Waiting for the port captain

Yesterday at 4pm we stood in front of his door for the first time but he was ‘in a meeting’. At around 6pm we gave it another try but again: meeting. Today we got up extra early to maybe find him free for us. After a boat-taxiride and a 15 minute walk into the village we again found him in a meeting. Well. So we spend our time travelling back and forth in between the village and our boat. Or we roam the beach and watch the iguanas and crabs.

The island is quite different from San Cristobal. The streets are unpaved and the houses much nicer, the nature is even more meager.  The Iguanas are much smaller and the nice and bright beach is interrupted by black lava rocks. Those are the same rocks that we found in the entrance to the anchorage. It’s quite interesting to navigate in between those obstacles and I guess at night it’s quite dangerous. The anchoring is not that nice here as there is quite some swell entering and the weather is mostly misty – bad for our energy input.

Continuation of the above entry at 7:30pm: Finally in the early afternoon the port captain found some time for us and we could present our case. He told us to get going as fast as possible and repeated everything all the other people of the office already told us. Thereafter we found ourselfes in a small office where another officer took about two hours to type the protocol, make a copy of our passports, ask stupid questions while we studied a copy of the ecuatorian maritime law that lie on a table. In the end we were back at the Rancho Relaxo around 3pm and I could finally fix the engine. (Replace the fuel filter again.) So it’s working now but noone knows for how long. But for sure long enough to exit the harbour.

Tonight we’ll have the crew of the SY Red Sky Night from Australia aboard our ship and we’ll have a drink or two. They will also start towards the Marquesas in a few days and as they got a faster ship than ours, we’ll probably arrive around the same time.  Tomorrow after the breakfast we’ll be going….

Oh ! And I nearly forgot: Today we also saw Penguins !! Unfortunately we didn’t have a camera with us.

Last thing: During the voyage our satphone wll be turned on every day at 18:00 UTC for one hour.