Chapter 142: The shortest voyage into the Pacific- can you say boomerang?!?!?

Well, I hoped by this week’s blog post we would be a week into our journey across the Pacific regaling you with tales of life on the high seas and dolphin pics.  Instead, we are currently sitting back at the dock in Vista Mar marina.  Now Vista Mar is not a bad place to sit, it’s just we were not expecting to be back so soon.  We left on a very windy Monday morning with high hopes for getting some miles under our keel in the first 24 hours.  Our dock mates helped us throw off the lines and we headed out the breakwater.  We were able to hoist sails very quickly and get underway.  About 30 minutes later we heard a POP.  Bob was below and I was at the helm but could not see what it was.  Bob came up and looked around on deck finding that our boom vang had popped off.  You may remember this had happened previously and Bob had repaired it with new attachments.  Apparently that wasn’t enough to fix the problem.  But a broken boom vang, while not ideal, was not any reason to turn around.  Bob could jury rig it and work on fixing it underway.  So we continued on.  Around 2 hours into the trip, we decided it was time to deploy the whisker pole to maximize our sailing. We furled the genoa so Bob could go forward to attach the pole as we normally do. Once it was in place we began to unfurl the genoa to sail wing on wing.  The next thing I heard was Bob swearing and saying the pole had broken and we needed to turn around.  I looked forward and the pole was twisted at an unnatural angle – not good.  Because this journey is downwind sailing, the pole is essential so there really was no choice but to go back.  But while we had only gone two hours away, it had been downwind so to return meant heading directly back into the strong headwinds that we previously were feeling grateful for.  To say it was a bumpy and very wet ride back is an understatement.  To add to the trauma,  our engine temperature was higher than it should be and that was also concerning.  3 things going wrong in the first two hours definitely brought back the PTSD from when we first tried to leave Georgia last year and had to return two times.  Thankfully, the engine functioned well enough to get us safely back to the dock in Vista Mar. Once we were tied up and secured, our first call after texting our kids, was to Jamie and Behan, our coaches from Sailing Totem.  They are currently in Micronesia but as always, immediately were available for counsel even though it wasn’t even 7am there yet!.  We talked through the different equipment failures and options for fixing.  The biggest challenge was going to be the whisker pole.  We needed to either find someone locally to agree to help weld and repair it or we would need to purchase a new one.  The challenge of purchasing a new one is that it would need to be shipped from the US and with the size of the pole, it would need to come by boat not airplane.  This could take months and potentially derail our whole plan to cross the Pacific so the first course of action was to start contacting welders. Jamie and Behan talked us down off the ledge and reminded us that we were indeed lucky it happened so early on in the voyage so we could return to Panama versus being in the middle of the Pacific. 

   We of course had checked out of Panama which is a bit complicated and required the help of our agent, Erick Galvez from Centenario & Co. SA .  Erick and his team have been great and so responsive so our next text was to Erick to let him know we had to return and could he help us with customs and immigration.  He went to work and sent us a document that basically cancelled our exit and instructed us to take that form and our boat paperwork to the local immigration office to clear back in.  The local office is a short walk up the beach and has a small team of mostly Spanish speaking officers.  We arrived and showed them the paperwork Erick had sent us but they insisted we needed an additional form showing us as checking back in, not just cancelling the exit.  We did our best to explain, helped by the one officer who does speak some English trying to translate, but in the end it was clear – we were not going to be able to check in without the additional form.  On the walk back to the boat,  I definitely had a “moment”  – suddenly it all just felt very overwhelming and stressful but thankfully Bob and I seem to balance each other out and not have our “moments” at the same time!  So we went back and Erick was able to procure the form they were requesting and we were able to return later in the afternoon and successfully clear back into Panama.

Bob began texting welders all of which appeared to be based in Panama City which is about 2 hours away.  We weren’t sure how we would fit the pole in a rental car to get it anywhere but decided to worry about that problem once we actually found a welder to look at the pole.  Bob got a text back from one of the welders whose first response was,  Do you have a Hill Country phone number??  Cory, the welder, was actually from Texas and relocated his business to Panama.  What an amazing coincidence  and even better his business, Aluma-Tech International, was actually located about 10 minutes from the marina not in Panama City – we couldn’t believe our luck! So we lined up a rental car so we could bring the pole to him to see it.  When our rental car arrived at the marina, we quickly realized the pole was never going to fit in that model car and the policia would definitely pull us over.  Again, we have been blessed by the people we have met here, Miriam the rental car agent, said she would get us a different model to try. So off she went to take that car and swap it for a larger SUV model. With help from Miriam and her assistant, we were able to get the pole securely in the car to take it to Cory. We arrived and after taking a look, Cory said he could fix it and would have it done the next day! Plus he could deliver it since once it was repaired it would be in one long piece that would never fit in an SUV.  What a rock star- so thankful we found Cory to help us! 

We returned to the boat to tackle the engine issue next.  We checked the new impeller we had installed to make sure that was still intact.  The impeller looked perfect so then we decided to take off the hose to the heat exchanger to make sure we had not missed any pieces when the previous impeller fell apart.  No pieces anywhere so that was good but still didn’t answer why the engine was running hot.  Bob decided it was worth checking the thru hull to make sure the water coming in wasn’t restricted and causing the issue.  Bingo! The thru hull was full of debris and the water flowing in was definitely more of a trickle.  Bob got in the murky water and dove under the boat to clear it out.  Not only was there expected debris of barnacles but we also found wood – perhaps a tree branch as we definitely have seen a lot of debris in the water from Aruba onward.  Once it was cleared out and hooked back up, we definitely saw much improvement in the flow of water from the engine so we are taking that as a win. Bob has reinstalled the boom vang in a new configuration so we are hoping the new setup will be the key to it staying in place.  Finally, Cory delivered our repaired pole and so now we are back in business to attempt departing when we have a weather window. 

All in all, we feel very blessed that we found all these issues while we still had the ability to return to Panama to fix them. It was of course stressful and I definitely had a “moment” but I am also grateful that we have amazing coaches, supportive family, and have found great people to help us when we need it.  Hopefully, we will soon be regaling you with stories from the high seas and lots of dolphin pics!