Offshore Passage: Panama to Ecuador - Part 2

A sail-rigged fishing skiff works the waters off the reef
 at Cabo Pasado, Ecuador, where Anna anchored after landfall.

STRONG, STEADY NORTHERLIES had arrived the day Anna departed the Perlas Islands, in the Gulf of Panama, and continued for the next five days and nights, unabated, to blow Anna 500 nautical miles downwind, out of the Gulf of Panama, across Colombian offshore waters, and deep into the waters off of north west Ecuador at: 02 N, 082 W, before the breeze and seas calmed down and gradually headed to the east, then south east, south, and eventually south west as we approached the coast of Ecuador.

Anna's track, from the Perlas Islands, Panama, to Cabo Pasado, Ecuador.

The currents tended to follow suit and were positive at approximately 1 knot, until we changed course on our initial approach to the central, western Ecuador coastline; here we anticipated and experienced a counter-current of 1 to 2 knots, and this made the last 200 nautical miles a slow-going affair, requiring us to alternate between motor-sailing in the calms, and sailing under wind power alone (when the breeze was equal to or greater than 10 knots from the south west) for the last two days before making landfall at Cabo Pasado, Ecuador at: 00 22 S, 080 29 W.

Half way to the Galapagos Islands, Anna meets a friend,
just after sunrise on a boisterous early morning ride.

We saw winds out of the north east at up to 28 knots and gusting, combined with seas of up to 5 meters at 7 second intervals for the first 5 days, in addition to calms and light air with a 1-2 meter swell and a strong cross-current, yielding mild but lumpy conditions for the last two days en route.

Under the aluminum dodger, Cat keeps an eye out for other traffic...
we saw two large ships and one sailing vessel in seven days.

The passage went, more or less, as we had anticipated. We waited for a period of strong northerlies, originating in the Caribbean Sea, to carry us out of the Gulf of Panama and well out into the Pacific, to the north and west of Isla Malpelo, Colombia. This routing strategy offered Anna a ripping ride well into offshore Ecuador (out of the seasonal convection zone, out of commercial shipping traffic, and for the most part, out of the strong reverse currents closer to the coast and east of Isla Malpelo), before fizzling out near the Equator. The ITCZ and Monsoon Trough gave us a break and moved north and west of our course, allowing the northers to carry us further south, to Ecuador, while keeping strong convection and its associated lightning and squall activity at a comfortable distance.

Crossing into the Southern Hemisphere was an occasion to break out
 the rum we had brought with us, from Nicaragua, home of Flor de Caña.

Anna entered the southern hemisphere at 00 00 S, 080 29 W, at sunset, on April 4, 2014. We took a snort of Flor de Caña, smooth, smooth rum and gave the sea and lightning deities their due, in hopes of an equally smooth ride for the remainder of the passage and the long stretches ahead of us, in South American waters.

It took Anna 7 days and 15 hours to make landfall, just after midnight, and under a radar approach at our destination, along the central part of the west coast of mainland Ecuador. We chose to land at Cabo Pasado. It has an easy and safe approach from the north west. And in the dark, on a moonless night, easy and straight-forward is the ticket. Cabo Pasado is a large, open rolling roadstead, and it is conveniently located between two extended reefs, each one-half mile from the center of the curve of the beach. The water begins to shallow out within one-half mile of the shoreline, so we dropped the hook in sand and mud and 3 meters of depth, at dead-low tide, and centered Anna one-half mile from the beach and two reefs. The reef on the south side of the anchorage would serve to dampen the SW ocean swell. We would rest up and clean up after the 700 nautical-mile direct passage from the south end of the Perlas Islands.

On the final approach to Cabo Pasado, Ecuador, a small, yellow bird
hitches a ride on Anna and keeps Cat company, on the mid-afternoon watch.

Our official port of entry would be Bahia de Caráquez, Ecuador, laying 20 nautical miles to the south of serene, desolate, Cabo Pasado. After a week or so at Cabo Pasado, we drifted down to Bahia de Caráquez and checked into Ecuador with Customs and Immigration. A health inspector visited Anna, at her first official port of entry, in South America, and gave us our ticket to 'officially' set foot on land.

The procedure for entering Bahia de Caráquez entailed waiting outside the entrance to the harbour channel at least one hour before high tide occurred. A pilot boat met Anna and guided us into the harbour, across a complex of snaking sandbars and surf, before reaching the deeper, protected waters of the port.

We are happy to now reside in more benign weather conditions, and more to the point, out of the harsh realm of the Central American lightning zone and the ITCZ (Inter-tropical Convergence Zone), which appear to all but disappear in this part of the southern hemisphere, i.e. below the Equator, in the eastern sector of the Pacific Ocean.

The seas smooth out for Anna in
Ecuador, as we approach the Equator.

We timed our passage to depart Central America before the start, once again, of the rainy season, which we absolutely love with the exception of course, of the direct lightning strikes - a cruel form of natural phenomena that we did not want to experience up front and personal, two years in a row; we had our share and paid our dues last season, in Panama.

In Ecuador, the seasons are reversed: the dry season begins in May (just a couple of weeks away), as the rainy season kicks into gear in Central America. The most significant difference is that on the west coast of Ecuador, during the rainy season, lightning is almost unheard of, and a glance at the the NASA satellite imagery and survey of lightning strikes, world-wide, by month, confirms the fact that the west coast of Ecuador is a good place to be when it comes to avoidance of severe electrical storms.

Other than being very fortunate to have had good wind and following seas for most of the ride, even into the offshore waters of Ecuador (an unusual occurrence), the passage was unremarkable from a sailing point of view. The most noteworthy exceptions were:

a) the emergency distress call of a vessel 100 nautical miles behind us, which took on water at an alarming rate, off Cabo Malo, Panama, in the shipping lanes. The crew of three were rescued by a cargo ship, 12 hours after their EPIRB was set off. The vessel, sadly, was scuttled;

b) from a meteorological standpoint: coming from the direction of the Colombian mountain ranges to our south and east, the night sky was lit up by cloud-to-cloud lightning strikes (no cloud-to-ground that we could see). Persistent flashing throughout the night...a sure sign of things to come (cloud-to-ground strikes), very soon, in Panama;

c) and last, but not by no means least, as we made our initial approach to Ecuador, still some 200 nautical miles offshore...we heard the emergency warning on the ham-radio frequency that we monitor at 0300Z (Pacific Seafarer's Net on 14.300 USB), for a tsunami that was anticipated to send a heightened swell along the coasts of northern Chile, Peru, and Ecuador, and possibly as far as Colombia and western Panama. The tsunami warning was based on reported sea conditions occurring along the Pacific coast of South America. At the time or the warning we were within range of the effects of the initial earthquake of 8.3 on the Richter Scale, in northern Chile. An aftershock of 7.1 was registered 12 hours later but the initial warning status was dropped to a rating of advisory only. Well out at sea we felt no effects from the tsunami, possibly due to the fact that at the time, we were experiencing ocean waves of up to 5 meters in height with a 7-second period (this was occurring previous to the tsunami and was a direct result of the reinforced wind and seas we were experiencing, while en route over the previous five days). Hard to tell whether the amplified tsunami swell, in deep-ocean water (12,000 feet below our keel) changed the dynamics of the sea state where we were located at the time. All we knew for sure was that it was a pitch-black night, with a heavy sea that rolled across the curved surface of the earth that we happened to be passing, blindly, through. When all was said and done, we were content to be in deep blue-water, and not along the open, relatively shallow coastline where Anna may have been subjected to the whims of heavier than normal surges and swells, which tend to occur during tsunamis of higher magnitude. Heavy tsunamis can take out harbours and wreak havoc in coastal areas.

Anna simply sailed on, at home in her element, oblivious and indifferent to her surroundings, while leaving behind a blazing trail of sparkling bioluminescence.

***

Anna is a Tayana 37 cutter, built in Taiwan. The rough translation of tayana, into English:  belonging to the ocean.