We arrived off the island of Contadora on Monday after a short voyage, useful never the less as Shimshal had been out of the water for a couple of months and a lot of work had been done on her systems.Thankfully most things seemed to remember what they were for and worked. Heather and I however have not been on board since 2018 and have forgotten most of the things we ever knew about sailing Shimshal. We will get the hang of it over the next few weeks no doubt.
There is now a learning curve as the new chart plotters don't work the same as the old ones and the peculiarities of the new networking need to be discovered. One unexpected issue is that the new Radar, a very smart WiFi unit, will only link to one plotter at a time; so we either have Radar in the cockpit or down below, here the cockpit wins but if it were cold and wet then who knows.
This cruising business can be very sociable. We have been in the company of another OCC boat, Diaomedea, sharing drinks with them whilst still in the marina and then after arriving in the Pearl islands. Anchoring close together we have shaired a pancake brunch, sundowners, and several cups of tea. They left this morning heading back to Panama city to pick up crew, provisions and to check out with immigration. They too are heading to Galapagos so no doubt we will cross paths with them again.
We have spent our time here with an extreemley hot trip ashore for a wander round and a top up with fresh produce as well as lots of time spent in the water. The island is surrounded by sandy beaches seperated by small rocky headlands. Here we have found plenty of interesting fish life and Heather has been experimenting with our new GoPro camera making short video films.
We have been sorting out the practicalities of onboard life, things like: The watermaker needs about an hour every 2 days to keep up with our water consumption and to keep the tanks topped up. The generator seems to need about an hour a day to keep the batteries full after the new solar panels and the wind generator have done what they can during the day. In these hot climes the fridge, freezer and the water maker have a large appitite for amps which never stops.
The waiting game is how to pick the best day to leave for Galapagos. There is a powerful weather routing app called Predict Wind; for us not in the know if you input your start point and destination it looks at several weather forcasts, prevailing currents and already has information input about boat speed etc. The app will produce several options of the best route to take over various start days and predict the winds and weather along your route. For our voyages there are strong winds forecast today and Thursday then they start to drop away, it seems leaving on Friday gives the best combination of favourable winds, wind strengths and wave hights with the least amount of heavy weather or calms when we would have to motor. It should be called the Goldylocks program, not too strong, not too light but just right !.