The Maiatla Log- 2015 to 2016 The Galapagos Islands Voyage.

December 2 2015. My Birthday.

Well aside from being my birthday and the start of my 56th year as a sentient being on planet earth, today is the day I commence my journey from Nanaimo British Columbia back to Tapachula Mexico to rejoin Maiatla to initiate our next big adventure on the high seas. My friend and crew-member Mark Taylor and I are departing today and once we reach the Mexican coastal town of Puerto Madero, located just a handful of miles from the Guatemalan boarder on the Pacific Ocean, we will start to prepare Maiatla for the long, open sea passages ahead.The rest of the crew, Marina Sacht, a Maiatla veteran of 3 previous cruises and her boyfriend Nic (who has never been offshore before) will arrive in Mexico on the 9th of December after which we will depart.

Jan and I had left our beloved boat in a safe marina in the Mexican seaside port last April after spending another season cruising and country hopping as far south as Costa Rica. Our plan for this seasons’ cruise is a bit more ambitious as we will immediately set a westerly course to take us well offshore covering over 800 miles of open ocean with our first intended landfall being Darwin Island, a mere speck on the chart of the pacific ocean. The island that was named after the famed naturalist, Charles Darwin and is nothing more than a few acres of guano covered rock, the top of a great and ancient sub-sea volcano that just barely breaks the surface.

The significance of this tiny islet is that it belongs to the renowned Galapagos Island chain which in turn are governed by the country of Ecuador. The bulk of the isolated archipelago lie just south of the equator and almost 700 miles off the coast of Ecuador. Amazingly the next nearest landmass to the west is over 3000 miles and is another archipelago called the Marquesas’

Janet and Mark’s wife Teri will fly into the Galapagos for Christmas and the crew of Maiatla will spend the following 4 weeks or so exploring the Galapagos chain then head back east to sail another 800 miles of open ocean to the Central American city of Panama where we will transit the famous canal to enter the Caribbean.

Bearing south once again we will sail to the beautiful coral atolls of San Blas, located in southern Panama and just to the north-west of South American country of Columbia. In late March of 2016 we will sail back north to Boca Del Toro where we will bed the boat down for another summer and return home to family and I hate to say, work.

Jan and I are very excited about this year’s adventure and we invite you to follow along. If you log onto our blog, you will find more details of our planed voyage and if you click on the globe in our “ Where in the world is Maiatla II” you will see precisely where we are on any given day during our voyage. I use our ham radio to send emails to update our position daily so our family and friends can watch our progress both down the coast as well as far offshore.

The two pics are of Darwin Island and a map our this years voyage.

Maiatla’s 2015/16 Winter Cruise