The Final Countdown

At long last, after more than three weeks of sweating, cursing and drinking ungodly quantities of Balboa (Panama’s national beer) I am ready to cross the Pacific Ocean. I’ve been working with Arcturus’ owners Andrew and Julie to prepare Arcturus, the Matrix 27 sailboat I’ve been hired to deliver, for her crossing to Tahiti and it’s finally looking like we are ready to pull up the anchor and point the bow towards the Galapagos, our first stop, about 800 miles away as the booby bird flies, 1000 nautical miles as the sailboat sails.

A few of the tasks completed in the time since I arrived are:

Stip boat of everything, clean boat, restow gear

Check all hardware, chainplates, thru hulls etc.

Paint bottom

New seal for saildrive

Paint bootstripe around waterline

Mount windvane

Repair windvane

Fill gasoline, diesel, propane and water

Provision food, medical supplies, etc…

Rewire electronics

Re-rig forstay

Set up jib furler

Re set sails and test

Several trips up the mast to replace halyards, rigging, etc.

Prepare navigation equipment

Clearing myself and the boat out of the country, always great fun dealing with Central American beaurocracy (here a few crisp $20bills and a bottle of whiskey goes really far with getting things done).

The list goes on.

All this has been done in 90 to 100 degree heat in a remote village up some estuary in western Panama while experiencing the joys of an ear infection. In the tropics it’s always one thing or another, I can’t complain seeing as this time I don’t have malaria or giardia. Boca Chica is actually a pretty sweet place, except whenever you need even the most basic of supplies you must travel all the way to David, a crazy chaotic city on the Pan American highway near the Costa Rican border (interesting side note: I once spent New Year’s Eve in a dodgy Chinese restaurant in David a few years back, I couldn’t tell if they served me spider monkey or dog…).

Boca Chica is popular with the sport fishermen who have found some of the best fishing for bonito or mahi mahi in the world. It’s also popular with cocaine smugglers making the rounds up from Columbia. The maze of islands and rivers here makes it the perfect place to drop off a few hundred pounds of blow. Being from Port Scandalous (Angeles), where plenty of drugs are shipped across the US/Canada border right under the nose of the resident border patrol, this is nothing new.

I just wanted to get the boat ready to tackle the pacific. Preparing for a yacht delivery always sucks. You are asked a million times when you’re leaving, and there is always another problem or challenge which comes up last minute causing another delay. But there is no point in rushing; one mistake could cost you the boat, or your life.

There are a few notable challenges on the first leg of the route to the Galapagos. First, I will have to cross the busiest shipping lanes in the world, where boats from the entire pacific funnel in heading to or leaving the Panama Canal. As a singlehanded sailor, this means very little sleep. Last time I sailed in to Panama, I didn’t get any rest for four days, and was experiencing sleep deprivation induced mild hallucinations by the time I anchored in Colon.

The second challenge is crossing the ITCZ (Inter Tropic Convergence Zone), better known as the doldrums. The ITCZ is the gap in the trade wind belt in the northern hemisphere and the southern hemisphere, and it is an area known for lack of wind, with the occasional squall brining gale like conditions for short periods of time. This is where the stories of ships being stuck at sea for weeks or months, the crew deciding to commit mutiny or dying of scurvy come from. My secret weapon will be the diesel engine, and lots of extra fuel stored in jerry cans lashed to the deck.

And the final main challenge for this leg is head winds and counter currents, including the famous Humboldt Current, which rushes north from Antarctica, fueling the fisheries off South America, and giving life to all the crazy marine life in the Galapagos, including penguins on the equator. This is truly wonderful, but it also means that for much of the passage I will have to battle one of the strongest currents in the world. Yay. Also, the Galapagos are known as the enchanted islands, and are famous for bizarre fogs and for disappearing and reappearing mysteriously.

But I have a brave little ship to take me across the oceans. She is beautiful and strong, her design incredibly well thought out and she is fully equipped for the challenges encountered along the way. In case of emergency, she has a brand new liferaft, ERPIRB, ditch bag with survival equipment, a sat phone, InReach communication device and two handheld VHF radios. Onboard is enough food for three months, with survival rations for up to six, as well as fishing gear.


The difference between this passage and ones I have made in the past, is I essentially will be connected to Babylon (the "real" world, or air conditioned nightmare, as I like to call it) via my InReach. I can receive short messages, just like texts to  a cell phone. Anyone who is curious about life at sea can feel free to contact me via share.delorme.com/RyanLangley.

I am ready. Arcturus is ready. The ocean is ready, and soon we sail west.