Fai Tira Pacific Ocean 4:48.31N 81:30.50W Friday 5th March

Fai Tira
pete.callis53@googlemail.com
Fri 5 Mar 2010 14:56
 

Fai Tira Blog Friday 5th March

Fai Tira Pacific Ocean 4:48.31N 81:30.50W

 

We have now left Las Perlas en-route to the Galapagos. 

 

The past couple of days have seen us at two anchorages in the Las Perlas, Isla Viverous and Rio Cicique, which were both lovely quite places to stay. The anchorage at Viverous was very nice and well sheltered from the North Easterly swell.  We anchored up with a few other BWR boats and were immediately invited onto Natibou for a BBQ with the rest of the crews staying there.  I had a fantastic T Bone steak that Hans has saved for me.  John enjoyed the superb salad that Monica had conjured up. We had a drink or three a enjoyed a very congenial evening.  The next day we all upped anchor and headed for Rio Cicique. When we arrived we were surprised to see about eight other BWR boats already anchored.  It seemed that most saw this place as a good last stop before the six day journey to Galapagos. A consensus of opinion of the newly arrived boats was to take a dinghy ride on the incoming tide up the Rio Cicique where with a two knot current you could switch your outboard off and drift up the river in silence listening to the sounds of the jungle. The other boats set off before us leaving us to drift and take in the commotion different noises made by the wildlife.  We later discovered that most of the sounds were actually coming from Parrots high in the canopy which were very hard to spot being green.  We saw crabs climbing trees and a magnificent termite nest.  (Pictures to follow when we have WiFi)  We did spot a bunch of Miss Tippy’s through the mangroves, a very rare sight indeed.  We had been invited onto Blue Magic for dinner by Mark and Chrissie which we gladly accepted as John was feeling a lot better.  We had a lovely relaxed evening where we put the world to right and discussed tactics for the trip down to Galapagos.  The next day saw us dismantling the steering on Fai Tira as it had got very stiff.  We tried out the emergency steering, which worked OK the quadrant and rudder being quite free.  We checked the cables and they seemed to be free as well.  It turned out to be the bearing on the wheel that was stiff.  To get at it we needed to dismantle the pinnacle and the associated compass.  We hadn’t done this before so we didn’t know what to expect.  In the end the good old WD40 eased the offending part and all was reassembled and free and working.

Wednesday saw us doing a few last minute jobs before we set off to the river again. This time it was low tide and we walked along the river bed that the previous evening  we had paddled down.  The experience was great, standing on a remote river bed on a sparsely populated island with only Jungle all around you.  The tide had sculptured the river bed into an undulating sandscape which was very hard to walk over and had patches of quick sand which luckily you only sank in to your ankles.  We did see some bird species we hadn’t seen the previous evening which was nice.  We returned to the Fai Tira to find most of the fleet had left for Galapagos so we decided to leave as well and motored for a while until the forecast fifteen knot wind kicked in.  During this time I saw my first Manta Ray feeding on the surface, it was about a metre across its wing span.  We sailed although the night and managed to cover 155 nautical miles in 24 hour period, not bad hey!  I had company on my watch for a couple of hours as a dishevelled gull sat right next to me until he decided that my singing  along to my Ipod was too much for him. 

 

 

Bye for now Pete and John.