All Changed but not yet ready for "The Off"!

Serendipity
David Caukill
Sun 4 Mar 2012 22:48

Friday 2nd March:  Puerto Ayora,  Academy Bay, Santa Cruz, Galapagos 00 48.6S  90 22.7W     

Today’s Blog by David

 

Since we last updated the Blog we have been busy. We have been “doing” Santa Cruz.

 

Dramatis Personae

 

Firstly, there has been  a change in the Cast for this month. Linda left us  on Wednesday bound firstly for a couple of days R&R in Quito with Bob, before going on to  Houston to visit a relative before returning to the UK. She has been ably replaced by Richard, someone whose coiffure readers may have cause to remember (Blogs passim).  Indeed, Richard is with his Coiffeur as I write. He arrived on Tuesday after a cruel  journey from New York via Guayaquil, his 23.30 flight being delayed until 03.30.  Bob should return to us later this afternoon.

 

 

Cousins’ Rock

 

Few readers will know that Bob first visited the Galapagos Islands 42 years ago as an  Engineer on a yacht which he sailed from the UK. He then spent a little more than 6 months on that yacht  while it carried paying passengers around the islands.   On his return on Serendipity, he has spent some of his time here looking up old connections: the Wittmer Family on Floreana, the Angermeyers in Santa Cruz both of whom he visited to show them pictures he had taken years ago.  It was them that recognised and put Bob in touch with David Balfour (one to the two owners of  the yacht in question) who has settled here and  made his living – indeed he is now Her Majesty’s Honorary Consul here. So, something of a trip down memory lane for Bob.

 

While he was here, the crew of the yacht decided to call a hitherto unnamed rock to which they took tourists to for snorkelling or diving off Isla Bartolome,  after Bob: so was designated Cousins’ Rock.   While Bob has been in Quito with Linda, we have organised a dive for him  at Cousins Rock tomorrow.

 

Diving

 

While Bob has been away Richard and I dived at Gordon Rock on Wednesday and yesterday Peter joined us at Isabella for what was by far our best dive to date. Over the last two days we have seen all manner of sea life up close and personal: Turtles, Sea Lions, sharks and  all manner of Rays and other fish:

 

Richard and Peter: Synchronised Swimming with Sea Lions:

 

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Shoals of fish numbering more than you can imagine – one seemed as large as a cloud in  the sky:

 

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Up close and personal it was but I the case of the Hammerhead, White Tipped and Galapagos Sharks, I was (and remain)  pleased to say: Not too up close!!

 

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We also have – between us – visited the Plaza Islands, Bartolome and North Seymour Islands as day trips.   To be fair, once you have done one trip in the southern Island group……..  Anyway, we will write something more on Galapagos wild life while we are on passage to Islas Marquesas.

 

Departure for Hiva Oa, Isla  Marquesas

 

Well – we have been in the Galapagos Islands for nearly three weeks and thus it is time for us to  continue our peripatetic journey across the Pacific. And so it is that on Sunday Lunchtime, the IT IS NOT A RACE will start again.  

 

Sadly, the weather forecast does not augur well. Light winds and a confused chop (which will slow us down) are forecast to dog us for the first week of our 3000 mile next leg to Hiva Oa. We have nowhere near enough fuel to motor all the way there, so we will just have to tough it out.

 

It is said that this next leg is one of the more likely legs for us to – literally -  run into a big whale.  Good job we had a watertight collision bulkhead fitted when the boat was built!