Truth be told I could’ve used a couple of days in Esmeralda or even Contadora but when Aeolus smiles down on you, one smiles back and says thank you…thank you very much. At the very least we’re like a watermellon seed between pursed lips being shot out of the gulf of Panama into the Pacific proper…which it turns out is green, nothing like the cobalt blue-gray of the Atlantic. Back lit, the waves of the Pacific turn pale green at the tips, like thick glass. We’ve been lucky with continuing good winds and very few dead areas, averaging well over six knots in an area known for the doldrums. Most unusal.
Even more unusual was a drama that played out over VHF radio which still has us spooked. Yesterday afternoon we started hearing alarming transmissions from what turned out to bhe a couple of large tankers calling all mariners to be on the lookout for an unspecified something in the water in an area approximately thirty miles to the north east of our position. What another conspiracy theory about that damn airliner? The captain that we could hear the best was Indian so he was kind of hard to understand but he seemed to be point man in the search. Finally we could hear words like sailboat-rescue-flares, and the names of two yachts that we were at anchor with in Contadora. This is not good. We knew they would be behind us to the north. We could hear tiny bits of transmissions but from what we’ve been able to piece together, we think they were taken off their boat in the dark, judging from the limited descriptions from the tankers. We might as well be on the moon for all the news we can
gather here. There are several SSB cruiser nets here in the Pacific but we cant seem to conjure them up on our radio, but we did conjure up a couple of spotted dolphins who spentfive minutes playing in EVs bow wave…nice for a change.
What a difference a day makes. As dawn broke, I was largely comatose when my watch alarm, an old car klaxon horn sound from my iPhone, went off. What, what, oh yeah, we,re at seaand I’ve got to get up and have a look around to make sure we’re not about to run into anything and still heading in the general direction of the Galapagos. this is something that goes on every twenty minutes or so all nighbt long. That’s when it happened, just a strange splash off the starboard aft quarter. I turned and saw a leaping dolphin heading for the bow. I hopped out of the cockpit and with age adjusted speed raced up the side deck to see dozens of dolphins frolicking in and out of both of our bows, a mere foot from my out stretched hand. Of course I didn’t have a camera and Marce was out cold catching up on her sleep down in our stateroom. I told them to standby for a minute and rushed down to wake her, I was afraid she would think it was an April fools day joke, grab a camera hoping that they had h
ung around. This was a first for us. They looked like a mixed bag of Common, White-sided, and Spotted, some quite large often turning to look at us as they swam between the bows. What a welcome.
The breeze continues to surprise and we couldn’t be happier as we approach the Galapagos. So far so very good.
