Well,we finally escaped the Galapagos' iron fisted but enchanting grip on us...Bravo is at sea once again!!! Felt terrific to finally be underway on this leg of our travels that we've looked forward to for so long. Though the forecast remained a bit grim as far as a lack of wind for the first 3-400 miles until we reach the SE trade winds which hopefully will carry us the rest of the 3000 mile voyage to French Polynesia, 3-4 weeks away.
As always it was a scurry to depart...last minute provisioning runs, final clear out with the port captain, and visits with buddies in the anchorage. Also the discovery the day before departure of a leak in the raw (sea) water pump on our diesel generator. We had a spare pump, but it was plumbed differently. A full day of Rube Goldberg fabrications made of spare hoses and hardware bits had it licked, and pumping cooling water nicely.
We weighed anchor just after noon yesterday, amidst conch shells and air horns blaring on boats of friends anchored around us....a nice sendoff. All of them will be leaving for Polynesia in the days ahead. The weather was a mixed bag, providing teasing bits of wind for us to sail on, only to die and be motoring again. But it was per the forecast, so not unexpected.
While putting in a reef in the mainsail to keep it from flogging so badly in the calm swell, we noticed a couple of bad things...possibly quite bad, actually. On our #1 main sail reef, the reef line turns around a turning pulley near the base of the mast. The bolts holding it in place had started stripping out of the aluminum mast. Not good at all. It's crucial that we be able to reef easily, and this block is part of the system. There's no really good way to repair the stripped bolt holes now, but we've jury rigged a second block which will likely work ok. We'll see.
We also noticed that a winch on the boom for the #2 reef appears to be pulling off as well!!! WTF??? Not sure what's going on here. That one will be tougher to jury rig. We're working on it today, and will see what we come up with.
And finally, since bummers seem to come in 3's, our head (toilet) broke today!!! This one is a real bummer. Looks like Adam will be up to his eyeballs in the icky stuff tomorrow!!!
But hey, it's a sunny day on the blue Pacific Ocean, we made 140 miles the first day. Still motoring, but we hope to reach the tradewinds tomorrow afternoon, if the forecast models are correct. 140 miles the first 24 hours, only 2,840 to go!!!
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