Saturday, January 31, 2015

Galapagos Passage Day 1

We left the Las Perlas Islands in Panama Bay yesterday morning around 10am. After a couple of hours of sailing we got to put up the asymmetric spinnaker -- big red. Had a nice 4 hour spin sail. The big ship traffic to and from the Panama Canal is like a busy highway -- with us sailing down the median strip. As we approached Punta Mala around 12 miles off, the winds picked up and we got rid of the spinnaker and put a reef in the mainsail. The seas are small, so the rides been pretty good so far.
We had a big inbound freighter just abeam of us in the early hours of the morning. Another cargo ship was on the same course but about 5 miles further out. The further out vessel called the closer in freighter on the VHF and immediately went into a long conversation in what I believe was Hindi. The only thing we could understand was when the closer vessel explained to the other one "its a sailboat, Georgia, red light". The further away boat changed his course to miss us by a mile.

Winds have lightened up this morning, but we are still making 7.5kts.
Paul



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