Week here in Panama has proven to be an insurmountable cultural obstacle to our attempts to leave for the Galapagos.  We have not made it off the dock, and Spectacle will remain in Panama City until at least April 9.

A bit of explanatory background is needed here.  Having long ago (as was required given the preposterous lead times with which these trips sell out) booked a god-awfully expensive SCUBA adventure in the Galapagos, we have known for weeks that yesterday was the last possible day to depart Panama City for the Galapagos without resorting to Plan B (i.e. flying there and back from Panama).  We need to be there on the 29th.  It’s 900-950 miles away.  Our boat does about 150 miles a day (and will easily do that if we motor 24/7).  The math is not hard.

We had been told by people who know things that the typical wait for a Panama Canal crossing is about 5-9 days, and our research pretty much confirmed this.  We began the process on March 1st (while still in Colombia) and were admeasured in Colon on March 7th.  For whatever reason (and there certainly isn’t a good one), there are presently HUGE delays at the Canal.  So when we were told that we wouldn’t be crossing the canal until late March, I pretty much threw a fit (although others have had it worse — a boat that came in two days after us was given an April 14th transit date).  At this point it seemed pretty unlikely we’d be making the March 22 cutoff.

Employing my litigator training, I pretty much table-pounded and screamed my way into a March 19-20 (“maybe”) crossing appointment.  So at this point, everything had to go right — not only did the March 19 appointment date have to be “real,” but we had to have the boat otherwise completely ready for the Pacific crossing 48 hours later.  This involved about 7-8 non-trivial things going right.

Slowly the pieces began to fall into place.  Sure enough, we made it through the Canal on the 20th and pulled into the Flamenco Marina late that Thursday afternoon with three items left on our checklist.

Well, to make a long and not very interesting story short, these fairly simple jobs have been rendered extraordinarily difficult by virtue of the subsequent Friday being Good Friday.  The entire city is basically shut down from Friday through Tuesday, booze is not being served (the horror), and people are not working.

After a great deal of gnashing of teeth and rending of garments, we managed to get two of the three simple jobs done — they took 30 hours and should have taken three.  But, alas, we could not find a single marine electrical store anywhere in town that was open to sell us an inverter diode (not a particularly hard part to find), which was the part our electrician determined is causing problems with out batteries.  There’s literally one boat store in the whole city that was open either yesterday or today, and it specializes in fishing gear.  Without said diode, we can’t guarantee proper, consistent charging of our batteries and that wouldn’t be a particularly enjoyable thing to live with for 90+ days.

So, alas, we have tripped over the final hurdle and will have to move to Plan B, but no big deal … we’ll fly in about 5-6 days, come back, and then cross the Pacific.

For any of you who had the pleasure of taking Statistics 150 at Mizzou or its equivalent elsewhere, you might recall the concept of Type I and Type II errors.

Basically, a Type II error is, in boating as in most walks of life, the more common mistake:  underinclusivity, the failure to include relevant data, or, if you will, the failure to recognize a particular extant problem — a false negative.

A Type I error is a mistake far less common in boating:  overinclusivity, the inclusion of irrelevant/erroneous data, or, if you will, identifying as extant a problem which does not in fact exist — a false positive.

Let’s make this simple –

Not knowing that the Japanese were going to bomb Pearl Harbor — Type II error.

Erroneously assuming Iraq had weapons of mass destruction — Type I error.

OK, even more simple.

When the pregnancy test says you aren’t pregnant and you actually are – Type II error.
When the pregnancy test says you are pregnant and you really aren’t – Type I error.

See the difference?

Not being the most experienced sailors, we commit Type II errors all the time.  The Tale of the Twin Fiascoes was basically one Type II error after another – not filling up the gas tank, thinking we had a handheld VHF but not actually having one, not turning off the electronics once we were out of fuel, etc., etc., etc.

Well, I’ve finally committed my first major Type I error.  And it was a doozy…

For about the last two weeks, I’ve been convinced that our batteries were, for whatever reason, failing adequately to retain charge.  Following test after test, the reading of endless manuals (probably could have done some more of that earlier) and even the hiring of a largely clueless electrician, I have now diagnosed the situation:  there is nothing now wrong, nor has there recently been anything wrong, with our batteries.  Instead, there is something wrong with my powers of diagnosis.

This episode would be at bit more humorous if it weren’t so badly timed.  Having improbably cleared every hurdle in our mad scramble to meet our deadline, we actually found ourselves all set – the boat was all ready to go to the Galapagos and we could have left on time in ideal conditions (the weather was absolutely perfect), saved ourselves a couple of thousand dollars in airfare and attendant travel hassles and had an extra two weeks in the South Pacific.  So, yeah, um …

After a rather acrimonious wrap up in the Galapagos, we pulled up the stern and bow anchors and headed off to cross big blue about 1:00 p.m. two days ago.  I must say that it’s a weird feeling to leave harbor (and in this case, a very rustic harbor) knowing that there’s no land for 3000 miles.  I kept saying, “I can’t believe we’re leaving right now for a 3-week passage.”  Most of our closest friends and family know that we’ve been anxious to get this leg of our journey out the way, so as weird as it is to go to sea for a minimum of 3 weeks, I’m still eager to get to the South Pacific.

Day 2 presented some really sublime sailing … calm seas, consistent wind, sunny skies, temperate weather.  At dawn, I was enjoying my morning coffee after just taking over watch from Andy when a huge pod of dolphins crossed the bow.  There must have been a thousand of them leaping and bounding.  It was a wonderful beginning to a nice day.

After watching scads of flying fish scurrying about all day long, we felt pretty confident that predators lie below us.  One flying fish actually flew onto the boat, ricocheted off the boom, and flew into the cockpit giving us all quite a start.  Later in the day, I thought I saw another pod of dolphins swimming alongside the boat this time.  I peeked over to watch them swim, and then began to wonder why they weren’t surfacing at all.  Upon closer review, I realized that they were not dolphins at all, but yellow fin tuna.  Huge massive 4-feet long yellow fin tuna … at least 10 of them. 

Andy put lines out immediately, but he only succeeded in losing one lure to an unseen leviathan and having another fish (a sizeable wahoo) break free just as we were trying to land it.  So far, it’s Fish 2, Andy 0.

Experienced sailors call the Pacific crossing “the milk run” because it’s notoriously easy, calm, and mundane (touch wood).  Well, today has been anything but mundane!

First of all, we had a bad night.  After the fishing disappointment, some weather and swell started up that was markedly un-Pacific.  Ian spent his watch dodging about 6 squalls that kept causing the wind to change.  Andy’s watch was also extremely rough with erratic rolling swells that we couldn’t quite manage to consistently take on the quarter (which is much more comfortable than square on the beam).  Andy also fashioned a truly fantastic boom lashing solution which secures the previously squeaking and moaning boom totally still.  Even with the constant noise diminished, everyone still slept badly.

Even so, watches must go on!  Later, Ian spotted something off the portside bow about three-quarters of a mile away, and said, “whale.”  I looked out and sure enough, a huge gray-colored whale was swimming and spouting along.  Although we were awed, whales in this part of the ocean can be aggressive, so first and foremost, we tracked its course, and changed our own heading to steer quite clear.  (Ironically, Ian was reading “In the Heart of the Sea” at the time).  I then woke Andy, and grabbed the camera.  The shot is a bit Loch Ness-like in its blurriness so you’ll just have to take my word for it.  From the color and size and angled spout, we’re sure that it was a sperm whale.

Later, we were just about to dig in to Ian’s spaghetti Bolognese for dinner.  Ian looked forward, his eyes got really big, and he said an expletive.  I think Andy can take it from here….