Next week our 20 days will be up and we are readying our ship to go. The Admiral is making lists of last minute fresh food that we will buy and bring aboard for 3 weeks at sea. The Captain has all the fuel tanks filled to capacity and has another 200+ gallons of fuel stored in drums on the deck. I dragged out the SCUBA gear today and changed all the hull zincs and scraped off the bottom growth. It seems like I just did the zincs in Trinidad , not so long ago. But a look at my maintenance log tells me that it has been 14 months ago…wow time flies.
What a great place this has been. Galapagos is unique, with several species that can only be seen here. It is exotic, with the enormous tortoises, colorful Sally Lightfoot crabs, winding lava tubes from the volcanos and swimming iguanas. And it is historic, with the history of Charles Darwin and the many voyagers that have passed this way.
The most lasting impressions of this place, however, are surely the wildlife. Although the Sea Lions are not unique to the Galapagos, their extreme lack of fear of humans is refreshing. The pups would play with Emily daily around the boat and we had 3 visit us while I was cleaning the boat on SCUBA. On several occasions they would touch my air tank and brush against me as I worked, twirling around me and playing in my exhaled bubbles.
The tortoises were completely comfortable around us and the finches would hop within inches of us as we visited here. And it was not that they were used to free food since we found this same fearless attitude in the more remote places we ventured.
As we ready our ship and ourselves for the longest sea journey of our circumnavigation, we all feel a few butterflies. It is a mixture of fear of the unknown and sadness for leaving this magical place. The entire crew will carry the special memories of this place and time with us as we continue our journey….
We will again let you know when we push away from land toward Marquesas and will drop a few breadcrumbs on http://www.shiptrak.org/ and even try to send in a few text-only posts via the SSB.
Tom
2 comments:
I only found your blog a few days ago and already fascinated. What a terrific experience for you. I shall be watching for updates.
Our thoughts will be with you as you make this journey! We'll be following along via your position report. Update via SSB as you can.
We just completed a 3-day cruise north to the Chesapeake with almost ideal sea conditions. Don't know how we would handle a 20day trip with no 'bail out' options.
Have a great and safe journey.
Linda & Corey
M/V Live Wire II
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