Mantanchen Bay 12.9.09

We had our first overnight passage of the season coming from Stone Island down the coast by about 120 miles or so to a large bay called Mantanchen. The trip was uneventful, calm weather & decent seas, and warm air temps for the passage. We buddy boated with S/V Precious Metal, S/V Outrider, S/V Pacific Jade, & S/V Grey Max – the slower boats took off earlier in the morning and the faster boats left later. We cruise at around 7 knots and are considered one of the faster boats. We left Stone Island around 11:30 in the afternoon with S/V Precious Metal and dropped the anchor around 7:15am the following morning.



There was a little wind while we were out so we even got to put up all the sails, even if we couldn’t sail solely. When we raised the mainsail, we found our first stowaway – a gecko! He was hiding up inside the sails and is on the boat….somewhere! Hopefully he makes it down below and will take care of the mosquitoes & no-see-um’s we’re sure to encounter here. We saw some whales & even a HUGE sea turtle while it was still light out and a million stars came out after dark for our enjoyment. I think the star-gazing gets better each time we’re out, if that’s possible! We began our watches after dinner. While we usually do a two hours on, two hours off watch schedule, we worked it a bit differently this time and we took turns though it wasn’t exactly two on two off. But it worked!

Once the hook was set we had a celebratory cerveza (you have to celebrate the long passages!), put the boat to bed, showered, ate a light breakfast & promptly took a nap. When we woke up, all of the other boats had arrived and were doing the same thing!

Haha… So we had a nice, relaxing, mellow afternoon – reading, napping, and enjoying the sunshine. Michael wired up the 12volt fan into the inside of the refrigerator and it’s already making a huge difference. The fridge used to come on and stay on for about 45 minutes and because of that, we had to physically cycle it every 3 or 4 hours so it wouldn’t deplete our batteries. Now it’s only coming on about once every 2 hours, for only 15 minutes! Woohoo! I’ll take that! Every little tweak makes a huge difference!



Tomorrow we’re going to do the ‘Jungle trip’ with the group, going back into an estuary on a panga to see the native birds, flowers, & crocodiles! But most importantly….the swimming hole. I’ll report on it later!

More to follow…
Rene