Pitufa.at

In order to sail to the Galapagos Islands we have to cross the ITCZ (intertropical convergence zone), an area with unstable weather conditions near the equator in between the faithful trade winds further north and south. We’re waiting for a period, when the northerly trades make it over the Panamanian Isthmus to help us getting south, where we then should find southerly winds. Whenever northerly… Continue reading »

Leeloo’s a very timid cat who doesn’t like visitors on board at all. In busy anchorages with dinghies going by all the time, she has always one ear moving with the outboard engines that are whizzing by. As soon as she hears the rpms dropping, she’s slightly alarmed, when the people in the dinghy start shouting ‘hello’ she scurries under deck, knowing they might come… Continue reading »

We took the dinghy to the neighbouring bay to visit the village there. Beaching turned out to be quite a challenge with the southerly swell tumbling upon the beach producing high breaking waves that would no doubt delight surfers, but are quite terrifying seen from a dinghy. Timing’s everything: wait for a calm period, quickly motor towards the beach, tilt up the outboard, hop into… Continue reading »

During the weeks in the bay of Panama in the grime of the city Pitufa got a long green beard along her waterline and dark stains all around. The last three days we used the calm water of the river to scrub the dirt off, polish the yellow stains off and finally put a layer of wax on to protect the paint. It was hard… Continue reading »

From one of the canoes that go by frequently we got a description for the way to the village: ‘Go always straight ahead, when the river forks go up the right branch, then you’ll see a puerto–you can’t miss it. Walk up the way, it’s a big village. Es muy cerquito (very near).’ Well, it took us three attempts to find the right branch of… Continue reading »

Usually we’re not much into sports, but last week we discovered a new exciting adrenaline sport and now we’re really hooked up. Play almost every day, fall into bed exhausted each evening, wake up with sore muscles, just to play another round of “extreme provisioning triathlon”. The rules are quite simple: The game starts early in the morning. The players warm up by taking several… Continue reading »

We’ve spent the past few days in a provisioning frenzy: a tour to a cheap supermarket, another one to a hardwarestore (who has ever spent 5 hours in a hardwarestore??), yet another one to a more sophisticated supermarket–each trip took us a full day, first searching for the right bus, then waiting endlessly for a taxi and in the end shipping all the bags half… Continue reading »

We’ve had quite an eventful week with my Dad, visited the old town centre, sailed over to Taboga and back, took a “Diablo Rojo” (a local bus, crammed full with people loud music hammering down) to the 16th century ruins of Panama viejo as an adventure trip, visited the Miraflores locks and took a walk in the Parque natural metropolitano. Today my Dad flies back… Continue reading »

We finished all our electronics projects in time before my father arrived last Tuesday. Since then we’ve been doing touristy things (sightseeing in the casco viejo, strolling through town)–nice after two weeks of constant work. Unfortunately the sea is very murky at the moment, lots of tiny creatures are around, sometimes bright red clouds drift through, at night they fluoresce spectacularly like bright turquoise fireworks… Continue reading »