Category: Panama

We had talked about the Pacific crossing since our beginnings in San Francisco, 6/2015. It was always the benchmark by which we made our progress south and yet it seemed abstract and we really weren’t sure what to expect.  As we prepped Allora to take on the vastness of the Pacific, we were sufficiently distracted by the daunting ‘to do’ lists, so apprehension didn’t even gain footing. We went aloft to check the rigging and reviewed our spares lists and miscellaneous extras to be sure we could improvise for a system failure. There’s a large swath of the Pacific that is too far away for effective rescue, so we had to be confident in our ability to be self sufficient. Our Evernote app was working full time syncing between our devices as we tried to keep track of the contents of the boat AND the countless suggestions and articles we’d read from other passage makers. We used multiple sources (Windy Ty, gribs, etc.) to check the weather routing, looking at winds, waves, currents and the ITCZ for a favorable route. This first leg to the Galapagos Islands is often referred to as a real chore, so we looked for the most favorable sailing route.  Lines checked, deck swabbed, provisions stowed, rust busted (for the most part), sails readied, job wheel created, port captain clearance papers secured, emergency procedures reviewed, SSB programmed to receive the optional daily net report, last minute wifi (‘wait, what about the blog?! There’s no time for a blog post! Haha, I’d never imagine that it would be 6 months till I would fulfill this task!)… Amidst days of this stupor, we finally obtained our one year visas from the French Embassy in Panama and at that point, we really had no more excuses to stay.  I might have kept provisioning forever, but thankfully, Captain Marcus confirmed the weather reports and declared our departure date: 4/8/17. The hectic phase of passage prep in Panama City, finally comes to an end, hatches battened and Allora is ready to cast off lines for the Galapagos (900 nautical miles away) with the whole Stevens crew aboard. Farewell Central America; hello, Pacific Ocean!

Wing and wing, like a butterfly
skittering across the cobbled seas,
more peaked and jagged than I expected
and even more blue that I could imagine
blue is the only color and then shades of white or black
liminal green in sparkles and rolling balls of bioluminescence at night
I’m glad our boat is not blue,
our skin is lightly tanned
the Hydrovane (auto tiller) is bright red
less and less of the food has been green
the tuna is an impossible dark tuna red
she had bright yellow fins

Only three days in, this sea feels endless but also small. On top of the biggest roller there is a limit to the ocean we can see from our low vantage point. We can sense only a little of its size
that may accumulate over time as a visceral impression, but not a visual one. Thinking about Slocum doing this alone there is no way to adequately describe the hours or the way daylight seems to pass so quickly.

We’re learning about our garbage because we have so little space to store what we can’t throw into the sea. We cut up plastic bottles, well rinsed to keep stinky food out and minimize the size of bundles we’re storing in “the cave,” the farthest aft compartment of Allora. We can also translate the power needs of our computers into trades we make:
water for showers or fuel that should be reserved to find wind if we’re becalmed.

The more technology we depend upon, the more frustrations we incur —convenience versus the aggravation of computer bugs. The Multifunction Display (MFD) which we use for navigation after weeks of gumming up and going on strike (just as we departed on our longest voyage) has decided to behave. What changed? The heading sensor, which seemed to live in its own special magnetic world, for months now, currently seems to know which way is southwest. Which is nice. Of course, now the radar is taking a sabbatical, shutting off whenever it feels like it. Really, though, we need the Raymarine systems least now for this kind of navigation, offshore.The iPad would be fine except for keeping a log of our miles. The AIS (which gives us the position of other boats and ships close by) is mostly irrelevant. (In the end, we only saw 3 other boats on the ocean between Panama and the Marquesas). There is not much chance some blue triangle might pop up on the screen, like the hordes of tourist boats did at the Galapagos, then winked out like stars as we lost their signal sailing away. We are in satellite contact (email) with an Italian boat that we know is less than 50 miles ahead of us, on a nearly identical route. They want to know our position, if we have any weather info (the wind is blowing?), have we caught any fish?

Yes, two dorado, the small one released, the other brutally murdered in the cockpit (blood everywhere) and turned into Ceviche. Yum.

The seas have been bumpy, yet bigger before and calming a little now, though still scrambled
with millions of little peaks like meringue. Thinly overcast this morning with textured clouds, alto-something-or-other. Crackly rattle of the SSB tonight, we’ll hear from a few other boats this morning: position, wind, speed, fish report.

Last night on my watch, I turned the running lights off and covered the instruments. Big starry sky, crescent moon set around 9:00. Happy Allora, whisking along, 700 miles from the nearest land, still over 2000 miles to go! I’m grateful to have lived a life that includes sailing a boat across the sea, the visceral awareness of this place, this space.
~MS