15 February 2014 Bahia de Caraques, Ecuador
Glenys spent most of the morning stowing away all of her provisions, then bizarrely went into town to buy some food for lunch. I pottered around in the morning doing a few small jobs with some bits that I’d bought yesterday. I’ve had no response from Bolivar in the Galapagos, so I emailed him again.
Yesterday, I tried to find some decent satin wood paint in Manta, but had no success, so I decided that I’d have to use the crappy paint that I’d bought a week ago. I painted on the weird undercoat which looks more like varnish - at least it should be waterproof and hopefully will survive until we get to New Zealand, where I think that we’ll make a new set of doors.
In the afternoon, Glenys finally motivated herself to do some more varnishing and spent a couple of hours sanding down the frame around the companionway down into the saloon. It was a nightmare because she had to mask off the whole area to try to stop the dust from dropping down into the saloon. Unfortunately, the wind picked up and kept blowing dust down below, so she then had to spend another hour vacuuming up the mess. She put on one coat of varnish and it looks much better.
I started to fit the bowsprit. I had to drill two 11mm holes in the side plates of the bow roller, which is made from 5mm thick stainless steel - it wasn’t easy. The bow roller is right at the front of the boat and the only way that I could get to it was to suspend myself in the bosun’s chair on the outside of the hull. I then had to tie myself to the pulpit to hold myself in position while I drilled the hole.
The first hole went okay because I was able to drill a small 5mm hole first and then gradually open up the hole with larger drills. The second hole was more of a problem because I had to drill through the first hole and my small drills weren’t long enough. Unfortunately, using the larger drills wasn’t as effective and I ended up blunting the drills and then work hardening the edge of the hole, so the drills wouldn’t cut at all. I then tried using a Dremel grinder and small files, but I couldn’t get good enough access to the hole because there’s so much other stuff in the way. After two frustrating hours, I gave up and had a beer.
16 February 2014 Bahia de Caraques, Ecuador
It was a Sunday and we’d planned to have the day off, but I woke up determined to drill that damn hole. I dug out my “Drill Doctor” and spent half an hour sharpening my drills. I had to regrind the drill bits several times as they became blunt, but the newly sharpened drills eventually cut through the work hardened stainless steel. A couple of hours later, I’d fitted the deck plate and it looks good.
We went out for lunch and a stroll along the beach and then chilled out for the rest of the afternoon (apart from a bit of painting and varnishing.)
I’d not received any response from Bolivar about the autographo, so I sent him another email and, in desperation, I sent an email to another agent (J.C. Soto in Isabella) who works for the same Agency. That seemed to work, because within an hour, I received a scanned copy of our autographo, which was a relief.
17 February 2014 Bahia de Caraques, Ecuador
I think that it’s hit us both that we’re going to begin our journey across the Pacific Ocean in four sleeps' time, so we attacked our job list with enthusiasm. Our main task for the day was to clean our water tanks and pipework because we've been getting whiffs of a bad egg smell from some of the taps.
We drained out the water from the tanks and refilled them with 60 litres of water into which we'd poured 2 litres of Clorox. We ran some of this 3% bleach solution through all the taps on the boat and left them to soak for a few hours. Then it was simply a matter of running the remainder of the treated water through each of the taps and then pumping through another 60 litres of fresh water. The water coming out of the taps at the beginning was a disgusting brown colour - it was about time that we did it.
In the afternoon, while Glenys went to do some more provisioning, I inspected the roller furling gear and greased the lower bearings. I then went into the marina office and told them that we 're leaving on the 21st and made sure that they understood that we want a National Zarpe for the Galapagos and don't need to clear out of immigration. I also confirmed that the pilot would be onboard at 0730, to give us time to get to the sand bar before high tide at 0800.
The Ecuadorian's are voting at local elections on Sunday 23rd and they're really going to town with the campaigning. It seems that every few hours there's a noisy procession of cars going along the Malecon promoting one of the numerous political parties. Each party has a distinctive colour and a number instead of a name, presumably to make it easier for everyone to cast a vote.
18 February 2014 Bahia de Caraques, Ecuador
We had another busy day of jobs. Glenys cleaned out our main bilge and engine room bilge with degreaser while I pulled apart our aft cabin to check the steering gear, the autopilot and the batteries. It all looks pretty good apart from signs that we've got a very small leak of sea water coming from the seals on our lower rudder bearing. I'm a bit annoyed about this because it took me two days to replace the damn seals in July. I'll have to keep an eye on it.
In the afternoon, Glenys did her final bit of sewing and made some new lifelines for us to clip into when working on deck. I checked the wiring for our radar, which has been giving us intermittent problems - everything looked fine and the radar seems to be working at the moment. I also checked the cooking gas pipework and tested for leaks.
After servicing the 15hp outboard a few days ago, I finally got around to putting it onto the dinghy and giving it a test. I had to adjust the gear shift rod because it was jumping out of gear when at full lock, but everything else was fine. I must admit that I enjoyed zooming around the bay for half an hour - much more fun than our tiny 2.5 hp outboard that we've been using here.
In the evening, we invited Alberto and Curtis around for a meal ,which was very pleasant. Alberto has a residency visa and is allowed to vote in the elections. I found it interesting that the Ecuadorians get fined if they don't cast their vote, so there's nearly 100% turnout for every vote. A little Draconian, but surely that's more democratic than in the UK where less than 50% of people actually vote.
19 February 2014 Bahia de Caraques, Ecuador
I topped up our diesel tank from our jerry jugs and dinghied over to the petrol station to refill them. Diesel only costs $1.05 per US gallon here and foreigners are not normally allowed to buy it at domestic prices because large foreign boats were taking advantage of the low cost. They're a bit more relaxed about it here in Bahia, but will only let us fill a couple of jerry jugs per day. I could have bought the fuel through the marina, but they charge $2 and it's easier to get it myself.
My big job of the day was to clean our propeller. I dragged out my scuba diving gear and braved the foul brown water. The prop had at least a 1 inch thick coating of huge barnacles and it took me over 15 minutes to scrape the damn things off - I had to work by touch because the visibility was less than 6 inches. While I was in the water, I also spent 90 minutes cleaning the water line to remove thick slime and barnacles. I was only able to clean down a couple of feet from the surface - we plan to stop at an anchorage when we leave here to finish the rest of the hull.
I was a bit knackered after my two hours of graft, so I spent the afternoon pottering about checking the satellite phone, getting the water maker back on-line and checking our navigation instruments. In a blinding bit of seamanship, I even put the way-points to the Galapagos into our chart plotter - I normally forget and end up doing it when we're under way.
The health inspector came aboard and gave us his clearance out to the Galapagos. We might actually go the day after tomorrow.
We went out for a pizza with “Albion” and Armagh”. There's only a few days to the elections on the 23rd and the political parties are not allowed to campaign after midnight tomorrow, so there were lots of campaigners in town dressed in their brightly coloured t-shirts. Another strange Ecuadorian law is that from midnight on the 21st, there's no alcohol served anywhere in Ecuador until the elections are over - I don't like the sound of that...
20 February 2014 Bahia de Caraques, Ecuador
We were up early and went for breakfast with Alberto in one of the small food stalls on the sea front – they only serve Encebollada, which is a Tuna soup traditionally served as breakfast around here. It sounds weird to have fish soup that early in the morning, but it’s delicious.
Having suckered me into town, Glenys proceeded to drag me around the shops doing some more provisioning. She then got on with storing food, vacuum packing some meat and cooking enough food for the first few days at sea.
I tidied up our front cabin which has been used as a painting room for the past week, then fitted the newly painted cupboard doors in the front heads – the Ecuadorian paint that we've been forced to use looks terrible, but the doors are so much better than the old water-logged ones. I stowed the sewing machine away and dragged out the spinnaker - we're expecting light winds on our passage to the Galapagos.
Just after lunch, I went into the marina office to pay our bill and pick up up our clearance documents. The national zarpe and temporary importation documents were waiting for me, but as I checked them, I saw that the importation document hadn't been stamped by the Customs officer. We then had a hour of chaos, while they rang the customs office in Manta (80 kilometres away) to be told that the document would have to go back to Manta to be properly stamped.
The marina's initial solution was that they'd arrange for the document to be taken to Manta by taxi and brought back today. However, when I said that they'd have to pay the $60 taxi fare (because it was their fault), there was a bit of back peddling and they're now going to get a document courier to take the form to Manta and then get it over to my agent in the Galapagos. They rang Bolivar in the Galapagos, arranged everything and hopefully it will be there when we arrive - don't hold your breath...
Back on the boat, I carried on tidying up, put the dinghy on deck and pottered about for an hour checking ropes and stuff on the deck. I even got out my fishing stuff - I'm ready to go now.
Glenys made Viche de Camaron for dinner - that's two traditional Ecuadorian soups in one day…