Daily 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