SUBJECT: Escape Expedition Blogs
Escape Adventure 22 Jun – 8 Jul 2013
For
the past few blogs I’ve been lamenting about the misfortune of having some of
our electronics damaged by lightening, the never ending rain and cold weather,
and the storms preventing our departure.
Well, now that part of the adventure is behind us and we just completed
the passage between Valdivia, Chile and the Galapagos Islands. We finally got the shipment of repair parts
through Chilean customs on the 18th of June and we were busy
replacing and installing the parts when Roni, the production manager at
Alwoplast, came down and said the weather was good, but we would absolutely
have to leave the next day to be in the good weather window. We doubled our efforts to get things
installed and working, but it was not to be.
Sven went to the top of the mast to install the new wind indicator while
his father Roni installed the speed sensor in the through-hull hole in the
starboard hull. As soon as we plugged
them in, all of the instruments went dead.
Back up the mast we went and we pulled the speed and depth sensor out of
the hull to check them. They seemed to
be OK, but they were not compatible with the other instruments for some
reason. We downloaded new software updates
for the new items that just arrived and spent several hours updating one
instrument at a time. Plugged them back
in and again, everything went dead—now late at night Wednesday night and our
window for getting the favorable winds north quickly closing. We took the NMEA 2000 backbone apart, which is
the network that allows all of the instruments and navigation computers to
communicate with each other, and I started rebuilding it with just one or two
instruments attached. In this case, I
started with the new wind sensor on the mast and the depth/speed sensor in the
hull. Amazingly, the data showed up
immediately as soon as we turned the instruments on. Next, I plugged in one of the NGT-1 devices
that allows us to monitor the NMEA 2000 network with our computer and “voilà”,
it worked perfectly. Next, the
auto-pilot—it worked. Then the Airmar
Weather Station which has the GPS, another wind sensor, and the electronic
compass. Again, it all worked, but it
was getting close to midnight and the weather was changing. We could hear the wind picking up outside and
the waves around the marina were starting to build. OK, let’s go for broke, I told Jay. Let’s plug in the radar and we’ll be up and
running. Jay powered down the
instruments and I crawled back under the pilot desk with my headlamp on and
screwed the connector for the radar into the “T-shaped” connector in the NMEA
2000 backbone. “Try it”, I told Jay so
he flipped the switch. Everything went
black—our worst nightmare. It’s midnight
and we’re back at ground zero with our instruments. I unplugged the radar and Jay flipped the
switch on and everything came back on, but we still didn’t have the radar
integrated. Jay got on the internet and
did some more research and found that the RS10 device that connects the radar
to the NMEA 2000 is not compatible with the depth/speed sensor unless you send
it to the factory to have the firmware flashed.
It couldn’t be installed in the field.
Great, we have a bunch of instruments that all work by themselves, but
not together. I started building two
independent NMEA 2000 backbones with the new wind sensor on top of the mast,
the speed/depth sensor in the starboard hull, and one of the Triton displays on
one backbone so we could see the data, and everything else on the other
backbone. I’d had to cut all of the zip
ties that Alwoplast had installed that made it look beautiful and keep it neat,
and I had a spider web of wires hanging everywhere under the pilot desk, but at
last I had two separate networks that we could use and that would work good
enough to let us navigate out of there.
Unfortunately, we had installed a new auto-pilot, four new Triton
displays, a new wind sensor, a new depth/speed sensor and we hadn’t had the chance
to calibrate any of the new equipment or to check the old components to see if
the compasses were all pointing in the same direction or if the radar was
calibrated with the compass. We decided
to go to bed and talk to Roni in the morning.
Roni,
showed up about 0800 the next morning and told us the weather had turned bad
and that the next window was Saturday, but it looked really good for at least
three days if we could get out early Saturday.
We told him about our progress during the night and asked to get Hector,
the electrician, back down to the boat to tidy up our spider web beneath the
pilot desk so that it wouldn’t shake loose during transit and for some help to
get the instruments calibrated. Roni
sent Hector down to help us and within a couple of hours everything looked
professionally installed beneath the pilot desk and all of the instruments were
working, albeit not on one single network.
Sven came down in the afternoon and we sailed down the river to the bay
beside Mancera Island where we had room to turn in circles and sail for fairly
long stretches toward known objects to calibrate our compasses. We couldn’t get the automatic calibration
programs to kick in, no matter how well we controlled the circles, so we had to
settle for going toward known objects and adjusting the compasses until we had
them all pretty well dialed in. By the
end of the day we were satisfied that we could navigate to the Galapagos with
the system we had, so we motored back up the river to Alwoplast and made arrangements
to top off the fuel tanks and the empty propane tank. We borrowed Alwoplast’s maintenance van and
drove into town to Sodimac, which is a big hardware store—sort of the Chilean
equivalent to Home Depot, but with a lot less stuff. We bought six more five gallon diesel cans,
an extension chord to run our electric drill with (albeit with Chilean chord
tips) and some other stuff, and we stopped by the big Unimarc supermarket and
bought about $500 worth of groceries to last us through the long passage to the
Galapagos. It was pouring rain but we
had no choice, but to pack our groceries across the street and pile them into
the van. Back at the marina, we again
hauled the groceries from the van to the boat and piled them inside with water
dripping everywhere. As miserable as
this sounds, we were grinning as we pulled the groceries out of the dripping
bags and stored everything in the cabinets under the seats, in the bilges, in
the freezer, in the refrigerator, under the sink, etc. because we knew this was the final
preparation needed to get on with the next phase of the adventure. The next day was Friday, and Alwoplast loaned
us the maintenance van for one last run to the grocery store to get things like
chips, cookies, candy, etc. that we would need to snack on during the long
nights of watch we would need to endure during the passage to the
Galapagos. That was another $200 bill,
and a pretty big load of groceries, but at least we didn’t have to haul it in
the rain. By about 8 PM Friday night we
had everything stowed away and the counters pretty well cleared off and ready
to go. The international police had come
by the boat earlier in the day about 3 PM and verified that we had paid our
bills, that our passports were in order, etc. and the Navy came by at 5 PM to
make sure that we had emergency flares, fire extinguishers, EPIRB devices, the
necessary radio gear, etc. to at least make it out of Chilean waters before we
capsized. We had the coveted “Zarpe”
paper in our hands that cleared us for an early departure the next
morning. I’d been running Buoyweather
and several other weather forecast programs several times a day checking the
weather in the vicinity of Valdivia and out to the west several hundred miles
because that’s where the storms are generated in that part of the world. Roni, Alex, and I had been comparing notes
several times a day and we all came to the same conclusion, i.e., we would have
to make a run for it early Saturday morning and we would have to motor or sail
as fast as we could go, but never slower than about 7 knots in order to take
advantage of the favorable winds while they lasted over the next three days in
order to be far enough north to avoid the huge storm coming our way from the
SW. Each time I talked to Roni or Alex,
they always ended the conversation with a warning that, “usually the storms
arrive sooner than the weather forecasters say, and I don’t want to get caught
in this storm”. Roni always added, that
I should stay close to the Chilean coast for the first few days in case the
weather turned bad and I had to duck into a sheltered port for a day or two in
order to weather the storm. Alex said I
should head due north, and the course I had plotted went NNW, farther out to
sea, but on a direct path to the Galapagos.
My course took better advantage of the higher winds and better wind
directions, but they were wise with experience and provided better security in
case something went wrong with the boat, the instruments, the sails, or all of
the above.
I
reasoned that we had been living on the boat for three months and sailing it
every chance we got, so most of the bugs had been worked out, the instruments
were finally working, and we only had one good shot at getting far enough north
to beat the storm and that was to go direct, on the path I had laid out that took
maximum advantage of the forecast winds.
The next morning when Roni showed up with his son Sven, who was
accompanying us on the passage to the Galapagos, and I told him I had decided
to go direct and farther out to sea, I could see in his face that he was
disappointed and I listened to his cautions one more time. By now, Roni had become a very faithful and
dear friend, and I valued his counsel tremendously. It tore at me inside to tell him I had
decided to go against his recommendation, but as the Captain of Escape, I felt
the course I had selected gave us the best chance of beating the storm, so I
think we both just decided to not talk about it anymore. Jay and I had already been up since 0630, had
breakfast, and topped off the water tank.
Alex showed up a few minutes before 0800, which was the agreed departure
time and Sven, Jay, and I posed on the back deck for the obligatory departure
photo below.
It was
cold, so we were all bundled up, but it was not raining. It was clear so we wouldn’t have to feel our
way down the river with radar, but rather could enjoy the scene as we
went. With a long bear hug between Roni
and Sven and some hearty hand shakes for the rest of us, Alex and Roni untied
the last of the deck lines, I slipped the engines which had been warming up for
several minutes into gear, and Escape started to surge forward inching away
from the docks we had become so accustomed to over the last three months. It’s as if she knew, this was the last time
she would see the place and the people who had given her birth. She quietly built up speed until I had enough
forward speed for the rudder to take control and then I turned her gently out
into the river and throttled up to about 1500 rpm to let her build up speed
while I jumped up on deck and waved goodbye to Alex and Roni. (add movie Departing Alwoplast) I could already feel the current of the river
gripping escape and I took a moment to enjoy the moment of actually departing
on the next part of our adventure. Jay
and Sven were already back in the warmth of the cabin, but I was still out in
the forward cockpit where I had a better view of the channel markers and where
I could take in the beautiful scenery one more time. (You can see the departure movie at
We reached the mouth of the Valdivia River
near the harbor Corral and rounded the green open ocean channel marker just as
the sun was coming up over the mountains and we headed out to sea. We raised the sails as we went around the
channel marker and we felt an additional tug as we trimmed the sails to stop
their flapping. The speed meter ticked
up a couple more knots and that brought a smile to my face because we were once
again harnessing the power of nature by using the knowledge we had gained in
the classes at San Diego and through our apprenticeship in Valdivia. It was a familiar scene because we had
practiced it many times, but on all those occasions we only went out a few
miles and then practiced our sailing skills and then headed back to the harbor
pretending to have been on some fantastic journey from which we were now
seeking shelter and the familiar marina with the technicians from Alwoplast who
could help us fix whatever thing we found wasn’t working quite right that
day. Remember, Escape is the #1 vessel
of her kind, a prototype of sorts, with the two mast foils, and a lot of
complex equipment like water makers, radars, radios that can talk around the
world, etc. The only thing we hadn’t
been able to test was how she did over long periods at sea when the conditions
were not only less than ideal, but may be really hostile. I sat on the deck beside the forward cockpit
and leaned up against the windows in front of the pilot station and grinned
from my well bundled cacoon of fleece and Gortex materials that I hoped would
protect me from the storms that may lay ahead.
At last we were under way and there was no turning back. Here are a few movies of the departure as we left Valdivia:
(Add Departure Movie 2a)(Add Leaving Valdivia
Movie1) )(Add Leaving Valdivia Movie2)
The
first day came to an end with this beautiful sunset.
We were off to a
good start. The winds were picking up to
around 20 knots, which is what the forecast said it would, we were making good
time so we were staying ahead of our goal of at least 7 knots to outrun the
storm, so we settled in to the first night of watches. Sven was going to be on the first three
hours, then Jay, and then me—then repeat until we get to the Galapagos.
Good to see you off and running. Beautiful and peaceful - nice videos.
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