Re-connecting on the Pacific

By Sam T - on "re-connecting while sailing from Galapogas to Marquesas......

Departure. There's nothing like that word. It can be filled with day-dream inducing connotations - travel, adventure, exploration, vacation - in summary, a point of separation from the mundane. Of course in my life (and for most others) it usually has quite a different flavor - business travel, work, stress, deadlines - in summary, a pain in the arse.

For the first time in my life, this word has taken on the former definition in all its potential grandeur. I am off on a true adventure. The “stated” goal of this adventure is help a friend deliver a 90' sailing vessel from the Galapagos Islands, Ecuador, to the Marquesas Islands, French Polynesia. The friend, Tim Forderer, is one of my oldest companions - we lived in the same neighborhood and ran in the same pack in high-school; sailed and roomed together in college; and shared many a wild time aboard the racing vessel Group Therapy, a J-29 based out of North Cape Yacht Club on the Western shore of Lake Erie. I use the term “stated” as making this transport is actually Tim's job - he is full-time, professional captain - and in proper terms, I am being hired by him to help crew a 90' sailboat - safely - across 3,000 miles of open ocean.
But like most things centered on Tim, the stated goal is more of a cover-story. The real goal is to reconnect with a close friend who was as important to me in my formative years as any family member. It was Tim that helped to re-introduce me to competitive sailing during our college days at the University of Toledo - which began after an abortive attempt at the University of Texas - but that is another tale. Along the way, he helped me re-learn some of the lessons of childhood learned in junior sailing: try to leave the boat in better condition than you found it, always pitch-in and help when something needs doing rather than waiting for it to be requested, be courteous and helpful to your crewmates, always keep a level head in emergencies, and most importantly, always take the positive view and make the best of any situation.

......

As anxious as I am to be on my way home, I hate goodbyes and I hate to see the crew break up. As I've mentioned several times before, this crew has great chemistry. I've heard many stories of crews and even good relationships being destroyed by the close quarters required by these types of trips. For us, this has been the exact opposite and one of the most positive experiences of my life. I consider Zac, Gordon and Lisa to be, at the very least, a part of my extended 'sailing family,' and I'm certain that TF and I have accomplished our goal of 'reconnection.'
Obviously, these are more than just “sailing” lessons. Many of them sound like those you learned from your parents… or in catechism… or the Scouts, and ultimately, the inherent messages really are the same. However they came to you, for me they came through sailing (or really through my parents who insisted we all learn to sail). The reasons I had to re-connect with these lessons are many and varied but they may have a bit to do with my particularly unruly teenage years.

TF asks a really good question, “What is your highlight of the trip?” I struggle for an answer to this as a dozen thoughts spring to mind - the pod of whales, the sunset with the wave after wave of dolphins, reaching an “understanding” at the wheel of Vivid, a deep-woods trail, a near decapitation by a rabid frigate bird, the flying fish shoals, a possessed winch, any number of late-night conversations, green flashes at sunset, and that is what occurs to me in just a moments thought.

Lisa makes pretext of using the restroom I think to give TF and me few more moments alone - five minutes to discuss family, friendship, what it all means… I don't think either of us has the answer, but I do tell Tim that I think he has found his place and calling. That 'place' isn't fixed on a map, but rather at the helm of a boat, on the open seas. I promise to be an ambassador for him to recruit more friends and our extended sailing family to join him for one of these trips.

Radar blurps and Ipod music

By Zac W. on sailing with us from Galapogas to Marquesas 3400 nautical miles.

Half of it, is the feeling when you're off the boat. It's not ego. When people ask how the trip was, when they are in awe of the distance traveled; it does feed the id, but that's not what what this is about. This is about knowing in yourself that you've done something beyond what you thought you'd ever get to.

Maybe it's that old tale of Achilles. He was given a choice between living a long, happy life; raising a son, being married to a beautiful woman, living with a small fortune; or he could live a short life, fighting and killing princes and kings, bedding their wives the queens and princesses, and be remembered forever.

It's not the glamour we seek, it's the sense of going beyond what is expected. Reaching for what, at some point in our lives, we believed to be impossible. Every time I step aboard a sailboat, there's the idea that this is something unexpected. I never thought I'd be here, it never occurred to me that in my lifetime I would cross the Pacific ocean. It wears off of course, the monotony of meals and sleep and radar blurps and Ipod music, but then without really thinking you find yourself behind the wheel, directing a spinnaker like a chorus, and you are aware of every dream you've ever had. You can feel the balance of wave and wind and boat, and as you work to keep those aligned, in yourself you feel the alignment of dreams and spirit and mind.
Of course it's complicated, and I wish I could give you more detail than these abstract words provide...

I ship out on the "Anderson" on Friday. A seven hundred foot boat that's been around over fifty years. It's the boat that turned back to look for the Edmund Fitzgerald the night it sank. A strange history, but I'm excited to be aboard.

Illegal Fishing Threatens Galápagos Islands Waters

Great article from National Geografic that documents the fish kill that is happening in Galapogas (as well as around the world). Ironically the main attraction for diving tourism in the islands are the sharks.

by Jennifer HileNational Geographic On Assignment
March 12, 2004

Jennifer Hile, a correspondent for National Geographic On Assignment, traveled to the Galápagos Islands to investigate illegal fishing and shark fin harvesting by poachers. Here she reveals the difficulties faced by the park rangers fighting the problem.
The 100-foot (33-meter) Guadalupe River patrol boat plows through the southern seas of the Galápagos Islands Marine Reserve, kicking up heavy spray, as rangers scan for poachers.
I thought I was coming to one of the world's most protected and pristine environments. After all, 97 percent of the Galápagos Islands, 600 miles (965 kilometers) from Ecuador, is designated park land: 3,000 square miles (7,880 square kilometers) of land scattered between 13 large islands, six small ones, 40 islets, and countless humps and bumps.
The islands themselves are encircled by a colossal moat—50,000 square miles (129,499 square kilometers) of the surrounding sea is protected as a marine reserve, one of the largest in the world.
About 90 percent of the reptiles, half the birds, and one-third of the plants here exist nowhere else. There's so little fresh water and the volcanic landscape is so inhospitable, only a narrow, unique spectrum of creatures thrive. Deep-diving marine iguanas and tortoises the size of dinner tables gives the islands a fairytale quality.
Cordoning off the islands as parkland was intended to preserve this place, freeing it from the crushing pressures of a burgeoning human population. But within days of arriving, one of my first impressions was of how much impact humans are having on this fragile ecosystem.
Underwater Gold Rush
When the reserve was created by Ecuador in 1959, hardly anyone lived on these islands. An illegal fishing boom beginning in the early 90s changed that permanently.
As more accessible, coastal waters off South America were overfished and emptied, commercial boats zeroed in on the protected waters of the Galápagos.
Fishermen from Ecuador poured in with dreams of easy money, encouraged by commercial boats from Asia paying big money for high-end delicacies like shark fins and sea cucumbers.
Unfortunately, the Ecuadorian government did little to intervene; the problems of such a remote province were easy to overlook.
The local park staff had too little money and too few people to deal with the growing conflict on their own. The aluminum-hulled Guadalupe River was donated in 1995; its clunky engines guaranteed the rangers could never catch anyone.
A grant from United States Agency for International Development (USAID) provided new engines and some modern radar equipment, ensuring rangers now move as fast as the poachers. A new seaplane acts as a spotter, scouring vast stretches of sea in a matter of hours, keeping in touch with boat-bound rangers by radio. A California-based conservation group, Wild Aid, helps train and finance rangers.
I'm out on patrol with them to witness the challenges they face and the otherworldly beauty they're protecting.
Patrolling Paradise
For one week, we motor through some of the most inaccessible corners of the Galápagos. It's a journey which reveals both its beauty and its problems. Even with new equipment, trying to patrol such a vast area of ocean is incredibly difficult.
We head for the island of Isabella, considered ground zero for illegal fishing. Much of what rangers do is basic detective work. We jump onto small dinghies and go ashore constantly, looking for camps.
Most of our time is spent cleaning debris from camps where illegal fishermen have already come and gone. We're consistently a few paces behind the people we're supposed to be policing. We collect rusting oil drums, discarded clothes, and rotting batteries from fragile mangroves and lava beds that shatter under our feet like broken glass.
The westernmost island, Fernandina, is considered one of the most pristine islands in the Pacific Ocean. We head for the west coast and hike into the type of wild landscape I've dreamed of experiencing since I was a child.
Sea Sanctuary
Protected lagoons are filled with baby sea lions. They swim right up to my feet, checking me out—the curiosity clearly mutual. Flightless cormorants are building nests of red sea weed on black rocky ground. Green sea turtles rest on the shore and penguins are waddling off for a swim.
All of them are vulnerable to the illegal long lines that crisscross this watery park like spider webs.
These translucent fishing lines, secured with buoys that float at the surface, can stretch as much as 80 miles (130 kilometers), and dangle with hundreds of baited hooks. Long lines are menacing because they are so indiscriminate: Almost any animal will take the bait.
On average fully half of the animals caught on long lines can't be sold and are thrown away—manta rays, sea lions, sea birds. That quickly drains the life from an ecosystem.
But long lines are cheap and easy to use, so they are a tool of choice for fishermen worldwide and illegal fishermen here.
They are hardly visible at the surface, making them incredibly difficult to detect. We didn't find anything along the park's western edge, so we headed for the northern islands of Darwin and Wolf, a favorite haunt for both sharks and the people who hunt them.
Scouring the Seas
At Wolf there is a stunning surprise. Hundreds of dolphins surround our boat. Their abundance is a reminder of how wild these waters still are, but also of what will be lost if this place is over fished. Large populations of dolphins need a lot of food. If what they eat is exploited, their populations also crash.
We finish our patrol on the eastern side of the park. The rangers constantly scan a vast, moving sea with binoculars and find nothing.
Back at park headquarters on the island of Santa Cruz a few days later, the director, Edwin Naula, throws open a shed holding some of the 4,000 shark fins confiscated just in the last year. Galápagos sharks, hammerheads, blues, duskies—all of their distinctive fins are jammed into black burlap sacks that pile to the ceiling.
Shark fins are worth as much as U.S. $80 per pound. The contraband at park headquarters has a market value totaling hundreds of thousands of dollars. With that kind of money at stake, fishermen are not going to back out of this reserve quietly.
Three weeks after I arrive in the Galápagos, local fishermen go on strike. They are demanding that long lines be legalized, and threaten violence if it doesn't happen. In the meantime, they've wrapped barbed wire around park headquarters, shutting down patrols.
That leaves the islands completely unprotected.
Whether the Galápagos will remain one of the world's last great pristine places or something closer to a commercial fishery remains to be seen. The current illegal fishing involves too many people fishing too small a place—without any controls, the entire system will crash.
That's what happened in mainland Ecuador, driving people into the Galápagos reserve in the first place.
The same mistakes are now being made in the Galápagos. More money can be garnered over the long run by leaving this place alone and cashing in on tourist dollars, but fishermen who don't speak English and don't stand to profit from tourism are more interested in their immediate survival.
Their determination to peel back the protected status of this place, and the lack of alternatives that makes them so committed to their goal, puts the future of the Galápagos up for grabs.

Isla Isabella - Galapagos

We are anchored next to a massive volcano about 3600 meters high on Isla Isabella. Isabella is positioned right on the equator. Our Galapagos cruise has had us cross the equator three time now. This volcanic landscape makes for a dramatic back drop for the yacht in the setting warm sunlight.
We take a dingy ride around the anchorage riding very close to the rock walls. We see Penguins, Blue Footed Boobies, Sea Lions, Land and Marine Iguanas, Marine Turtles. We see all of this in the first ten minutes. The Galapagos Islands are preserved. Kept sacred and protected from man. It is amazing to see the amount of LIFE here.
The penguins are the highlight of this dinghy ride. About 10 of them come whizzing around a rock corner in the surge over a boulder shallow. They bob, weave and flow like white water rafters bouncing at the mercy of a class 5 river.

20 Shearwaters fly by. Their aerodynamic bodies are black on top, and as they bank away synchronized, like acrobatic Blue Angels, they expose their white bellies. It's very foggy. The water temp, even though we are near the equator, is between 19 and 20 c. We are approaching Roca Redondo to dive. This is the area that Master and Commander was filmed. Redondo Rock is 20 juts out of the water 20 meters high. It is the tip of an active volcano. Sulfur bubbles that have made their way up from the bottom are natures way of reminding us that this Volcano still has some life in it.
Now there are about 100 Shearwater birds around us. We anchor in the axis of the strong currents that wrap around both sides of Redondo. one boat length behind us is a group of about 60 sea lions "cooling". They chill out by floating on the surface with one fin in the air, its quite a sight. Simutaniously to port, close enough to touch, a group of about 20 large Bottlenose Dolphin are lolly gagging by in the current axis looking for lunch to come their way. In the surf break off the point of the Roca, Sea Lions float and wait like territorial surfers guarding "their" break. They wait for the big one and then body surf as far as the surf will take them.
Redondo is covered with birds of every type. They swarm the island like pissed off bees after a few mischievous kids played pinyotta on their hive.

Crossing the Equator

The water outside is like pools of olive oil. The sky is absolutely cram packed with stars. The breeze is turned off as we transit the ITCZ, Inter Tropical Convergence Zone - AKA the Doldrums. The southern cross is in full sight.
We are all gathered in the Pilot house watching the GPS count down to 0 00 Latitude and switch from the Northern Hemisphere to the Southern Hemisphere. It's exactly the same feeling as a new years eve countdown.
At 2300 we cross the equator for the first time. We stop the boat and drift. We throw gifts to Neptune. toast the occasion and silently each in our own way ask for protection and safe passage in the vast open waters of the Southern Pacific Ocean.

The Buses of Colon

Colon Panama is a scary place. A place that you would not even consider walking around with your guard down or after dark. There are areas that are extremely unfriendly to outsiders. The poverty is apparent, the living conditions are terrible. Amidst all of this are the Buses of Colon. They jump out at you and provide color to an other wise dreary landscape. They are expressions of the creativity and the driver’s personality. They display graffiti as art.

Walking around Colon I am escorted by a 250 pound taxi driver that seems to know everyone. I am paying him to watch my back as I try to capture the contrast between the depressing gritty feel of Colon living and the colorful upbeat buses.

As we leave Vatican City (in Colon) he decides to tell me that on the same basketball court I was taking pictures two people where killed the night before. Time to move on....

Check out the pictures by clicking on the "The Buses of Colon" to your left.