Monthly Archives: Thursday May 31st, 2012

Sails up and sails down

Well, this has to be one of the most active trips of our big journey. There is wind. But it keeps changing in direction and strength just as fast as we’re able to handle the sails. Mix in a couple of thunderstorms now and then and a few surprising little islands and you’ve got an interesting journey. Still, the engine has been running for the better part of the way but we are sailing quite well and this we didn’t expect at all. Right now at two in the morning, we’re passing Punta Mariato with a distance of three miles and the Isla Coiba is about 55 miles ahead of us. The crew is fast asleep and we’re sailing with a speed of 4.5 knots, course west. Along the coast there is not much of interest – it’s mostly uninhabited and covered with dense (rain)forest. We’ve seen quite a few big rays juming out of the water. That sounds weird but we’ve already seen this behaviour in Kuna Yala. Why they’re doing it, we don’t know. Probably just for the fun of it. Other things to see: lots of big ships farther out at sea and intense lightning nearly all the day. But despite the varying wind it’s one of the more relaxing trips so far. There are no big waves and the motion of the ship is very comfortable as we’re mostly sailing close hauled. Uh, yesterday I mentioned that we didn’t use the main sail in a loooooong time: Today in daylight, I discovered that part of the sheet actually turned green because of the moist air and the missing movment. Hehehehe.

LATITUDE: 07-08.80N LONGITUDE: 080-54.37W COURSE: 272T SPEED: 4.4

Posted in Rancho Relaxo, Sailing | 2 Comments

Erste Segelreise im Pazifik

Bevor du denkst: ‘Ach was, da ist doch kein Wind. Die motoren doch !’ – Nein ! Wir haben soeben Segel gesetzt, ha ! Also die ersten 12 Stunden war tatsaechlich kein oder kaum Wind. Mal von hier, mal von da und nie mehr als ein leichter Lufthauch. Doch nun, da wir uns der ‘Punta Mala’ naehern und also bald die Bucht von Panama verlassen, haben wir eine schoene Brise aus WSW erwischt und haben – tadaaa – endlich mal wieder das Grosssegel oben ! Wenn ich mich recht entsinne, hatten wir dieses zuletzt auf dem Weg von Antigua nach Barbuda gesetzt, das ist also schon ein paar Monate her. Wahnsinn, seither haben wir also nur Genua, Fock oder Blister benutzt… Was war noch los ? Viele Schiffe begleiten uns auf dem Weg ueber Sued nach Nord. Alle Frachter und Tanker die an die Kueste der USA wollen, fahren hier entlang. So gab es keinen Zeitpunkt, an dem wir nicht irgendwo am Horizont Positionslichter sahen. Ausserdem hatten wir noch ein schoenes Gewitter. Geblitzt hat’s rundum und beinahe im Sekundentakt – das ging ueber ca. zwei Stunden so bis sich dann endlich die Schleusen oeffneten und der Regen auf uns niederprasselte. Gut auch, denn als wir den Anker aus dem Schlick vor Panama City hochgezogen haben, wurde unser Deck ganz schoen zugesaut. Zwar haben wir natuerlich schon ein wenig vorgewaschen, aber erst jetzt ist das Vorschiff wieder wirklich weiss. Sonst ist alles im Lot. Waehrend der Motorfahrt wurden unsere Batterien vollgeladen und der Watermaker hat den Tank aufgefuellt und nun, da wir endlich segeln bin ich auch guter Dinge, dass wir Costa Rica ohne Probleme erreichen werden. Wir haben zwar nochmal drei extra Dieselkanister gekauft, doch selbst mit den nun vorhandenen 200 Litern wird das ganz schoen knapp. Und ganz abgesehen davon ist uns ein Lueftchen um die Ohren deutlich lieber als das Gebrumme unseres Mercedes, unten in der Bilge.

Posted in Rancho Relaxo, Sailing | Comments Off

Nearly ready to leave for Costa Rica

Early in the morning, Bas was already awake and got his things together while the laziest crew of the world was still asleep. At seven then, the alarm clock went off and we had a final breakfast, bevor we set out with the dinghy to get our friend ashore. We’ve met so many nice people during the last weeks but we also had to wave goodbye to all of them.

We hope that our paths will cross sometime in the future – with Bas, who will be in Europe now and with our friends that are now underway towards French Polynesia. The latter suffer the same problem we will have tomorrow: no wind. But at least we have the advantage that we’ll sail along the coast and we also will probably make a stop somewhere. Maybe the Isla Cohiba. Let’s see…. Maybe the forecast is wrong and we can sail. But otherwise we definately have not enough diesel to cover the 360 miles that lay ahead of us.

The rest of today we spent searchinf for new oars for our dinghy, shopping for fresh vegetables and fruits as well as a birthday present for Bruno, who will turn six in a few weeks. Probably we’ll re-schedule the celebration to party together with his grandmother, who will come and visit us in Golfito.

Well, there’s not much more to say. Next time I write, we’ll hopefully be underway towards Costa Rica.

Posted in LosLocos, Pics, Rancho Relaxo, Sailing | Comments Off

Two beach days in Taboga

Before Bas leaves us and we leave Panama, we decided to spend two days at the beach here in this nice little ‘island of flowers’. Taboga was really beutiful and now that we’re back in Panama City, we are all relaxed and got a little sunburn.

I’ll not write much as everybody is quite tired and we’ll have a farewell-dinner with Bas tonight. Tomorrow at this time, he’ll already be in Amsterdam and I guess after one week he’ll start missing the Caribbean. ;-) Too sad the time has passed that rapidly, we would have loved to have him on bord a little longer…

Uuuuh, and I forgot to mention something really important: VIOLA CAN SWIM !!! – She started swimming (dog-style) when we were in the Shelter Bay marina (in the pool). And now that we were in salt water again it of course worked way better. Oh, we are sooooo glad that now both our kids can swim – probably the most important thing for a family that’s living on a sailboat.

Posted in Kids, Learning for life, LosLocos, Pics, Rancho Relaxo, Sailing | Comments Off

In Tobago, aehm no: Taboga !

After an amazing farewell party with the Kira (again), we decided to move away from the anchorage and go to someplace where you can swim without getting skin irritation. Our initial plan was to go to the Las Perlas but with the wind against us, we cut it short and ended up in Taboga. A lovely little island just eight miles out from Panama City.

The little village is really beautiful and quiet and everywhere it smells of flowers. Right now we’re at Ted’s Aqua Sol Villa and enjoy the fastest internet connection we’ve had in months. Tomorrow we’ll go at the beach again (after four weeks without) and on the 27th we have to be back in Panama City to bring our friend Bas to the airport.

Tomorrow we’ll finally have a day at the beach again – after four weeks that’s gonna be a real treat – especially for the children.

Posted in LosLocos, Pics, Rancho Relaxo, Sailing | Comments Off

At anchor in front of Panama City

The last 43 miles we sailed were quite meaningful. Being in the southwest caribbean a turn around would have still been possible. Now that we’re through the canal, we’ve put the Atlantic ocean behind us and decided to go on and carry on. Turning back is not even an option. No, we’ve decided to go on and the next stops will bring us to Costa Rica, the Galapagos Islands and then towards French Polynesia which starts with the Marquesas – right in the middle of the biggest of all oceans. This is possibly one of the longest passages that lays ahead of us. During the last days some friends of us already left – directly towards the Marquesas. After you pass Galapagos there is no other island to stop. They have to cover 3800 miles, which means five to seven weeks on sea for the most of us. The SY Thor is underway already and the SY Murungaru didn’t even stop after going through the canal !

Sailing south towards the Galapagos islands means light to no wind. Going east brings no wind or headwind and this is where the next passage will lead us to. So we’re waiting for a little change in weather which is quite unlikely as we’re already in rain season. Towards Golfito in Costa Rica we’ve got to sail 350 miles. With a nice wind we would cover this in three days but right now you can only make use of the current and the land and sea breeze . This also would mean many stop overs and short trips in between. A way of sailing we’ve stopped to do since we left europe. After the first longer passages we discovered that it’s better to do longer trips but also stay put in one place for a few weeks instead of days or mere hours. Where ‘one place’ doesn’t have to mean one anchorage; for example, we consider Kuna Yala as ‘one place’.

Right now we’re anchored right in front of Panama City – I cannot stop looking at the skyscrapers with all their lights. Quite impressive to see and even more so after having spent many months without ever anchoring in front of a real city. But this skyline comes with a cost: the quality of the water here is really bad. Some go swimming – either because they have to or because one is clumsy – but usually that’s not a good idea. Skin irritations and little wounds that get infected are sometimes the price to be paid. There are a few places to eat and a shop down near the ‘dinghy dock’. I’ll definately have to take pictures of this amazing piece of craftsmanship: The dinghy dock is connected to the island by ‘ferry’ (a little red dinghy that you use to reach the stairs in the wall. Hehehe. The Island on the other side is connected to the mainland by a long road but there are no buses. As taxi is the only way to reach the city, we haven’t seen much of it until now, but maybe tomo rrow we’ll set out to get some of the things we’re in need of.

Posted in LosLocos, Pics, Rancho Relaxo, Sailing | Comments Off

Enter the Pacific !

A quick one, because we all had not so much sleep last night: We had a perfect Canal passage, a good party in the Gatun lake with a nice freshwater bath in the morning. And now we’re in the Pacific ocean – thanks to the best linehandlers of the world: Tim, Claus und Bas !

Here some quick unsorted pics from the passage. Big thanks to Stephi for the screenshots of the Miraflores webcam !

Posted in Animals, LosLocos, Pics, Rancho Relaxo, Sailing | 4 Comments

Ready for the Pacific

The fenders are in place and I finished painting in the morning. Everybody had breakfast and while we’re cleaning up, Gui went to the next gas station to get some fuel for the passage. Unfortunately the fuel station here in the marina is closed today and we don’t have enough diesel to get through the canal. Well, well…

Tomorrow I’ll do a SPOT-message right in front of the Miraflores locks, so if somebody watches on the webcam, please do a screenshot for us, yes ?

Posted in LosLocos, Pics, Rancho Relaxo, Sailing | Comments Off

Dutiful linehandlers and some painting

The best linehandlers of the world – our friends from the Kira have decided to do the passage a third time. Way ahead of time, they arrive three days early to enjoy luxury life in the marina. They commute in between pool and bar and in the early morning hours they swing themselves into the hammock on the foredeck. Hehehe.

The skipper could no longer idle around and grabbed screwdriver and steel brush to open around fifty little rust nests around the ship. Everything was taken care of with anti-rust and paint and three days later the ship looks a lot better. Unfortunately I couldn’t finish with the cover paint as today it was raining nearly constantly. – Well, this will have to wait, then…

Tomorrow at 13:00 we will be in the ‘flats’ to wait for our advisor. We should be in the Gatun lake tomorrow in the evening where we plan to have a barbecue on the mooring buoy. On monday sometime around 13-14h we should be in the Miraflores locks where you can see us on the webcam.

Posted in LosLocos, Pics, Rancho Relaxo, Sailing | 1 Comment

Dancing with Mosquitos

The mosquitos are buzzing behind the nets, the sweat is running down my forhead and onto the already wet cushion. The linen sticks to my back and I ask myself: Why, oh why didn’t we sail to Norway ?!?

I get up in the middle of the night and go to take a cold shower. Afterwards I grab the camera and try to make a few night shots. But the mosquitos impede any attempt to keep still for longer than a few seconds. After a few pictures I flee back on our ship and try to find sleep before the temperature starts to rise again.

Posted in Animals, LosLocos, Pics, Rancho Relaxo | 2 Comments

Sauna in the forepeak

It’s absolutely incredible, what temperatures we can reach here in Panama. It’s actually only 33 degrees on the outside (at 10h in the morning) but the humidity never gets lower than 80% and there is absolutely no wind here in the marina.

So we play a little with the water and empty our cans with water from Kuna Yala. We’ll fill them up again, when we reach the Gatún Lake.

Every day some boats are leaving for the Pacific and new ones arrive. tires and panama-lines are wheeled through the marina daily. And one always meets new and interesting people. Just as yesterday when we ran into Sabine and Heinz from Hamburg. They already sailed around the world once and are now on their second journey. Unfortunately I forgot to ask for the ship’s name, but I’ll do that today.

And now Bruno and me are gonna deflate the dinghy and maybe – if there should be no rain – we’ll do a little rust cleaning later on…

Posted in LosLocos, Pics, Rancho Relaxo, Sailing | Comments Off

As linehandler with SY Tamora and SY Kira through the Panama Canal

As many other sailors, we also help out on other yachts as line handlers for the Panama Canal. Every vessel needs four line handlers, a skipper and an ‘advisor’, who’s sent by the channel authority and looks that everything runs as it should and keeps the communication with the control center.

Friday we get ready and give our kids to the SY Mares, while Gui and me get aboard the Tamora to go to the ‘flats’ (the anchorage in front of Colón) where the advisor is to come aboard. We’re in a hurry as the time for the passage was moved from 16h to 14h and we still have to get some fuel. Bas, the fourth line handler could not be found in the hurry and was replaced by Marissa from the SY Tevakenui, who only had five minutes to prepare. :-)

We drop the anchor in the flats just in time and hand over Gui to the Kira that arrived yesterday. Thus all line handlers are on their ships and everybody is ready. Only the advisors are absent. It’s getting 14h… 15h…. 16h… we call the channel authority’s scheduler and get a big shock: We’ll not get through today, they re-scheduled us for tomorrow 16:00 ! Usually that wouldn’t be bad, but every ship has three additional crew aboard and we gave our kids to friends which makes things a little more complicated…  But we can’t change it and it has the advantage that we’ll be able to celebrate Tim’s 29th birthday on the Gatún lake, in between the Atlantic and Pazific !

Next day at 16:00h a big pilot boat closes in and drops of a very friendly advisor. Just two minutes later we’re on our way to the Gatún locks, where just in front of the first one, we go alongside with the Kira to form a pack of two ships. A big freighter from the Philipines is going into the lock in front of us and seconds later the monkey fists are thrown towards us. We connect the lines to ours and get into position in the first of three locks on the atlantic side. The lines are pulled up and as soon as they are tied up, the lock closes and water flushes in.

Everything runs smooth and we’re through all three locks just before sunset. We drive a few minutes into the Gatún lake and tie up to a big mooring buoy. The Kira goes alongside and only minutes later we jump into the lake to have our first bath in a sweet water lake since a long time.

We have a excessive birthday party and when the advisor arrives at 06:15h in the morning, nobody has had any sleep. :-) With small eyes covered under sunglasses, we enter the ‘Banana Cut’ (a shortcut) and sail slowly in between little islands covered with rain forest, while we try to catch up with our sleep. At around noon we arrive at the first lock on the pazific side and again everything runs smooth while we go down the three locks together with the Kira.

Big smiles on all faces as the last lock is openend and we slowly enter the Pazific ! Silke gets out some champagne she brought from Germany especially for that occasion. We sail around Balboa and drop the anchor in between SY Kira and SY Thor, in front of the amazing skyline of Panama City. Soon after we start our voyage back with the bus and arrive in Colón just before sunset. We are greeted enthusiasticly by our kids, have a final beer in the marina bar and fall into the bunks very early in the evening. In a few days we will do the passage again, this time with the Rancho Relaxo. Hope that everything runs just as smooth.

Posted in LosLocos, Pics, Rancho Relaxo, Sailing | Comments Off

Two nights in Panama City

Gui’s father is in Panama City on behalf of the ILO and invites us for a visit. Of course we don’t hesitate and immediately leave the boiling hot marina. As the marina is on the north side of the american continent, we have to wait for the ‘Cap San Raphael’ to get through the Gatun lock and into the Atlantic ocean, as we wait in the Taxi. A surprise was that the bus wouldn’t go today as this monday was declared a bank holiday because a former president died. We were lucky and could share the cab with a nice canadian man who’s traveling to the airpoirt. Having arrived in Panama City, we enjoy the air conditioning in the hotel room and the kids are fascinated by the big TFT screen. – Two things quite uncommon for us sailors.

We pay a visit to a beauty saloon and the captain looses about 0.5kg of hair and looks like a human again. Viola also gets a haircut and her nails done and Gui enjoys a pedicure. Now we go back to the hotel and have a nice dinner together with Gui’s father.

Next day we start our search for a competent optican to get new optical sunglasses for me. The last pair, I got anew in the canaries but lost them while crossing the Atlantic ocean. As we’re already here, the kids also get their eyes tested and everything is ok !

The city itself we don’t like too much. Although we used to live in big cities the last years, right now we’re quite overwhelmed by the noise, the dirt and the stress in this city. Ok, we didn’t visit the nicer parts of Panama City but still, I’d rather do without air conditioning but hear the birds sing and the monkeys howl in the djungle, instead of the constant honking in the city. The traffic is actually quite amazing: Despite us being quite used to the latin american way of driving, the way the buses plow through the streets is still frightening. It’s a fight for every place at the traffic light and people in smaller cars better stay behind, otherwise they’ll loose…

Back in the marina, we meet Dieter and Silke from the Tamora, who felicitously prepare for their passage tomorrow. I’ll be on their ship as a line handler and Gui will go with the Kira on the same day. The kids will spend two days on the SY Mares in the mean time. Beside the Mares is a free space now: Laura Decker also took her SY Guppy into the Pacific. And I’m reading on the web that our friends from the Hitch-Hike-Heidi started their voyage back across the Atlantic. The Roede Orm reached the mainland of Europe again and the Chiloe is about 600nm away from Uruguay.

Posted in LosLocos, Pics, Rancho Relaxo, Travel | Comments Off

Waiting for the passage through the Panama Canal

As so many others, we’re now sitting on our ship and wait until the time comes for us to pass through the Panama Canal. It seems that we’re already in the rain-season as it’s pouring down heavily every couple of hours. Not exactly helpful when the temperatures never go below 30 degrees. The climate inside is like in a turkish bath. Our date right now is set for the 20.5.2012. But this can still be moved around, so we’ll post the definite date one or two days before leaving – because: There are webcams in both the Gatun and the Miraflores locks and maybe someone will see us while we steer the Rancho Relaxo towards the Pacific.

And of course we again changed our plans for the next days. With the weather like it is all paint jobs are impossible and so we’ll have to do without antifouling until we reach a place that is a little dryer. While the small rust patches along the waterline we might be able to do when there are a few hours of sunshine and no water movement… Someone mentioned a possibility to haul out the ship in the Tuamotus but we don’t yet know where that is exactly. Maybe somewone who knows could drop us an email…

Yesterday the SY Mares arrived and Bruno and Viola were extremely contented to see Laura again. The three spent the whole evening chasing crabs on the jetties and swimming and diving in the marina pool until 23h in the night. Right now we’re doing school and afterwards we’ll visit Laura to probably go to the pool again. Hehehe.

Posted in Kids, LosLocos, Pics, Rancho Relaxo, Sailing | Comments Off

Back in civilisation (?)

After one complete month that we spent in Kuna Yala, we’re now back in the so called western civilisation. The contrast couldn’t be any bigger. The San Blas islands, little sand patches with palm trees and beautyful corals and now Colon, a stinky town with rotten buildings and lots of noise.

After seven months that we spent on islands we’ve now put our feet on a continent for the first time since leaving Portugal. Right now we lie in the Shelter Bay Marina where our kids spend the day in the pool and the djungle begins right after exiting through the marina door and one can hear howler monkeys and lots of birds all day. There are crocodiles (!!) in the harbour water and we meet many sailors that we ran into on other islands in the Caribbean. All discussions are about the channel, the date when to leave and what is still to be done at the ship. Really pleasent to be with many other sailors again.

And we’ve been very busy since arriving: We’ve done all paperwork for the passage, the ship is measured and fenders and panama-lines are rented. We also did our biggest shopping until now and got groceries for about 900 dollars on board. Enough to last until Tahiti we hope. Gui was at the doctors and got antibiotics for her otitis of the middle ear – so in the next weeks there’s medicine instead of snorkeling…

Tomorrow we’ll leave the marina and sail towards Portobello where we’d like to persuade the Kira to follow us into the Rio Chagres. And as soon as we know the date for the passage into the Pacific, we go back to Colon to get the Rancho Relaxo out of the water and do new antifouling and take care of a few little rust patches on the waterline. Mmmmh.

Posted in Animals, LosLocos, Pics, Plants, Rancho Relaxo, Sailing | Comments Off