Final
waypoint- first leg
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On October 22, Grace cast off her lines and headed out into the Pacific. Our first anchorage was Taboga, a small island which we could see from Balboa. It looked so European, and we were told it appeared that way up close, too. It was a short sail, and the view from Grace's deck was great. We launched Droky Dinghy believing we would have a nice dry trip ashore after having paid $210.00 to get her fixed. No such luck! Still leaky. We'll always have clean, salty feet. Boy, will they be surprised when we bring her back in about 2 months.
Taboga is beautiful. Very European with narrow streets and houses built up the hillside, but no good restaurant. The church was the first or second, depending on what guide book you are reading, church built in the new world in the 1500's. There are no cars but lots of flowers and many wonderful shrines, perhaps because the French used the island as a sanitarium for yellow fever and tuberculosis patients during their canal venture.
The next day we left for Pedro Gonzalez in the Las Perlas Archipelago to meet Reliance with Carl and Karen on boardñ they are heading to Ecuador also. Jerry has come down with a horrible cold which may hold us up because it's no fun sailing all night with a head cold. A cold on the Equator! It took several days to kick the cold enough to head out on the 600 mile sail.
Beautiful sailing all day and all night however, in the middle of the night a boat of some kind kept tagging along beside us and finally headed right for us full speed while Jerry kept identifying us over the radio and turning into the wind so our sails could flog and identify us as a poor lonely little sailboat out on the big, wide Pacific Ocean. After many tense moments in which Reliance started sailing toward us to show support the boat passed behind us leaving us shaken and wide awake.
After 2 more days of beautiful sailing weather, Poseidon decided to put us to the test. 20-30 knot winds on the nose and large breaking seas. Gracie would rise up to meet waves that stood as tall barriers in front of us blocking our way. Our knotmeter would read 0.0 or sometimes even -1.4. We felt fuel rich after the first 2 days and fuel poor after the next 2 days. We were making only about 3 knots per hour which would leave us rowing after a few more days, and we were getting tired because the wind and the waves did not make good bedfellows.
After rain and high winds, the winds maintained 20-30 knots all the way to Ecuador making us disbelieve the wisdom of our decision to head this way. The waves calmed down enough so we could have our Equator celebration. Jerry looked the height of fashion in his green beard and aluminum foil crown and trident. He had brought a bottle of Paulliac wine from Paris 28 years ago especially for this celebration. I could develop a taste for it very quickly. Needless to say, Poseidon only got a token amount. A mistake for which we paid on the sail back from Ecuador
As we approached the Equator we raced our GPS's. Jerry used a handheld in the cockpit and I monitored the one reading into the computer. Mine had the antenna mounted on the stern, but it still reached a South reading before Jerry's.
Six days and 16 hours after we left Pedro Gonzalez we arrived Manta, Ecuador. It was midnight, and we usually would wait outside the port until morning, but 2 very good friends met us at the breakwater in their dinghy and led us into a mooring which was about a mile inside this long breakwater-past countless huge fishing boats and even a U.S. Navy frigate. We parked in front of a beautiful, modern well lighted yacht club built to look like a boat.
The Manta Yacht Club has a good restaurant, nice swimming pool and is in the process of building new showers and other conveniences. They charge $5 a day for mooring, and the food at the club is wonderful. Diesel fuel is available from the security guards who deliver it to your tanks. There is great security, and the Port Capitan is right across the street. A great Chinese restaurant, The Red Dragon, is about a block away. Manta has a beautiful beach which is crowded with families and little booths on the weekends. We met the young men from the U.S. Frigate Boone here, and they invited us to tour their boat since we complained about being buzzed on the way down. We even got to sit in one of the drug interdiction helicopters and were presented with Night Stalker patches.
Up the hill from the yacht club in Manta is the beautiful Oro Verde Hotel in which we ate many good meals, drank many great cappuccino's and made arrangements at Metropolitan Touring for inland touring. We wanted to be back in the canla zone for a crossing close to the new year so our time was limited. We had to decide between the jungle and the mountains. We opted for the Spine of the Andes.
We flew to Quito on the Friday before the tour so we could go to the Ecuadorian Folklorico Ballet, Jachingua. The theater was so rundown we thought, Uh,Oh, but we were delightedly amazed as this wonderful, musical spectacle unfolded. The costumes, authentic embroidered everyday clothing of the various Ecuadorean Indians, the excellent musicians playing authentic Ecuadorean instruments, and the excitingly, happy stories depicting Ecuador's history were spellbinding.
- 17 January 2001
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