Safe Arrival in Ecuador

Harmonie
Don and Anne Myers
Sat 16 Feb 2008 05:24
02:13.072S 80:55.334W

We made it safely to the shore of Ecuador at around 12:15 this afternoon
(Friday, 2/15 - only two hours after Don's original arrival prediction -
not too bad!). We did have to dodge quite a few fishing nets (as far off
shore as 40 miles) and at one point, Don said he carefully floated the
boat directly over a net with no trouble during his watch this morning.
We briefly caught a 'long line' (floating line that connects a series of
fishing lines marked by buoys) on our keel, but after floating around for
a bit with the engine in neutral, we floated off the long line and all was
well.

The total trip from Panama was about 725 miles and took us five days to
complete. We motored 50 hours, which was about 40% of the time spent at
sea. Not our best trip by any means, but at least the seas were very kind
and there was no sustained bad weather. Oh, and in case you were
wondering, the missing piece of fruit that was at large in the cabin after
the most recent flying fruit basket event was found uninjured underneath
the oven. Thankfully, no fruit guts were splattered this time.

We are staying at the Puerto Lucia Yacht Club near the town of La Libertad
and the city of Salinas. We are currently waiting for customs to pay us a
visit on our boat. Until then, we are supposed to stay on board.
However, since we've been waiting five hours already and it's now 5:30,
we're pretty sure customs isn't coming today and if we go up to the yacht
club bar for a much needed drink and dinner out after five straight days
on the boat, we are pretty sure we won't be arrested. Besides, unless the
customs people arrive armed with machine guns and drag us out of bed in
the middle of the night, we won't be scared. We've been through worse.

Valentine's Day came and went with no fish. Don did catch another huge
mahi-mahi yesterday afternoon, and spent more than 45 minutes reeling it
in, only to - you guessed it - watch the southern hemisphere giant
mahi-mahi perform the same triple back flip double twist somersault
freedom move that four of his northern hemisphere friends had performed
before. That's zero for five fish. Don went into deep depression but has
since recovered. As usual, he's pretty sure he'll be able to overcome
this obstacle and land us a fish in the future. However, in the meantime,
he did feel badly that he was unable to provide us with a Valentine fish.
We opted to celebrate the equator crossing over lunch instead of dinner
yesterday (Don figured if we had the champagne for dinner neither one of
us would make it through our night watches) and it was quite lovely. And
for those of you superstitious sailing folk, yes we did give Neptune some
of our champagne after the first toast. In fact, Neptune received a full
glass. This is probably why the rest of our trip went so smoothly.

My father was so curious about the equator crossing toilet flushing
experiment (he is such an engineer) that he sent a special email asking
about it. So, to put all of your minds at ease concerning this burning
question, as best I could tell, the water did go straight down the toilet
with a very little swirling action when we were very near the equator. I
say as best I could tell because when the boat heels, all bets are off
because the heeling action affects the toilet flushing operation. Now
that we are firmly in the southern hemisphere, it does seem that the water
swirls clockwise down the drain, and I seem to remember that it was more
counter clockwise on the northern side of the equator. Maybe someone up
way up there in the North Country can confirm that the toilet swirls
counter clockwise in the northern hemisphere. Then I think we will have
the solid answer we have all been looking for.

Also, there is another loose end that needs tying up. An avid blog reader
has informed me that the more proper term for describing an undesirable
color is brindle, not bringle. As in shit brindle brown instead of shit
bringle brown (or shit bringle blue as I used it). This avid reader did a
thorough Google search on the subject backed by a quick Webster's check.
I got the expression shit bringle from my sister, who got it from a woman
she used to work with more than 20 years ago. Apparently, this woman my
sister used to work with is really the one to blame for the confusion (I
find it's always more comfortable to push the blame as far from oneself as
possible). So there you go, shit brindle brown (or blue if talking about
the Pacific Ocean color in the Gulf of Panama). I'm a big fan of
accuracy, so am happy to have received such a well researched
clarification so that I could share it with all of you.

That's it for the moment. There are still pictures and stories to tell
about Panama, so these should follow in the next few days. There are also
pictures to share from our Panama - Ecuador trip and these will be posted
as well. We will be in Ecuador for nine days, which should give us plenty
of time to catch up on things and see some of Ecuador. We leave here on
the 24th of February and will head to the Galapagos Islands. That trip
will take us 3-4 days as it is only about 530 miles. Once we get to the
Galapagos, our Pacific island hopping crossing will begin in earnest.
This is the portion of our trip that we are both most excited about and
should result in some really incredible experiences.
Anne