Galapagos 2021

Who should call us on the radio in the night but our old friends at Marina Hemingway in Havana who saw our approach and beckoned our return. Alas, a 48 hr Covid quarantine affords no time for a visit, so must decline but are reminded of their great hospitality during our last stay.

Midnight watch on the 5th, motor sailing in light winds heading 163 degrees at 6.6 kts, 575nm from Panama….expect to arrive at Rosalind Bank in 24 hrs and sail between it and Thunder Knoll in 5000 ft canyon and then sharpen our course for Panama with winds building Saturday for the final approach.

You're not supposed to sail too close to the coasts of Honduras and Nicaragua because of pirate attacks so we chose a route that would take us toward the Caymans and keep us 150nm off the mainland coast. We figured the ocean would serve as a moat and no motor boatin' pirates would fight the seas that far out to get us. After three days in the doldrums, the sea was turned into a lake and our moat was drained. Suddenly, a small rocket of a speed boat very low and long, and kicking up a high bow of water appeared at dusk a quarter mile off our stern and then stopped. Two men stood up and looked us over. Three of us on deck looked back. We quickly turned off our navigational lights, which in this international terrorist negotiation was a signal that we knew they were to be hidden from, which implied that they should know we would be ready for them, which of course we were not.

The gun I had shipped to the boat never arrived. Apparently there are so many people buying guns in America right now, the system is a bit bogged down. Later as we considered our defensive liabilities, knives started coming out of drawers. I saw Eric measuring the heft of the brass cockpit table leg, taking practice swings. Sam noted the seriously with which I was taking things—it was the first time in three days he'd seen me not barefoot. We discussed recipes for Molotov cocktails and how to steer the boat while under fire, face down on the cockpit floor.

Our interlocutors in the speedboat, the only recreational boat we had seen since Key West, paused for 60 seconds. Then they sped off on their course to Jamaica, seemingly drug runners with more profitable endeavors than high seas robbery.

We ran dark for the rest of the night, making the faint flicker of rising stars on the horizon into pirates ships on the prowl, and laughing about how unfortunate it would be for our poor families to have to explain for the rest of their lives how we were killed by pirates of the Caribbean.

Wind and wildness have returned under a moonless sky, ripping along at 8+ kts in 15kts aft of the beam and a favorable current, navigating to the Southern Cross, 300nm from Panama, expected arrival before darkness falls Monday.

4am watch starts with a slap in the face from a spraying wave that crests on the beam and splashes me in the cockpit. I haven't even had a sip of espresso yet and that sort of thing wasn't happening five hours earlier on my previous watch. Wind is a gusty 25-30kts from the northeast, seas are building to 8 feet and we still have our entire mainsail out and plenty of jib to go with it. We've been sailing like this for 8 hours and I guess we grew a little desensitized to the escalating conditions. Or maybe the crew has had enough of Marlow being a dry boat at sea and is gunning to make cocktail hour in Panama the following day. Whatever the case, that little dousing is all the signal we need to shorten sail and batten down the hatches. No one can sleep in the roll and the heat, so we press on, all together on watch for the final stretch to Panama, now just 30nm ahead.

Normally a yacht would have to wait 7-12 days to transit the canal at this time of year but we've just been told due to Covid there is no line and so we're going through on Thursday.

Safe and happy at the dock in Panama City. Love to all of our supporters who made it possible—my family for holding down the fort and keeping on without me, my sailing mentors, Sham Hunt who is my father's friend and my dad of the sea and John Middleton who built Marlow at Hinckley and fields endless phone calls about how to fix this and that, the gang in Key West led by Travis Scott who got her ready for sea again, the team in Panama including our agent Tina McBride and the team at Shelter Bay Marina, Juan, Eddie and Modelo Steve (as long as you feed him Modelos, he finds another project to make your boat better) who took us in bloodied and bruised and got us ready for sea again. Finally, to my crew, for their courage…the Funks have a cool of adventure in their blood, and first mate Salk for his excellent seamanship.

Crew departs in the afternoon and I crawl into bed for 12 hours, waking up through the night for my shift. I listen to Richard Dawkins read an abridged version of The Voyage of the Beagle to set the tone for the adventure ahead. The next crew starts arriving in a few hours as I track delivery of our sail, arrange to have our bottom scrubbed as per the requirement of the park, and schedule yet another Covid test.

150nm from Panama City, cruising 6kts in 10+ kts aft, out of the Gulf of Panama and on a direct course for the Galapagos heading 233, 716nm ahead. Milking the last of the winds for today before we get becalmed for the foreseeable future. Have burned 8 gallons of fuel out of 160, engine run for 10 hrs at low RPM over the last 24, may need every drop to make it all the way under power. Send us wind (but not too much).

10pm, just left off swimming with the seals of the Galapagos under the moonlight. They are curious and playful, probably as lonely as the rest of us during Covid, wondering where are all the boats and people? We are one of only four visiting sailboats in Moreno Bay on the island of Cristobal, a fraction of the normal traffic. We arrived at dawn with an escort of sea turtles in the afterglow of the Sons and Daughter of Neptune Party held the previous afternoon 100 nm from shore during which we transitioned from pollywog to shellback in a ceremony full of tears and much hilarity. We stopped the boat for six hours, and with Neptune's permission broke our rule for drinking at sea, bbq'd tuna, made speeches and competed in the laugh Olympics. Then we sailed through the night and the sun rose to a prehistoric landscape filled with mini pterodactyls, blown off volcanos and gargantuan rocks sticking up out of the sea.

1am lying awake in bed to the sounds of sea lions worshiping Marlow's black hull like at a shrine. They croak and beltch like giant frogs and rub themselves against the boat below my bunk while expunging bubbles which rise all around like you are swimming underwater with them. No wonder I can't sleep.

One of the virtues of life here is the poor internet that is a byproduct of protecting the environment foremost. Hence, a weeks worth of blog posts piled up until we reached Puerto Ayora, the largest town in the Galapagos, where we will be settled for a few days until we depart Tuesday for a lap around Isabela. Puerto Ayora reminds me Mahon on Menorca, one of my favorite ports and of a similar size, home to 20,000 people. One thing common to the islands is there are almost no roads along the coast, just the occasional overpass through the highlands to another spot on the coast. This gives sanctuary to sea life of course, and makes the Galapagos the ideal cruising ground as we'll practically have every cove to ourselves.

We spent the morning swimming with penguins and sea lions, flightless cormorants and turtles in a nameless cove after walking through lava fields to find a brackish pond where two flamingo were feeding together with a white heron and then we sailed in a perfect breeze for 3 hours between five volcano….I hereby tender my resignation from the human race.

Anyone who has been offshore knows how trying it is, the boat and all her issues and the people and all their issues. But then there are little these little moments of wonder that make the struggle entirely worth it. One such occurrence happened some days into the run from Panama to the Galapagos, in the middle of the night, when the magic of the sea is often revealed. We'd had a few nights to get comfortable with the darkness, killing every last source of light on the boat and welcoming the set of the moon, so we could fully tune into the canopy of stars above. With any kind of weather we'd have begged for the moon to light our way but with the luxury of placid seas, our attention turned to more spiritual pursuits. Dingle and I were on watch, buds since college, co-conspirators in pursuit of any quixotic illusion we can conjure along our way. On this majestic night, amidst the blackness, a light haze on the water in an otherwise clear sky blurred the horizon such that we lost all sense of scale in any direction. The stars suddenly closed in on us as if we were in an underground cave looking up at a prehistoric sketch of the universe. We reached up with our arms in euphoric exaltation like babies expecting to touch the Milky Way. We became star gliders under light sail flying on an intergalactic spaceship through the cosmos. I was reminded of why I challenge myself to leave the comforts of home to get out here with the characters I love. It is for the dark nights at sea.

Trees we are like

Isabela is like visiting a planet without humans, and I dare say I prefer it. It's nighttime and sea lions are swimming around the boat at anchor in a magic cove causing bioluminescence trails which sparkle with reflective starlight while we charcoal bbq ribs. The day started sailing east toward a rising sun filling the cauldron of a volcano as I weep for my Mom who died last year, the queen of adventure who would be so thrilled for us. Then we walked among tortoises and hung with land iguanas before snorkeling with penguins. My last act on this perfect day is to bake bread at 1am, which we eat for breakfast with eggs at dawn as we sail on to the next port.

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