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Day 16 and 17; Rendevouz on Chichime; and on to the Panama Canal; January 20, and 21, 2014



The World Cruising Club held a Party on Chichime Island at 1:00 PM today. Everybody to bring a dish or drinks to share. Joel from WCC passed out rum coconut drinks, with real coconuts as the 'glass.' Very cool. Met people from other boats, and even met some people on the island who had nothing to do with the Rally. Specifically, three young men from Israel: Arnon Joseph, Tom Peleg and Nir Badt. First actual Israelis I'd ever met. They were staying in a hut where the charge per day for each of them was $25. For that they got a "leaf" (roof) over their heads; and three meals a day. What a deal! Why mention this? Because part of the experience in the World ARC 2014/15 is not only meeting people in the Rally from 9 or 10 different countries, but indigenous peoples in the countries we visit; and others who just happen to be there.

Because of the trade winds, there is no need for air conditioning. But a negative characteristic of these winds is that there is always a mist in the air. Very high humidity. It's never really clear, atmospherically. When looking toward the mainland, the mountains are always clouded in mist. Impossible to see them clearly as a result. Different. And every morning a layer of moisture covers the canvas dodger and bimini on our boat.

We weighed anchor at 9:00 PM so we could sail all night and enter the canal zone in daylight. For those of you in Rio Linda (a Rush Limbaugh euphemism),"weighed anchor" means we lifted the anchor off of the bottom and put it back on the boat. Not that we put it on a scale to weigh it. Leaving at night is one of the biggest differences in traveling by boat versus car. Who leaves in their car to travel 13 hours just before they would normally go to bed? Sailor's do. Once the anchor was on board, we slowly made our way past three other anchored sail boats, then thru the reef. Finally once clear of other boats and shoal areas, we rolled out our main and jib and took off to our destination.

During the night we had two conversations with large ships. These are the sort of conversations that you'd really like to never be in a position to have. The first one consisted of the person on the bridge of the ship yelling on the radio: "Red to Red, Red to Red, Red to Red!" What he meant was that both ships, his and ours, were to pass port to port, the left side of his ship passing by the left side of our sail boat as we barrelled toward each other at a combined speed of 22 knots. Even though a sail boat on the open seas has the right away over a ship under power, one of the international laws of the sea is to avoid a collision. Which we did. The second incident had to do with a ship trying to pass us to starboard (on our right side). My navigation system said that this ship, if it continued on its current course, would pass by us at 71 feet. Not good. At that distance we're sunk. Finally, we received a call from that vessel whereby the caller said for us to hold our course and that he was going to alter course and pass under our stern. Because we have a device called an Automatic Identification System, the ships calling us saw our boat on their chart plotters; know we were a sail boat; our boat name and size. The name is important, because if a ship calls another vessel; or we call a ship, not speaking their name over the radio won't necessarily allow you to get a response because there could be dozens of ships around you. And by international law, when a ship hails another one by name, them MUST answer.

Before arriving at the entrance to the canal zone around 9:00 AM, dozens of ships were seen anchored waiting to transit the canal; and others were entering and exiting the zone thru the massive breakwater. We contacted Christobol Control on Channel 12 as we were instructed to do, and were told not to enter thru the jetty until another ship exiting the zone had exited thru the jetty first. This meant that we had to meander around for a half hour, with our sails down, before entering the protected waters inside of the jetty. Once inside the jetty, we turned right and headed for the Shelter Bay Marina. Before getting our berthing assignment, we stopped by the fuel dock and took on 65 gallons of diesel. While maneuvering up to the fuel dock, it became apparent that our rudder was not acting properly. Later we determined that the near gale we were in 10 days earlier, had damaged the upper bearings in the rudder. As a result, we will have to haul the boat out of the water before proceeding to the Galapagos Islands to put new bearings in. The problem with the missing or broken bearings limited our ability to turn the boat by 50%. Only because we had bow thrusters were we able to still maneuver adequately and dock the boat. We were able to sail for the last week and a half with the rudder 50% compromised because whenever we made course changes they were almost always not more than 10% at a time. If we'd tried to make a course change of 60% we wouldn't have been able to do it.

Once in the slip, Joel dove under the boat to see if something was wrapped around or impeding the rudder. We didn't know at this time that we had a bearing problem. Hours later we determined that the bearings had failed. Once we determined that, we contacted Murray Yacht, where the boat was purchased; and the US Beneteau factory, where the boat was made. We also took pictures of the rudder post, bearing assembly and rudder 'stops', and figured out why the rudder wouldn't turn as it should.

Brian Fox

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