By this time I had hoped to be reporting about our passage to the Galapagos Islands and on some of the fauna there, but alas we're still here in Valdivia. We were scheduled to depart on 1 June along with our sister boat "Pounce", the second boat in the Atlantic 47 series. Preparations were in full swing and on 29 May, I was in the Alwoplast hangars coordinating the delivery of fuel, departure permits (called zarpas), etc. when all the lights went out. It took me a while to find my way out of the building and back down to the dock and when I got there, Jay was standing out on the dock and said all of our electronics had just failed. We don't really know if it was a lightening strike, a near miss, or a power surge over the shore power that caused it, but our whole electronics suite was shut down.
We went back on board and I attempted to restart our Lithium Ion battery bank, which is the heart of our DC electronic system on the boat. Fortunately for us it started right up with no apparent problems, but clearly there had been some kind of power spike that caused both of the large relays that are in the system to protect those Li Ion batteries to shut down. So, one by one, we started bringing our systems back on line. Luckily our broadband radar, both our Single Side Band and VHF radios, and most of our displays were all OK, but our wind sensor at the top of the mast, our auto-pilot computer, the speed sensor, the depth sensor, and three of our seven displays were damaged and not operational. Well we couldn't head out on a passage to the Galapagos without those instruments so we set about trying to reprogram them hoping that just their memories or software had been upset, but no such luck. Next we tried to substitute a Raymarine auto-piot computer for our Navico computer, but it wasn't compatible and couldn't talk to the rest of the system. We spent the next couple of days talking to the Navico reps on the phone to see how fast we could get replacements but no matter how badly we wanted them, it was clear that it was going to be about a week and a half at least before they would get here. So we had to sit here tied to the dock and watch Pounce leave during the first reasonably good weather window we had seen in weeks. Pounce departed about 1 PM on Monday, 3 June and made a little over 200 miles per day for the first couple of days. We got a report each morning as to their progress and the status of the weather, sea state, etc. They had to motor or motor sail for the first day and night against light head winds and then started picking up westerly and southwesterly winds so that they could go under just sail power. The experienced over 30 knot winds with 20 foot seas so it was pretty rough going, but the boat did well with just minor chafing of one of the control lines on the forward mast foil. Chris White, the designer of the boat, was planning on sailing the first three or four days with us, but once we lost our navigation electronics, he jumped on board with Pounce and went with them. He also gave us a few things to watch for as we follow them north out of here.
Well since we were hunkered down here, we continued to make preparations starting with putting on our light air sail. We got a break in the weather a few days ago so we brought it on board, raised it and furled, it lowered it, and stowed it below in the starboard forepeak. It's a big sail and I think once we get about 400 to 600 miles north of here, we will get really good winds out of the southeast that will carry us all the way to the Galapagos and we should get some good use out of that sail then. Here's a picture we took of Pounce with her identical light air sail, called a screecher, deployed. It's not quite filled out in the picture as the winds that day were very light. You can see from the picture though that it is significantly larger than the conventional jib.
In order to get our screecher up we had to add a three or four foot carbon fiber bowsprit to the front of the boat. It attaches to the cross beam between the two bows with a pin through the seagull striker as shown in the picture below. Sven, then got in a row boat and went to the front of the boat to attach lines through holes in the two bows that hold down on the bowsprit once we fasten the screecher to it at the eye in the front of the bowsprit and tighten it with the halyard to the top of the mast. You can see one of the two blue lines in the pictures below.
While we've been waiting for our replacement electronics to arrive we took advantage of that time to fix a small leak we discovered around one of the through hull fixtures in the starboard engine compartment. To fix it, we had to raise Escape out of the water with Alwoplast's huge crane. It's a reasonably simple fix, once the boat is out of the water, but not everyone has such a crane that can lift a 47' catamaran out of the water. I posted a video of the lift on You Tube at http://youtu.be/PIDlQZLuBZE so you can see the process and here is a still photo of Escape while it is hanging from the hoist. Once the repair was made, we needed to let it dry overnight so Jay and I spent the night dangling on the hoist. It was a good sleeping night because there weren't any waves to rock the boat every time a fishing boat or barge went down the river, and no fenders banging on the sides of the hull. In the second picture, you can see Leo in the rowboat beneath Escape taking out the through hull fitting so we could sand the surface inside to make it a tighter fit. It turns out Leo's parents live in one of the houses on the other side of the small Island I showed you a movie of in one of the previous posts where I pointed out from the dinghy ride. His dad is one of the fishermen we see out here every once in a while. Leo just finished engineering school in December, but he's been working here at Alwoplast for about ten years.
While they had Escape up on the hoist, Jay and I went in to town to do some shopping and to get some lunch. We almost always get off at the first bus stop so we can walk through central park. It's a pretty park and I like seeing the people there and all of the stray dogs looking for a pat on the head and a handout. On the way from the bus stop to the park, we usually walk on Libertad Street. It's just for walking so no cars can go on it and it goes all the way from the fish market down by the river to central park. Here are a few pictures of Libertad Street and one of the Central Park.
We didn't buy too much stuff because we figured we would be hiking around town most of the day while they worked on the boat on the hoist. We found a great little cafe called the Picamaderos or Woodpecker. We ordered a great big Ceasar Salad which we shared and a dozen shrimp empanadas plus a couple of beers. I like the milder beers so I ordered the Kunstmann Lagar but Jay likes the stronger beer so he ordered the Stout. After we had lunch we headed back to the park and stopped by the Palace Cafe on the way to check our e-mail to see if our parts were on their way yet—not yet it turned out. The Palace Cafe is one of our favorite coffee shops—it has great coffee and free internet. Sometimes we go in there if the internet is down at the marina. It's a good place to hang out.
On the way back from the mall towards the park we came across this guy standing on the sidewalk with a cap pistol strapped to his hip. I'm not sure what he was there for, but everytime a car would go by, he drew his pistol and fired a couple of caps at them. I couldn't help but think what would happen to that poor guy in the U.S. In LA they would call out the whole SWAT team, get a helicopter overhead, have him surrounded by cops, get some ambulances on the scene, and evacuate everyone from all of the stores in the mall as a starter. The guy would probably get shot and not even know he was committing a crime. Anyway, here is a picture of the guy with his pistol drawn. Down here, no one seemed to pay any attention to him, and he didn't seem to have a beef about anything, he was just having a little fun.
As we walked around town I also found a few more graffiti pictures worthy of note. I showed you a few in my previous posts, so here are a few more to add to the collection. I'm not sure who draws these or what the message is on all of them. Some are pretty obvious and some are not. Sometimes you have to stare at these things for a while because they look like they were painted by someone with red wires hooked up to blue connectors inside their brains. For example, look at the second picture of the person with a chameleon on it head and the person's left eye is also the eye of the chameleon. I don't think if I doodled on a drawing pad all day, I would come up with anything like that. Other pictures are more realistic like the person in the third picture wearing traditional Mapuche Indian headdress and outfit.
When we got back to the marina, they were finished fixing the through hull fitting, but the boat had to stay out of the water for the night so we just hopped aboard and put our groceries away and went back out to see what else was happening at Alwoplast. We found our friend Julio working on the dock trying to repair a spot where the plastic strips had been worn or lost around the pilings. We were glad to see him fixing that because those plastic sleeves make it a lot quieter at night when the piers are banging against the pilings. Julio is a great guy, as are all of the workers here at Alwoplast. We've gotten to know them pretty well during the 3 months we've been here and they've taken me into their shops to show me their equipment and how they do stuff. They're very proud of their work, and they should be. They're hard working and very skilled at what they do.
After talking to Julio for a few minutes, I went up to the hangars and peeked inside. I like walking around in there to see what's being worked on now. Inside I saw the solar taxi below that Alwoplast makes. It was in there to get a fresh coat of antifouling bottom paint and some new paint on the Kunstmann sign on the side. They had moved one of the hulls for Atlantic 47 #4 outside where people were sanding it and getting it ready to connect to the other hull as soon as it is done.
Well, my friends, that's my report for now. Not a lot has happened. We continue to get ready to get out of here and head north. Hopefully we will be able to do that next weekend. In the mean time, we're supposed to have a couple days of good weather so maybe we will get to go out and try out our new sail.
Chan
