Approached at Sea 100 Miles from Land - Sailing to Ecuador

Yeah I see him You should go out there Jason Some cookies? Some cookies. Yeah we'll try that Chockies? Watch the boat That's not nerve wracking at all is it? That was super scary man When I saw that on the horizon I was like No that's a huge whale going really fast But it's not going back in the water Yeah luckily that wasn't That was a friendly approach Not a I mean they could have been a lot less friendly if they wanted to They are 100 miles from Colombia The nearest town Tumaco T-U-M-A-C-O They must have been Colombian. They were very friendly I see one boat on AIS Which is a massive ship It can't be connected to them They must be part of a mothership somewhere That was a nice encounter In the realm of encounters Yeah basically It was probably one of the better encounters of the coast of Colombia that I've heard of Which is a good time to discuss why we aren't going to Colombia So we're not going to Colombia because it's not supposed to be safe Everything we've read is stay 20 nautical miles offshore because of people on shore looking for boats on the horizon And there's really only a couple spots to take a boat in like ours. We had friends that actually went in and they told us it's not safe They literally were there a month ago Anyway we really really wanted to go to Colombia But it's just not It's safer on the Caribbean side Maybe another day by plane or something That's why we're skipping Colombia if you were wondering What did you think about that Nikki? I mean I didn't like it I'm definitely rattled But I guess it was expected and not expected all at the same time I thought we were far enough out I didn't think we were going to see any little boats like that But I've read about it And I know lots of other people have had that happen And it's fairly common around here And most of the time it's just fishermen or whatever coming up to ask for food and that's what it seems like But you can't help it I'm nervous now of course about our night watch Because you're thinking Are they coming back? Are they going to a mothership? Like I don't know It's silly and you can't live in fear So you just gotta suck it up and do your watches I don't know. Feels kind of like you're at their mercy if they do show up You can try to keep them off your boat but at some point If they want to get on board and they want to take your stuff I feel like they're going to do it But you can't live in fear So forge ahead of them Forge ahead There's a boat coming up behind us It's 1145 They're way off in the distance We had all of our lights off They're not showing up on the radar Which is really weird We're still 80 miles offshore He's got his bright lights flashing at me Hopefully it's somebody good and not somebody bad I turned on our tricolor Hope he is somebody good Either way he sees us Oh man I don't want to turn on the big light in here just in case 5am I usually love my night watches I really like them The luminescence are out The stars are out It's just a really beautiful thing It's really hard to describe The feeling and the sensation Especially when you're under sail because it's just the wind propelling you and pulling you to your destination It's really It's not just a sense of peace It's more like I don't know, amazement It feels like magic sometimes being out here All I can always think about is the movie and the book Life of Pi and I think about the way he describes seeing things and you think Making things up, that stuff is real I mean flying fish and glowing creatures It really is magical Anyway, today not so much I feel very distracted and on edge and we've had the boat earlier today and then Jason had an encounter tonight and then at a shipping, like a cargo ship passing in front of us but it was like 6 miles out so it was no worries but all of a sudden I could see another light come on so another ship decided to light itself up obviously because they didn't want to get hit by that cargo ship Well as soon as they were inside of the cargo ship they then shut their lights down again and I thought well maybe they're a sailing vessel or something similar to ourselves and they're keeping their lights off to stay low key because of where we are and it is kind of a dangerous territory for getting hassled and you never know what's going to happen Anyway They shut their lights off so I've been really super paying attention and then I could kind of see a light little flickering light and it was at some point it's off the port bow and then it's off the starboard bow and then it's behind us and then it's directly behind and anyway I'm sure it's just a fisherman or whatever it is they're doing out here I don't know but man it makes you like super on edge and I don't like it but it's also the realities of this lifestyle like some nights are just not going to be filled with bioluminescence and whatever sometimes it's just going to be you're going to have to pay a lot of close attention because the other issue is I don't want to hit one of those small boats out there so anyway lots of emotions and thoughts running through my head I'm trying to listen to my podcast to distract myself and I've gone from everything from like sailing podcast to food podcast so I'm listening to the feed now and it's a crazy night man I'm glad that night is over it's 6am day 5 and we had probably 3 or 4 other boats come close but none as scary as that one that happened it was just like in front of us and then it was to the side of us right behind us shining that light on me. When stuff like this happens we have plans, we have things that we feel confident are a proper solution but we're not going to tell you what those are because we feel like security and safety should be between you and your loved ones and people on the vessel don't ask us what our exact plan is because we don't want everybody in the world to know now let's get back to sailing we haven't stopped sailing for jeez, we kicked off the engines yesterday afternoon we've been sailing the whole time, I just tacked and we've got 135 nautical miles left with tacking and everything that's probably about 36 hours I don't know another day and a half of course, another day and a half no big deal so we're getting close almost on the border of Ecuador and Colombia woo! alright, at least we got to survive one more night lingering back there yeah, waiting inside they want to come and ask for food it's amazing yeah, 70 miles from land, we've got these big jugs I almost ran one over this morning it's like these big milk jugs and they have this long line going down that's one of their markers right there see, I have no idea how they find that out here in the middle of the ocean look this is just so I can practice my heaving too you just wanted to see me in your favorite swimsuit everybody's favorite swimsuit oh fishing line got caught around the prop I guess when we tapped and now I've got to go get it hopefully this will only take a second scuba Jason I really don't want to do this 10,000 feet of water, it's kind of dark and stormy it's your boat Nikki, you should do it yeah, but it's your watch well, the good news is at least I have the tape I heard that attracts sharks I can see it, it's just wrapped around one fin of the prop, I just got to turn the prop be careful going up and down does not make for a safe situation success good job heat work, high five high five, good job thanks for going in it's not too bad I didn't get to pee though how was it? blue blue and deep and we're only doing like we're in like a two knot current so we're moving at two knots so it's actually pretty exciting oh okay let's get out of the heat too look where I woke up to land ho I guess sometime in the middle of the night we got close to land so we are getting close probably have bed hair but yeah we're almost there you always know the cats are doing okay when they're eating drinking and pooping this whole trip, every day they've been eating drinking, pooping and peeing a lot, so I think the cats as you can see are totally fine they do sleep a lot though let me get him off two seconds later he got himself off he's too small to keep maybe we'll get his bigger brother wow welcome to Ecuador well we're having a very special captains hour aboard today unexpectedly I feel so guilty alright well the deal is we are about to cross the equator it's coming up and we did not do our homework properly because we didn't realize we were going to be crossing the equator on this sail in my head I just had that we were crossing the equator on the way to the Galapagos but I was wrong we were crossing the equator today on this sail and technically there's like a whole thing like ceremony Kate's done it before so she's supposed to be a she's our experienced sailor, technically we should just blame it on her because you should know these things I should, I should, but it was like 6, 7 years ago don't use old age and memory as an excuse I thought in your 30s that's when you were allowed to use that excuse okay so there's supposed to be a whole ceremony and a thing and you were supposed to be our Neptune I was, and we were supposed to all get nude and swim around the boat Jason was very excited about that part it's the first time I heard about that part yeah, no judging we will not be doing that today because we don't have the ceremony so we don't know what it is so instead we're going to offer a little sacrifice make a toast and hope that the we have not completely pissed off the gods to the gods of the sea the gods of the wind the gods of the ocean in case you're different than the ones from the sea please take pity on us please show us mercy we are sorry we're not naked I am sorry we're not naked thank you for letting us sail through the equator and granting us safe passage for the rest of our southerly sails salute to health prosperity fair winds and calm seas and an offering of our finest navy strength small bass gin I'm sorry I might have drank a little bit we'll see if we survive I know, crossing the equator are you wanting me to tell you about that? without swearing sorry without swearing yeah that is, yeah I just went up there took all those set screws out put Loctite in, tightened them back down because they were coming out I did that right before we left and now they have completely come out and that is separated which just pisses me off because I just tended to that so something is not right it shouldn't come out like that I'm a little bit angry about that we have not crossed the equator yet so this is not due to us not doing the ceremony this is happening right before they're not connected I have decided 5 4 3 2 you guys are so slow 1 party in the cockpit party we only had half of one cocktail so it's not really a party here calm down I want to get naked and swim around it's 3.05 my shift just started hopefully it's the last shift of the sail unfortunately because our genoa furler was basically falling apart we we decided to furl it in and we've been motoring for the past 6 hours which kind of stinks because we have 7-8 knots of wind we could have been sailing even slowly sailing towards our destination the deal is we have to arrive close to high tide and we have to hire a pilot boat to get us in to the port because we're actually staying in a river so it's not the ocean we're like up river just a tiny bit and the sand barbs move like crazy apparently and you can't just navigate it yourself or so that's what we've read so we're sort of out here just cruising at 2.5-3 knots slowly making our way towards our destination Bahia de Caracas we're only 8 miles out but we've got 3 hours for sunrise and 4 hours for high tide Puerto Amistad this is the curiosity flag baby thank you very much I'm kind of freaking out because we've been here for an hour floating in this swell and thankfully a cruiser or some yachty was monitoring the radio and he hailed me and he's going to drop his dinghy and we are going to Boca shortly she's high tide like literally slack high tide straight up and that's exactly when we're supposed to enter did you see that? all those crashing waves it seems so calm right now which makes that take off so dramatic okay we're about to check in to Ecuador and I think this is your very first sail sail without Rufus right? that is correct every sail I've done as an adult with your other half so what's it been like sailing without Rufus? it's been it's been good and it's been weird it's almost like phantom limb missing kind of thing I'm so used to having him there all the time but it's been really good to have a different experience and be like pushed out of that comfort zone because I can always if I'm worried about something or whatever it is I can always rely on him and this has been great because I realized I got to sorry babe I love you no and it's been great it's also been great to see how you guys do things and experience that as well because I'm so used to our routine and it's really nice to be in a different routine and I love how you guys do things and how you make things special everyday you don't just go into hibernation mode sleep, watch, sleep, watch you make an effort to make really nice meals and nice coffee and nice cocktails and stuff like that which is very cool so it's been a really awesome experience I can read between the lines and what I got from that is Rufus is militant you sleep, you watch and you eat dry bread that's it nothing else maybe I should clarify that it's usually just the two of us and so if you're at sea for 35 days and it's just the two of you doing 4 hour watches and 3 hour watches and it's on a monohull it's not on account of a camera so you're constantly doing this and you only get 3 hour survival in between and you do not when it cooks you just like grab an orange or something stuff it in your face and then lie down how many ocean crossings have you done? because you've done the Atlantic I've done the Atlantic, I did that in 2012 from South Africa to Brazil and then I did Caribbean Sea and then I did the Pacific Puddle Jump from Panama to French Coloniesia and that was in 2016 so I'm sitting at about the last I checked was about just over 25,000 nautical miles nice you're so salty well thanks for being a part of our crossing thanks for having me the pilot has just texted me and asked to tell you to raise your anchor I doubt that you can do that, is that correct? we're just out here floating near the shallows of the mouth of the river sounds like you guys are good so Solis back to 69 over thank you so much Solis, Curiosity back to 69 gotta love our fellow cruisers yeah, super nice it's either a fishing boat or a pilot boat 2S coming back 2S on a pilot? OK Solis, this is Curiosity yeah, what's up? hey, there's two guys here they're not going to get on the boat they just want me to follow them that's not the pilot, is it? Adiosto's this little guy he got on my boat and I had him steer the boat in over definitely wait for Adiosto perfect, thank you, standing by on 69 those guys are leaving here comes the real pilot so they're like, OK OK, here we go man, like a pro look at that Adiosto? me llamo Jason mucho gusto Adiosto ah, Nicky gracias Adiosto's taking over man, you should have seen him climb aboard while underway that was impressive, he's early it's probably going to get rough so we probably want to put everything away we're like 100 yards from the wall these are three foot swells life's going super fast I know, holy cow is it scary? you have to water it to see how deep it is it's sketchy it's crazy I would myself it would have gone slower very true it's just really shallow he's doing great now a year and a half ago they had a massive devastation of the town so they're still in the rebuilding phase of the Teller's buildings el zarpe y documentacion y solo uno copy original original? mas tarde del nuevo retorno aqui todo solamente por cheque, sello y otra vez todo aqui so he's actually going to tuck us in si, dos gatos el nombre de gata es Cleo Cleo we're giving Ariosto all of our original documentation he said he's going to help us check in passports official documentation and zarpe from Panama the government officials are going to come here look at our boat and then we'll go into the office and get them back scary should I double bag it? todo? oh man, it's been like 6 hours now and the customs people have not come, we've been told we can go to the marina that's what we're going to do, just to get off and at least go talk to you guys there, get the scoop because we are excited to be here and I'm itching to go ashore now that we're here so I don't know I feel like it was a really good passage other than the sketchy boats coming up in the middle of the night and all of that, but aside from that it was a really good passage, we had nice weather for the most part very mild weather and it was nice being out at sea, it was not itching to get to land, but now that we're here I'm super anxious to go explore my big camera, the card was full so I took it to shore couldn't shoot anything we bought an Ecuador flag we found out that the I think you have it upside down Ecuador flag here we found out that the guys are going to come tomorrow at 11 o'clock to check us in, he wanted to give us a day to breathe the guy that owns this marina well it's called a marina, but there's not really a marina it's just mooring balls right now in Anchorage $5 a day nicest guy he's going to let us ride with him to the big town so we can get groceries awesome guy from Florida super nice dude we've got some friends here that we just met the one dude that sold us that helped us get in we're going to go buy him a beer tonight chillax a little bit don't tell people that we're going to go to sleep we're not leaving the boat, I promise technically we're just going to the marina so it's still ok we're just going to chillax, put the cameras away 11 o'clock they'll be here and we'll finish this video up that was supposed to be my cut yeah that was epic 1, 2, 3 Bienvenido a Anchorage todo bien we've made really good friends shared a couple beers, lots of stories in Spanish and English they're helping us practice yo practicar espanol ahora si? hola, como estas? bienvenido mi pota rapido o no? corazon es debil suave suavecito muchas gracias por su servicio foto y whatsapp si hey thanks for joining us on the sail to get our full sailing report click over to our website you'll also find some opinions and thoughts on safety at sea and don't forget to subscribe see you next week