A Close Call in the Galapagos #2

It’s been quite the eventful 24 hours since I began my final preparations for leaving the amazing Galapagos IslandsBodacious Dream and I departed yesterday, Wednesday the 7th about 14:15 hours from Puerto Auyro on Santa Cruz Island, and headed west and then north around the western side of the island through the late afternoon and evening. No particular reason to go that way instead of the shorter, eastern way other than after so many weeks of sailing through vast oceans with vistas of only ocean and sky, I thought I’d like to sail along the shoreline for a while. That and the fact that Panama, my next destination, is only 935 miles away and I’m not feeling super rushed to get there! A short hop to be sure, compared to all the others!

Crossing the EquatorThe “Ballboy” and I cross the Equator … 0.29718S , 88.84146W

While my list of typical pre-departure “things to do” like closing out my bills, shopping for fresh food, clearing out of customs and immigration, packing and stowing things on the boat, checking the gear and the engine usually go on without too much fanfare, yesterday wasn’t to be such a day.

Santa Cruz, Galapagos
An overcast morning looking out on the harbor of
Puerto Auyro 

:: Early Wednesday morning, I met up with Peter and Diego who run Galapagos Ocean Yacht Services, who have not only been great hosts but a tremendous help in guiding me through the local bureaucratic requirements. Diego and I were headed out to Bodacious Dream to put the fuel onboard, which meant we had to have a water taxi come over and pick us and the fuel up and then take us out to the boat. That part went smoothly. After securing the fuel on board, we called for another water taxi to come take us back to shore.

While waiting for the taxi, we noticed something strange. It’s that kind of slow to dawn on you change in your visual field that suddenly causes you to wonder… “Hold on, wasn’t that boat over there before?”

Sure enough, we were moving… and Bodacious Dream had come adrift from it’s mooring! Yes, we were still tied to it – but we were both adrift! The mooring had broken its anchor which meant we were loose and drifting backwards towards the surf and shore that was less than 75 yards away – maybe less than five minutes away from the rocks!

Mooring Broken
Just before this, we were moored right between these two steely dudes! 

5026_sc_moorings2Thankfully, Diego with his command of the native language was able to raise help from the water taxis as well as from the crew of one of the large steel research vessels next to us.
In short order, we were unhooked from the floating mooring and secured to another mooring, while others stood by scratching their heads and wondering how that happened! Had we been just a few minutes later to arrive, who knows WHAT might have happened.

As I counted my blessings and made my final preparations, I noticed the two 100-foot steel research vessels disconnect from the moorings they were attached to and instead set their own anchors! I guess if you’re that big a boat and you see a little 40 foot boat that weighs less than a 10th of what you do, break a mooring, you wouldn’t trust it either!

Once secured, Diego and I headed back to shore to finish up my to-do list, so that I could get underway as soon as possible. It was obvious to me by then that Bodacious Dream and I were both ready to leave the Galapagos!

:: So, now after having run steadily through the night, we are on our course toward Panama and the Panama Canal, which I expect will be quite an experience on its own.

3278_200_32.333568S_103Checking the log and distances, here are the interesting numbers for today! Panama is less than 900 miles away. Bodacious Dream has sailed over 40,000 miles since she was launched in Wellington, NZ in November 2011. I’ll have to do the math on the circumnavigation totals, but off the top of my head, I’d say it’s around 25,000 miles since Newport. As I write this, I am just north of the Equator. If my mental maps are correct, you can ONLY cross the equator in two oceans. This trip, I crossed going southbound in the Atlantic, and have just crossed going northbound in the Pacific!

:: I learned a lot in the Galapagos Islands. There was so much more to see that I just didn’t have time to do. In my next update, I will share with you some observations on the incredible wildlife I saw, but for now let me share with you here a bit of what life is like in the in the Galapagos Islands, and specifically in the town of Santa Cruz where I stayed.

I learned from locals that in the 1960’s there were only 600 people in the Galapagos. Since then, the population has risen to over 20,000. As Peter told me, it is famous now as an eco-tourist destination. You can see that the locals must struggle to both capture the tourism economy and to manage the growth that has come so quickly to the islands.

Santa Cruz, Galapagos
The Tourist’s Main Street

While walking along the newly built promenades, you see restaurants, jewelry shops, art galleries and the inevitable t-shirt shops. Just a few blocks away though are the older buildings with apartments and storefronts of a more local nature. All these buildings are built with concrete! Wood is scarce here and has to be imported from the mainland, while concrete can be made from the volcanic ash of the islands.

4852_sc_volleyball_550Volleyball and Socializing … 

The weather while I was there was hot and muggy, so many businesses observed siesta time by closing up for a couple of hours in the middle of the day and then reopening in the afternoon and evening. As they have for years long before the tourists showed up, it is a tradition for the locals to come down to the waterfront in the evening and to enjoy each other’s company in the town square. Every evening about 6 o’clock, the men began to gather at the volleyball court in the center of town for a pick-up game, while many of the families sat around the perimeter and watched, and the children played. It seemed to be quite the town event.

4770_sc_cafe_550Music and Talk in the Cafés …

:: By this point many of us touristas were wandering back to town from either a tour or a local hike, stopping by the small sidewalk café and enjoying a cold drink before heading our respective ways. In these impromptu gatherings, I heard a full range of languages… from German and French to Swedish, English (in several varieties) to Polish and Russian. I experienced so many great conversations through the few days I was there, but the one that I will share with you here sheds some light on one of the more memorable events in my circumnavigation.

If you remember, back in the Southern Ocean east of the southern tip of the African continent, I encountered a night with floating bioluminescent globes in the water – hundreds of them as I sailed through this area. Well, one of the folks I met at the sidewalk café was a scientist and captain of one of the sailing boats in the harbor, and they were conducting research for a magazine story. Somehow, we got onto the subject of the bioluminescence and he thought that what I had seen might have been bioluminescent squid that sometime float with surface currents.

Screen Shot 2014-05-08 at 2.17.47 PM

He told me of an experience they had one night while sailing. Apparently, there is only one type of seagull that feeds nocturnally and there are many of them around the Galapagos. (In fact, just last night, I had two of them flying around the boat and playing in the slipstream of the airflow off the sails.) Anyway, he described a night when they saw one of these bioluminescent squid flying through the air… obviously in the clutches of one of these nocturnal feeding gulls. Now wouldn’t THAT have been a sight to experience?

Sitting in the cafés at night, I was enthralled listening to scientists, researchers, and regular folks like you and me sharing with each other their own unique experiences and stories of the oceans and the earth.

Blue Footed Boobie:: Over the next couple of days as I make my way towards Panama, I’m setting myself the task of writing down some of the amazing things I witnessed and learned while exploring the Galapagos Islands. I’ve got some great photos of the wild life too … and believe it or not, if you haven’t seen a blue-footed boobie, they actually do have blue feet! I can confirm that as fact!

So, as I make my way north, I’m hoping for gentle days of sailing and some better weather. It rained every morning in the Galapagos, and I can still see showers around me on the horizon here. The locals kept saying that the rains were unusual this time of year. Normally, it’s dry and getting a bit cooler by now as the sun makes its way towards the Tropic of Cancer. Actually, I suppose it’s not so curious but one of the consistently reoccurring stories from each place I’ve stopped on the voyage is that the weather systems are different this year. It’s a great and mysterious world we inhabit … full of telling signs and full of deep wisdom, if only we take the time to listen.

– Dave, Bodacious Dream (and galloping) Franklin!

P.S. While I was in the Galapagos, While he was there, the Jamestown Press back in Rhode Island caught up with me and got the updated story on the circumnavigation.
4756_dr_jamesp_550

Tegan’s Science Notes #6 – Seabirds

Dave RearickSome days are made interesting merely by their simplicity. Today looks to be one of those. The last 36 hours have made for some demanding sailing. Even though we’ve made good time, it’s taken a lot of patience and effort as the wind has increased, decreased and repeatedly switched directions. Each one of these changes has required that I adjust the course or trim the sails.

Today by dawn, things had settled down and we are now sailing steadily on course, which both simplifies my life onboard and gives me a chance to catch up on other things.

It’s pretty desolate down here in the Southern Ocean. There appears to be little visible sea life other than the mysterious bioluminescence I see occasionally at night and the plethora of seabirds that accompany me on my journey. For the first few days, there were a dozen or so albatross around, floating like soft music in the wake of the boat. Yesterday, I sailed through a flock of smaller white seabirds, but there were many of them – maybe 100 or so, and they kept up with me for several hours.

so_polar_skuaToday, the crowd has moved on. In its place was one lone, dark brown bird, (I’m going to guess it’s a South Polar Skua) which circled us for quite a while. As if we had entered a courting dance, he would land on the boat, I would chase him with my camera and he would fly off … and shortly resume his same pattern – coming up from behind, drifting a bit, then swooping around behind the sails and stalling just in front of the boat before falling back along the weather side. I would follow him around the boat, probably a couple dozen times before I would give into dizziness and allow him another victory in our simple game.

hemingway_175The days move along out here. I sail, navigate, check systems, watch out for ships, eat, sleep … and repeat. I’m grateful for the routine, as it has given me time to digest some reading material … one of which has been Ernest Hemingway’s Moveable Feast, a selection of short stories of his days in Paris. Two years ago, I found myself in the Lilas Café in Paris that he mentions. I sat on his dedicated stool, watching the many comings and goings of interesting people, just as it happened back in the 1930’s.

In the meantime, our ocean scientist, Tegan Mortimer has another wonderful science note for you directly below here – this one appropriately on seabirds! I strongly encourage you to give it a read. As I watch the birds soar day in and day out, I stand amazed before their beauty and the skill they bring to their aquatic lives.

Sailing along here … oh, let’s see … at coordinates … 46.81776S, 161.104W

– Dave

Science_6_title

Tegan MortimerTegan’s Science Notes #6: Seabirds

Of about 9,700 species of birds on earth, only about 350 are considered seabirds. Think about that – 9,350 species occupy only 30% of the surface on the earth while those 350 species of sea bird ply the vast oceans which constitute 70% of the surface of the globe!

What is a seabird?

The definition of a seabird is a tricky one. Many people use the technical definition that a seabird is a bird which feeds in salt water. However, many coastal and wading birds feed in salt water, but aren’t considered seabirds because they don’t spend enough time at sea. However gulls are considered seabirds though they are strictly coastal and return to land regularly.

Sea BirdThe majority of sea birds spend the bulk of their time at sea and only return to land to nest. Therefore they depend on the marine environment for their food and float on the ocean’s surface to rest. The enormous wandering albatross will spend the first seven years of its life at sea before returning to remote islands to breed for the first time.

Who are the seabirds?

I mentioned albatrosses, which are the quintessential seabirds, and gulls which many of us who visit the coast are familiar with. The seabirds also include the petrels, shearwaters, storm-petrels, auks, pelicans, gannets, boobies, skuas, cormorants, shags, frigatebirds, tropic birds and last but certainly not least the penguins.

Many seabirds like the albatrosses and gannets have evolved strong, long wings which allow them to fly long distances without expending much energy, while other seabirds like the auks and penguins have sacrificed flying ability in favor of evolving features which allow for strong swimming ability.

Razorbill and Auk

Auks: Razorbill and Puffin

So what birds has Dave seen so far?

Dave has had some fantastic bird sightings. Unfortunately, seabirds can be very difficult to identify, especially the albatrosses of which I am sure Dave has seen more than one species. But this is the list so far of what we’ve been able to identify.

birds_1-2_named birds_3-4_named birds_5-6_named birds_7-8_named birds_9-10_named

Many of these seabirds are common and widespread in the oceans. In fact, the Wilson’s storm-petrel is believed to be the most numerous bird species in the world with around 12 to 30 million individuals! On the other hand, the gray-headed albatross, cape gannet, and African penguin are classed as endangered because they either have small geographic ranges, small populations or are experiencing significant population declines. So this makes a great list of both common and rare species. Dave spotted a white tern (actually it almost landed on his head!) off the coast of Brazil which is a very unusual sighting for that species in that area.

Dynamic Soaring

Albatross and some other seabirds use a peculiar flying pattern where they make large looping turns which take them up into the air and then they swoop down to almost touch the water and back up again. This is called “dynamic soaring” and it allows these birds to fly without expending much energy. These birds are using the difference in wind speed at different heights to soar. The wind is slower closer to the surface of the ocean due to friction and it becomes faster higher up. The bird starts by climbing up to higher wind speed, and then turns away from the wind and gains airspeed as it soars down the wind gradient. When it turns back into the wind at the water’s surface, the bird has extra energy which allows it to climb back up to higher windspeeds again. Birds which use dynamic soaring have evolved long, thin wings which they hold rigidly in the air as they soar a bit like the wings of a glider.

Dynamic Soaring

Additional Resources:

:: Source and good article: whoi.edu/oceanus/feature/a-robotic-albatross

:: Another interesting article: whoi.edu/oceanus/feature/of-wings–waves–and-winds

Seabird Conservation

While it may seem that seabirds that roam the vast oceans are less touched by human impacts that threaten other bird groups, the fact is that seabirds are the MOST threatened group of birds on earth! Of the 346 species of seabird, 101 species (that’s 29%!) are threatened globally and another 10% are classed as “Near Threatened.” And almost half of all seabirds are known or thought to be declining in population. The albatrosses in particular are the most threatened with 17 of 22 species classed as “Threatened by Extinction.” To put it into a little context, of the 10 species that Dave has seen, 30% are threatened and 70% have declining populations!

What’s happening here? Human activities are the greatest contributor. Historically, many seabirds breed on remote islands that are relatively free from land predators, so they often nest on the ground. When ships would occasionally land on these islands, pests like rats were unintentionally introduced. Rats are very destructive to ground nesting birds, eating both eggs and preying on chicks. Luckily, efforts have been made to eradicate such introduced pests from many of these islands.

Today however, other more menacing threats face seabirds. Drowning in fishing gear is one of the greatest threats to seabirds. In the open ocean, fishermen set long lines, miles of baited hooks, which unfortunately catch much more than the fish the fishermen want. Many seabirds hunt from the air, diving to catch prey they have spotted with their sharp eyes. When these baited hooks lay near the surface the birds take the bait, get hooked, and drown. This situation is bad for the birds, but the fishermen don’t want it either as that is a lost piece of bait. Organizations like Birdlife International are working with fishermen in the most affected areas to modify fishing practices to reduce this “bycatch.” The good news is that simple changes can dramatically reduce the number of birds being caught and lost in this manner.

Another threat to seabirds is marine pollution. Laysan albatross are particularly affected with 97% of chicks being found with plastic in their stomachs. The adults are attracted to plastic objects floating at the surface, likely mistaking them for fish eggs or squid. They carry them back to the colonies where they feed them to their chicks. Forty percent of chicks born each year will die due to plastic blocking their guts or other effects of consuming plastic objects. :

::The heavy cost of marine pollution: ocean.si.edu/laysan-albatross-plastic-problem

Seabirds are majestic, elusive and true ocean wanderers, the lone occupants of the air above the ocean, but they could all too easily disappear from these winds. We all have a role to play to protect the ocean and its life, whether it is learning more about marine debris, attending a beach clean up, buying seafood caught with sustainable practices or any other action which improves the ocean environment for all.

– Tegan

(Tegan Mortimer is a scientist with Earthwatch Institute. Contact Tegan directly at Tegan Mortimer <tmortimer (at) earthwatch (dot) org>)

:: For more great science insights and opportunities, please check out our BDX Explorer Guides or stop by our Citizen Science Resources page, where you can also find all of Tegan’s previous Science Notes. Also, we welcome your input or participation to our BDX Learning Discovery efforts. You can always reach us at …  <oceanexplorer@bodaciousdreamexpeditions.com>

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A Day so Grey it Disappeared!

At some point over the weekend, we crossed the International Date Line … which meant I had to sail the same day all over again! As the world is divided into 24 time zones, there has to be a place where there is a difference in days, somewhere the day truly “starts” on the planet. Thus, the 180° line of longitude, exactly one-half way around the planet from Greenwich, England and 0° longitude is approximately where the International Date Line is located, and as we crossed the line from west to the east, a day was subtracted.

Looking around at the sky and sea, it sure looks like this could have been yesterday, as the conditions the past few days have been so much the same. What we have are grey Southern Ocean skies, grey Southern Ocean waves, moderate Southern Ocean winds patrolled by grey and white Southern Ocean albatross. Much the same, day in and day out … but that’s not a complaint – not at all! Actually, I’m quite grateful for the moderate conditions, which have allowed me to more gradually transition from land to sea and to work through the emotions of leaving friendly company to being alone and still far from home.

grey_day_500
Grey, like I said … 

Despite my love for the adventuring lifestyle, each time I leave harbor and set out again, I’m spent for a couple of days, as I transition from the more manageable life on land to the more unpredictable demands that await me at sea. After a few days though, the transition is mostly complete and my focus shifts back to the journey and destinations ahead instead of aft at the land and friends fading beyond the horizon.

So now, Bo, Franklin and I work our way east towards an imaginary point about 120°W longitude, where we will look for our chance to make a turn north towards the Galapagos Islands. Until then, I spend my days sailing the boat, looking out at the vast ocean, watching and studying the dozen or so albatross that glide over the undulating waves, up and down back and forth as they circle the boat, watching me with one eye as they soar by. I suspect they find my sailing as curious as I find their flying. Perhaps, as the old sailors believe, they are the souls of dead sailors guiding and watching out for me, as I sail through their neighborhoods.

albatross_500
Our boon companion … the Southern Ocean albatross

Today, we look to catch our first cold front. It’s not expected to be a strong one, but likely will bring with it with some mix of weather – a shift of winds, a drop in temperatures and a change in patterns – each shift playing some part in moving me along on his journey, though for now, they look to be gentle changes and positive movements.

Last night, we had rain … and more rain, refreshingly washing the last of the dust from land off this ocean-bound vessel. And in the dark of night, we had visitors … strange looking creatures that seem to only fly at night … flying squid! Two of them landed on deck and waited until morning for me to return them back to the waters, but not before I captured their unique features on camera.

flying_squid3_500
Night visitors

In some ways, they are ugly, and in other ways, beautiful … beautiful in the way that such creatures are that must adapt their appearance to a world in which they must struggle to find a place, to exist and to thrive … and to occasionally catch a lift on a strange passing vessel!

Screen-Shot-2014-03-31-at-1.5746.08018S, 169.01413W

So, we continue sailing … now about 700 miles east of New Zealand headed for that waypoint about two weeks away where we’ll make adjustments and the changes to our navigation that will take us in the direction of the amazing Galapagos Islands. So, off we go!

Thanks so much for following along. I’ll be back soon with more.

– Dave, Bodacious Dream and Franklin (who’s back to his bouncy self)

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