Good Fishing!

Feb 21, 2015

Good Fishing!

We have been enroute now for 48 hours and have covered about 300 nautical miles of the 870 to Galapagos. We have traveled more than that but have needed to change tacks with the wind straight behind. The winds so far have usually been over 20 knots with the boat traveling around 8 knots. We even hit a 10 once down a wave. A bit rolly for typing and cooking but generally good days.

The really exciting part has been the fishing. The first day travelng out of the Bay of Panama which is shallow we had 5 fish bite. Two tuna got filleted for dinners-delicious. The 2 mackeral were too small and were thrown back. The fifth took the bait and hook with him to sea. The next day in deeper water, larger fish were biting. We have seen some but usually we have lost the bait and broken the line. We will have to get stronger line and more hooks next stop.

The route to Galapagos needs to be mostly south at the beginning to take advantage of the NE trade winds spilling over from the Caribbean. The trade winds south of the equator are from the SE. In between is the ITCZ(Inter Tropical Convergence Zone) or doldrums which are somewhere north of the equator this time of year. There is a weather forecast on SSB which is forecasting the light winds to start about 2 degrees N. The northernmost island of the group is at the equator but we will travel west at a spot south of that to hopefully sail with some of that south wind.

We were delayed more than expected leaving Panama. More money and forms were needed for Barb joining us. Another boat also had extra crew. Rob and their captain and a cab driver spent the afternoon trying to find the needed places to go but arrived after closing. We decided to take advantage of the delay and take a dinghy, then cab, to a grocery store and restaurant with the crew on No Regrets. I enjoyed seeing some of downtown Panama City. It has a really beautiful skyline. The architecture is more modern than Toronto. The formalities  finally got done Thurs am and we were off.