Heading west to the Galapagos
Harmonie
Don and Anne Myers
Sun 24 Feb 2008 05:43
We leave the Ecuador mainland tomorrow (2/24) at noon for the Galapagos
Islands (which are part of Ecuador). The trip is relatively short at 530
miles (never thought I would say 530 miles on a sailboat was short) and we
plan to arrive in the Galapagos on Thursday after four days of what will
probably be a long motor. We are still too close to the equator to pick
up any trade winds, so we are expecting little or no wind for the entire
trip. It's a good thing diesel is so cheap in this part of the world...
We will be taking something with us to the Galapagos that we hadn't
planned on until the farewell party tonight. Our tour guide Jessica's son
Oscar will be leaving Ecuador soon to go to college in the US. His father
lives in Florida and Oscar plans to attend one of the colleges in the
Tampa area. Before leaving Ecuador, Oscar had always wanted to go to the
Galapagos (seems a shame he's never been there being Ecuadorian and all)
and what better opportunity than to sail there on one of the World ARC
rally boats. Well, as I've mentioned before, Harmonie is one of the very
few boats with only two people on it and of the boats with only two
people, ours is the largest. It's only logical that Oscar should come
with us, and so he is. We never thought we'd be taking a 19 year old
vegetarian Ecuadorian teenager with us to the Galapagos, but there you go,
we are.
Oscar has never sailed before (and may not sail on this trip either given
the wind predictions). Nothing like taking a big leap into the sailing
world with a 530 mile, four day trip as your first. Only a kid would be
brave enough to do it. Jessica hunted us down in the marina restaurant
tonight after she had heard that we agreed to take Oscar on as crew and
thanked us profusely. We really think it will be fun and it will be nice
to have some company on our nighttime watches. Let's hope Oscar survives
the trip as well as we do.
The next update will probably be on Monday when we are on our way across
the Pacific to see the islands with really, really, really big-ass lizards
and turtles.
Anne