We decided to risk the dinghy and leave early for The Perlas Islands, worst case scenario we could always go back to Panama as its only around 40 miles.
Alarm went off at 4am to catch the tide, we had no idea as to the strength of the tide as we have no tidal information apart from high & low.
To the great relief of both of us the anchor came up quite clean as on other occasions we have spent quite a bit of time scrubbing all the grey smelly clay off.
Great sail (although 50% was under motor) and we had the cruising chute out for the last hour doing somewhere between 2 and 6 knots. The seas here are teeming with life. The first we saw of this was a huge whale that slowly surfaced, blew and then displayed its entire back, dorsal fin and sank again. It appeared again several times near Naz and we think it was a Brydes Whale due to its length, colour and very hooked dorsal. We then had to negotiate the fleet of fishing boats trawling backwards and forwards and were given a display of flying Rays. Well, they were trying to fly as they launched themselves out of the water and flapped their wings vigorously. Another fish we saw was skimming above the water using the lower part of its tail fin as propulsion. Wonderful!.
Everywhere, there are jumping fish and shoals of fish "balling-up" at the surface obviously trying to escape a larger critter as the frigates picked them off the surface.
The Perlas seem almost deserted. Jimmy Cornell's cruising guide says that you should only anchor in remote places in the company of other boats (previous incidences of pirates) but, after passing one island with no sign of life and running the length of another, we decided to put into a large deserted bay. There is nothing and no-one here except deserted sandy beaches, cliffs and pinnacles of rock jutting out of the water reminiscent of Ha-Long bay (Vietnam) or Krabi (Thailand). Absolutely beautiful.
The charts on C-Map do not have a lot of detail. We eventually decided to stop at a beach that had less swell running onto it and felt our way in. The depth stayed constant at 10m until it shelved quickly to 8, 7, 6 and we decided to move out again. Having dropped the hook, the depth was still on the up and down (between 8 and 6 metres) and we could hear the chain grumbling on rock. With another 3.5 m of tidal drop still to go, we upped the anchor and moved out a bit further. This morning there is a jagged lump of black rock sitting pretty much where we were originally positioned.
Pete pumped-up the dinghy and it is still pumped-up after 20 minutes. The edges of the patch are not as smooth as I would have liked but the whole thing is on an area of the nose that curves in every direction leading to a few wrinkles. Hopefully it will stick until we get a replacement.
A lovely night just Pete, I and Nadezhda, even though I must admit to being slightly nervous after hearing about Jimmy Cornell
Tuesday 17th April 2007
This morning we took the dinghy ashore to explore from land it is even more beautiful, soft golden sand and stunning azure blue seas it really is paradise!
Hundreds of Pelicans and Frigate birds sitting together on the beach and as soon as we got close they took to the air. Luckily for us they had already done their morning ablutions!
I found some oyster shells and I’m planning on making necklaces from the mother of pearl, not sure it’ll work but it’ll pass a few hours at sea.
In the afternoon we decided to visit Isla Del Rey only a short hop of 15 miles.
A good sail, mostly close-hauled (my favourite as I like to play with the wind) we spotted another yacht and decided to drop anchor. It was pleasant enough but nowhere as spectacular as the last island.
The wind direction would have been perfect for sailing to the Galapagos but we really wanted to see more of the Perlas Islands plus you really have to mentally prepare yourself for long passages and we weren’t prepared.
Wednesday 18th April 2007
We decided to go back to The 1st Island (Isla De San Jose) but to move slightly around the headland to another anchorage.
Another stunning anchorage!
We must have been very lucky when we 1st sailed to the Perlas Islands as we haven’t seen as much marine life apart from a shark or two that actually turned out to be Ray’s with one of their fins out off the water.. they really did look like shark fins!.
Pete…..
We settled for a beautiful anchorage on Isla San Jose where there is a wooden, Thai/Indonesia style hotel overlooking the rocky bay. We motored towards the beach and watched as the depth went up and down. I reckoned that the shallower parts were rock and the deeper parts probably sand and we eventually anchored in 8.5m depth. "Ok" I said, the tidal range two days ago was 4m and we are currently in 8.5 so no problem.
Wrong! Yes, it is equinoctial tide time and the moon is now just new. The tidal range was just over 5m and we had arrived bang on the high tide
So we sat and watched the depth go down. Where I was thinking that we would not see less than 4 plus metres depth, it kept going down until it reached 3.1 at the bottom of the tide. Of course, this is no problem as long as the conditions remain calm. I decided to keep a watch when Fliss went to bed and started hearing waves crashing from places where there weren't any before. I blew out the hurricane lamp, turned off the anchor light and peered into the inky black. As my eyes became accustomed, I saw two dark lines on the horizon. The first wave simply rolled gently under us, the second, larger wave got within 15 metres and started breaking. It hit us broadside-on with a crash.
I shouted to Fliss to get on deck and luckily, as the anchor came up, we had 4m depth - this meant that the shallow patches we had come over should be deep enough to get out. They were - by 0.5m......I gunned Nadezhda over these as we were luckily without waves for the period of real shallows.
So, now I have learned another lesson and won't be so lax when checking tides, depths etc. We will also ensure we are not hemmed-in by shallows and have an escape route!
Now in much deeper water and staying there!
Fliss….
I remember saying to Pete have you checked the tide and he was convinced that there wouldn’t be a problem, so at 11am and the boat sitting at 3.1ish metres of depth I retired.
I wasn’t asleep just reading my book when I heard a loud bang as the wave hit, the impact was so great that it launched a heavy bag from a safe place all over the galley floor, bearing in mind that we have been in high seas and seriously leaning over, this bag has never moved before, it really was a bang.
I grabbed the anchor remote and told Pete to put the deck lights on and got the anchor up as quickly as I could, as luck would have it and it was luck, no further breaking waves came in whilst bringing it up. The anchor came up in super fast time (I was worried that if we had fouled our anchor on a rock we really would be in trouble) I stood by the navigation table reading off the depth as Pete gunned it… at times it read 2.5mtrs (we draw 2) and I read the readings out to Pete, praying that Neptune would be good to us and not send any more waves in at this time. Pete was in the cockpit also looking at the depths and I think that he really didn’t need me reminding him.
Let me describe Pete, he was ashen, his nerves were in overdrive and you could probably hear his knees knocking together in Balboa.
Apologies to Nadezhda and Pete had a large glass of wine to calm down.
Thursday 19th April 2007
Pete………….
We took the dinghy to the beach and had a stroll around the idyllic setting before returning to Naz.
As we picked-up the dinghy to carry it back to the water, it was noticeably deflated again so we hurried it back and got it on board. Unfortunately, the patch was leaking in a couple of places and we are running out of glue. Even if we can seal the leak, it is not wise to proceed to the Pacific with the possibility of another leak so an emergency call was made to my Dad to see if he could find a dinghy supplier in Panama.
He came up trumps with a few telephone numbers and, having rung round, we think we might have two sources (although almost no choice)..
Tomorrow, we have an unscheduled visit back to Panama for the dinghy hunting exercise.
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