Wednesday, June 2 1999 - Approaching Panama
Greetings fellow explorers,
Firstly a word to yesterdays journal: Thanks to Mario de Sa Campos who has sent us the following information regarding the ‘floating green mat of vegetation’.
These floating islands are apparently locally known as “Terras Caidas” which means “fallen land” and they are not uncommon in the Amazon Basin area. These chunks of land are washed many miles offshore by the “Pororoca” which is the great force of water entering the Atlantic Ocean from the Rio Amazonas. In our particular case since we were in large area of discoloured water at the time is seems safe to assume that our "floating island” was generated by the same process (if not necessarily from the same river). Mario also told us that these islands have even been sighted with houses on them!
We have had a busy night and a busy day so far.
Beginning with last night, after I had signed off for the evening, the sky which had become ominously dark (no-not just because the sun had gone down!) began to even more ominously to show flashes of colour ……. A tropical electrical storm was approaching. In fact, if the clouds are thick enough, they show up as a dense, brightly coloured mass on the radar. On closer inspection this one appeared to be not to bad - there were no signs on the radar of huge, towering anvil-headed cumulus clouds, which would have heralded really unpleasant weather. However that said - being out on deck in complete darkness, surrounded only by vivid flashes of lightening, lighting up the sky in a manner similar to that I once saw when watching the northern lights, was really very eerie.
I am afraid discretion took the better part of valor and I took the cowards way out, deciding to go to bed and be fast asleep before the worst stuck!
I awoke in the middle of the night, after nearly being flung from my bunk - total silence on board except for the thumping of feet up and down the corridor outside - no engine - this, I thought is IT, the ‘eye of the storm’. As it turns out however - something quite different, but no less alarming had occurred, the electric storm has fizzled out, but after rapidly loosing revs, the engine had shut down completely. The boat had turned beam on to the wind and swell and was healing over from side to side, so that those of us, who were not up and pounding up and down the corridor between the pilot house and the engine room, had to hang on to the side of our bunks like monkeys.
The engine had stopped because the fuel filters
had clogged up with dirt and restricted the fuel flow to the engine. This ‘dirt’
is nothing of the order of twigs or silt and such like, in fact since the
filters have a sieve size of only 10 microns, things such as micro-organisms
(provided they are there in sufficient quantities) can clog them up. Eventually
the problem was solved by switching over to the back-up fuel filter - but it was
an unpleasant few moments until the problem was located and solved.
This problem would not normally have occurred, but for the fact that the fuel
centrifuge, which normally revolves at a very high rpm, spinning water and any
foreign bodies out of the fuel, is broken at the moment. That meant that the
filters became clogged much sooner than expected.
Well, no rest for the wicked ….. the morning has been busy too. When we woke up this morning US Navy Ship 09 was heading our way. They came over, just checking us out (I mean, without wishing to be disparaging, we are off the coast of Columbia - and could potentially be up dirty-doings). Michael decided to call them up quickly and introduce ourselves - after all we didn’t want to risk a shot across the bow. They were friendly enough and cruised along side us for a while. We all amused ourselves by pointing out to Michael that we had finally encountered a ship that had more ‘toys’ onboard than ours!
Shortly after the Navy, we were visited by our
old friends the dolphins - not the Spinner Dolphins this time, but cousins of
theirs the Atlantic Spotted Dolphin (Stenella frontalis), belonging to the same
family - Delphinidae.
Young Atlantic Spotted Dolphin (Photo taken near
Bahamas)
Atlantic Spotted Dolphins
have shorter chunkier beak than the Spinners, with white lips and a white tip to
the beak. They are dark grey on the upper side and pale grey to pinkish on the
belly. As the name suggests they are characteristically spotted (darker spots on
the belly and paler spots on the back) - although the amount of spotting varies
with geographical location and age. Of the 13 or so who came to our bow only
about half were noticeably spotted, and that mainly on the underside. Unlike the
Spinners they only stayed for about 10 minutes, which is unusual since they are
avid bow-riders, often traveling many miles to join a fast moving vessel.
Flyby Day (Who knows what kind of Plane
this is?)
Lunchtime brought a flurry of activity, with several things happening at once; a military plane gave us a low flyby, checking us out, maybe the Navy ship was calling it, a whale surface on the starboard side and the telephone rang. We had an almost Laurel and Hardy situation of people jammed in the pilot house doors trying to either get out with cameras or get in. The plane circled round us twice before obviously deciding that we were not doing anything illegal and heading off, the whale unfortunately only breached twice giving us barely even time to establish an ID. After everyone pooling his or her respective descriptions, we have tentatively come to the conclusion that it may have been a Pygmy Sperm Whale. Although these whales are not often observed at sea - this was the only species that really fitted the shape, particularly the blunt head and very small dorsal fin.
We are now traveling smoothly along on a calm and beautifully blue sea.
If all goes well we should be in San Blas tonight at about midnight
More tomorrow
Janet