San Cristóbal > Santa Cruz, Galápagos July 14th 2011 (00:44.9S 90:18.6W)
Aquamante
Vries Peter Pons
Thu 14 Jul 2011 22:30
time getting up early after the intense day of diving and snorkeling of
yesterday with the hammerhead- and Galápagos sharks, sea turtles, sea lions,
eagle rays, to name but a few.
We manage to leave around 9.00h, which is only just in time, because it is a
42nm trip and we want to arrive well before sunset as we probably have to
set a stern anchor, since the bay of Puerto Ayora is quite small and very
crowded.
We have a nice breeze of 9-12 knots, first part beam reach and after having
passed south of Santa Fé a broad reach. This is how sailing was intended:
between 6 and 8 knots, slightly heeling over one side, sliding through a
calm sea, so that you do not even notice the speed of the boat.
We have not trollied a fishing line for the trip to the Galápagos, as the
seas were so choppy going upwind. But this is a nice occasion to try one of
our Rapala lures again. Much to our surprise we do not catch anything for
the whole 7 hour trip, but we had a lovely sail. And we clocked our
milestone of 10.000nm sailing since we left Palma de Mallorca on 4 July
2009.
In the bay we anchor next to Mirus, fellow Dutch cruisers, whom we've
already met in Panama City. They are the only other cruising boat, the three
other sailing boats at anchor here are local boats for charters. Once at
anchor and the stern anchor set (first time during the two years we've been
sailing, but it just went very smoothly), Irene, the Santa Cruz sub-agent of
Bolivar Pesantes comes on board to handle the formalities of clearance. She
is well briefed by Bolivar's wife Grace, leaves in half an hour only to come
back half an hour later with a Port Authority official Ivan in shiny shorts
and a cut-off t-shirt to collect one more signature and that's it. We spent
quite a bit on our autographo, but the whole clearance procedure is
completely hassle-free. At 18.30h time for drinks in our new place for the
next couple of days.