Sequitur

It was well past 0200 on Tuesday morning, the 8th of June before we finally got to bed. The passage from Paita had taken us eight-and-a-half days, bucking directly into both the wind and the Humboldt Current and dragging a collection of nets and lines in our undercarriage; we were tired. After we had anchored and had dealt with the authorities by radio and the 'official' workboat had left, we secured and fell into bed.

We slept until nearly 1100. We were having coffee and I was about to contact Jaime Ackermann on VHF to organize our arrival and stay at the Yacht Club Peruano, when Jaime arrived off our stern in a launch. We invited him aboard and shared our tales of Paita and our passage down the coast, complete with the lack of response to our communications. He understood it all; he said pleasure boaters should never go into Paita, and our radio contact experiences were true to pattern. We arranged to meet with him in his office mid-afternoon to do the formalities.

Mid-afternoon we called a launch and were picked-up from Sequitur and deposited at the yacht club float. Jaime met us and showed us around the facilities on the pier and introduced us to Chef Frano in the tastefully appointed dining room, which is marvellously situated with floor-to-ceiling windows looking out from the end of the pier.

We followed Jaime to his office and after he had reviewed our papers, he told us that, even although it had cost us more than four times the appropriate rate, we had not been cleared into Peru by Paita. We still needed to clear-in, and to do so we needed an agent. Because of the abuse we had received in Paita, he said he would do the clearance himself, he would act as our agent, and his fee was a beer. We liked his price. We gave him our papers and walked with him to the bank machine to withdraw some Soles to pay the 550 for the necessary sanitation inspection, and an additional 46 Soles for the Customs/Immigration fee.


We walked back out the pier, where Chef Frano welcomed us into the restaurant and showed us to a corner table. We discussed his menu with him. Edi had a craving for scallops, and he suggested he broil some for us with Parmesan cheese. We asked him what next and he said he would prepare a ceviche and then follow it with a lomo saltado, a sauteed beef tenderloin dish. We selected a bottle of Chilean chardonnay and had a splendid meal, with Frano commuting back and forth between the kitchen and our table, and providing a very personal service. We still had a tad of room left after the lomo saltado, and he recommended a causa rellena with crab, and off he went to prepare it.

While he was in the kitchen, Jim and Linda walked into the dining room. They are the couple aboard Chesapeake with whom we had spoken on the radio on our way south from Paita. We talked briefly with them and as our final dish arrived, we agreed to chat later and they went off to their table.

After a fully satisfying dinner, and wonderful conversations with Frano, we went into the lounge to flash-up our laptops and get the password to log into the Club's wifi connection. Jim and Linda joined us after their dinner, but the facilities on the pier were being closed for the evening, so we all headed down to the float to catch a launch back out to our boats. Jim and Linda were on their way to visit with Herb and Bev in The Lady J, and we stopped there on our way to Sequitur. Herb and Bev asked if we would like to join them, so we stopped there.

Herb and Bev are in an Ocean Trader trawler, and they had arrived with it from Florida in July 2006, and they have been moored at Yacht Club Peruano ever since. We spent a few delightful hours listening to them tell of their adventures coming down the coast, of travelling inland and of living in La Punta, Callao. After much camaraderie, wine and fruit tarts, we called a launch and headed back to Sequitur.

We slept-in until 1030 on Wednesday, and then I got up to tend to generating some electricity and making some water. When we had arrived and anchored, I could not get the transmission to shift out of gear. I now needed to get it into neutral so we can run the engine and start replenishing the house battery. I cleared-out space in the port settee locker and crawled in to jiggle and juggle the transmission linkage, but could not get it into neutral. Finally, I went down into the engine compartment and shifted the lever there.

I flashed-up the engine and started recharging the batteries, and at the same time, ran the watermaker. The water in the anchorage is murky, and the filter set that had done so well on the passage down from Paita went from 82% to a clogged-up shut-down in only 40 minutes and gave us 38 litres of water. However, making water daily or at most every two days, keeps us from having to back-flush the membrane with 25 litres of water, so we were well ahead of the game. The filters refresh themselves between uses, and the next day we got another 30 minutes and 28 litres, and then a further 10 minutes and 9.7 litres the following day.


In the mid afternoon we went ashore to meet with Jaime and to sign some papers, and then went off to explore the area. La Punta is very much an upscale neighbourhood, a waterfront area of Callao, a suburb of Lima. The streets are lined with a delightful mix of colonial mini-mansions and townhouses interspersed with modern. Many of the homes appear very well cared for, but there are many in need of attention, some nearing derelict.

We found a nice little market with produce stalls less than two blocks from the Yacht Club gates, and we selected one particularly inviting stall. We bought a couple of bunches of asparagus, and when I picked-up a package of nice-looking button mushrooms from the counter, the lady put up a finger and went to the fridge and brought-out an even nicer and fresher package. She told us she would have some better asparagus the next day, and we asked her to put three bundles aside for us. A couple of blocks further along we found the bakery we had been told about, and we bought the best bread we have had since San Francisco.


Jaime came out to Sequitur late on Wednesday afternoon to officially welcome us to Peru; he had completed our entry for us, and had our stamped passports and 183-day visas. He said he had had a bit of a verbal battle with the official, who had wanted to give us only three months. Jaime insisted on six months, and he eventually won. I gladly paid him his fee, in fact I doubled it as we sat sipping tins of Tecate and chatting.


For dinner on Wednesday evening I prepared the last of our jumbo scallops and some of our remaining prawns. I sauteed the prawns in butter, garlic shallots and mushrooms to just short of done, then removed the prawns, and in the hot pan seared the scallops and plated them. The prawns went back in with diced Roma tomatoes and a splash of Riesling for a final toss. This was served with steamed basmati rice and fresh Peruvian asparagus with mayonnaise and accompanied by the rest of the bottle of Rheinpfalz Riesling.


On Thursday afternoon we bundled-up a large collection of laundry and took a launch ashore, where we walked along to the recommended lavanderia. This is housed in a wonderful old colonial house with a huge corner veranda. The charge is 4 Soles per kilo, and we were told it would be ready for pick-up at 1800 the next day.

We stopped to buy some more bread at the bakery and to pick-up our bundles of asparagus from the vegetable stall. With these in hand we walked along the malecon eastward, past the end of the fashionable district and into a less savoury neighbourhood. It was daylight and there was a lot of traffic, so we kept walking. Our intention was to visit the Marina Club facilities to see if they would be able to haul-out Sequitur and whether they were capable of doing the work we required.

After a couple of kilometres, we finally arrived and were asked to wait for a few minutes while the manager came back. A short while later Roberto Rios Garcia-Rosell, Gerante de Operaciones welcomed us with his Spanish-English dictionary in hand, and escorted us into his office. I told him we wanted to haul-out Sequitur in September, after we had returned from the summer in Vancouver. I asked about his access to qualified Yanmar mechanics, Raymarine techs and someone familiar with Fischer-Panda, all of which he appeared confident he could provide. He asked me to email him a detailed list of the work we needed done, and he would review it and get back to me. I asked for a tour of the yard and a look at the travel lift.

While we were in the yard we spoke briefly with Herb, who had just had The Lady J hauled and was waiting for a ladder so he could climb down. We invited him and Bev over to Sequitur for dinner on the weekend; we needed to do some freezer emptying before flying to Vancouver. He knew they had something planned on Saturday or Sunday evening, but wasn't sure which. He would check with Bev and let us know. I told him we were also inviting Jim and Linda, and when he said they were meeting with them later in the day, I suggested he confirm the date with Bev and then invite Jim and Linda on our behalf: 1700 Saturday or Sunday.


We took a bus back to the Yacht Club for half a Sole each. Out on the pier we watched for a while as Serge Jandaud, of Toulouse, France prepared his ocean rowboat, Clinique Pasteur Toulouse for departure on the 12th of June to row solo across the Pacific to Australia. We spoke with him briefly on the pier and learned he had rowed solo across the Atlantic in 2006. For his current 8000 nautical mile passage, he is estimating 6 to 10 months.


On Thursday evening Herb had radioed us to confirm Saturday evening, so when Bev arrived at 1700, we were ready. Herb was still aboard The Lady J in the yard, overseeing workers and would be along shortly. Another launch soon dropped-off Jim and Linda, and after a while Herb arrived. We sat chatting, sipping wine and nibbling cheeses and salami from a board Edi had prepared.


Around 1800 I began cooking. I sauteed our remaining seventeen boneless and skinless chicken breasts in butter and garlic and set them on a platter in the oven while I finished a huge wok of ginger, garlic, red onions, white onions, carrots, broccoli, cauliflower, asparagus and tomatoes, finished-off with soy and a picante tomato salsa and a liberal sprinkling of freshly toasted sesame seeds. With this and the platter of chicken breasts, we served a large bowl of steamed basmati rice and more bottles of wine.

We had a delightful evening, some six hours of swapping tales, sharing experiences and gaining information on this area and others. Around 2300 a launch was called and very shortly our guests were gone without Edi and I having to use one of our favourite quotes from Lin Pardey: "Why don't we go to bed so these good people will have an excuse to go home?" It was a splendid evening.

On Sunday afternoon we went ashore and caught a collectivo to the mercado, where we found the stalls rather deserted, being so late in the day. We caught a bus going to Avenida de la Marina and continued on to Plaza San Miguel. This is a huge, modern shopping centre, full of the same mix of upscale brand-name shops and boutiques that we would find any major North American shopping mall.


Early on Monday afternoon, as we were preparing to head ashore, Edi spotted a large fire in a ship some three miles or so north of us in the anchorage. There were twin billows of dense black smoke, one forward and one amidships, which looked like they were coming from bunker oil fires. It continued to burn black for a good quarter hour after she had spotted it, then the smoke began fading to dark grey and then progressively paler grey as water seemed to be bringing the fires under control. The ship continued to smoke alternately grey and black for another half hour, and was still smoking when we took the launch ashore.

We met briefly with Jaime and asked him for the timing of the installation of a mooring for Sequitur. He told us he had ordered chain and was expecting it to arrive this week, but could not narrow it down any closer. We again told him we were trying to schedule our flight back to Vancouver, and we needed Sequitur securely on a mooring in the Yacht Club's field before we went. We also reminded him, as we had discussed the previous week, that we wanted him to hire a tripulante for us to visit and clean Sequitur twice a week and to provide security while we were gone.


From Jaime's office we walked westward along the malecon, where we ran into Bev who was out walking with her parrot, Lorenza. Bev was looking for the sail loft of Steve Wagner, a sailmaker, repairer and canvas worker. We chatted and walked along with her until she headed into a boatyard she thought was the right place. Edi and I continued on to Panarello, the panaderia, where we bought a loaf and a dozen biscotti.


Callao is the location of the Peruvian Naval headquarters, in the anchorage are various frigates, destroyers and support ships, and on the shores of La Punta we saw the Naval Academy, the Naval Warfare School and other navy-related establishments. In the late afternoon a couple of sloops from the Escuela Naval, each bristling with a crew of a dozen, sailed past under spinnaker.

Large crew are not unusual here; a thirty or forty-foot boat often heads out with ten or twelve or more onboard. It is interesting to note that here in Peru the owners usually do not operate their own boats. They have hired crew.


After their crew have prepared the boat for sea, the owners arrive onboard with their guests, very smartly dressed, often in suit-and-tie. They then sit with their guests in the cockpit while the crew sail the boat and serve them food and drinks. After the outing, the boat is brought to a mooring close to the Yacht Club from where the owner and guests are landed by launch, while the crew take the boat back out to its mooring to clean-up and secure it. This seems strange to us, but it appears normal here.

Just before noon on Tuesday we took the launch ashore, with the intention of taking a bus to Miraflores to explore that reputedly upscale district. As we passed Jaime's office, he came out and told us he would have a mooring ready for us to move to a bit later in the afternoon. He had also organized with Jullio, one of the launch operators, to regularly clean and watch-over Sequitur while we're gone.

Jaime was going to arrange a launch to come out and guide us to the mooring and to assist with our move, so we went back out to Sequitur to prepare for the move and to start getting her ready for our absence. We shuffled and packed and waited onboard through the afternoon without any sign of a launch and without hearing anything further from Jaime.


In the evening I cooked-up the last of our frozen raw peeled prawns in butter in the big wok with crimini mushrooms, garlic, white and red onions and served them with basmati rice and grilled zucchini slices. Even after seconds, there were leftovers.

After breakfast on Wednesday morning we took the launch ashore and walked up the pier to Jaime's office. His office was locked, and the lady at the reception counter, with her lack of English and our extremely limited Spanish, told us he was away for the day; he would be back manana. We managed to communicate our need to move Sequitur to a mooring that Jaime had arranged for us. She was familiar with the situation, and she gave us a slip of paper with the name of the buoy on it, and indicated to us that a workboat would move us.


We tool a launch back out into the mooring field to look at the buoy, and satisfied, we continued along to Sequitur and as we were being dropped-off, asked the launch skipper to let the workboat crew know that we were ready for the move.

At 1300 the workboat arrived and I passed the crew a line from the bow. Four minutes later our anchor was aweigh and stowed and we were being slowly towed through the moored boats. At 1315 we secured to a buoy with twin 25mm nylon strops, one on each of our bow cleats. The mooring is just off the main fairway that runs through the field to the Club pier, and it is adjacent to the guard barge. We feel very secure here.

We took a launch ashore to do some banking and to arrange for a taxi to take us to the airport at 2300. We have standby bookings on a fully-booked Lima-Toronto flight departing at 0145 on Thursday morning; hopefully there will be some no-shows. On the way back to Sequitur, we stopped at the Club's very well-appointed and spotlessly clean washrooms on the pier, and we indulged in our first unlimited showers in many months.

Back onboard we continued to organize for our departure, dismounting the easily removable items and stowing them below, lest someone else remove them for us. Mid-evening I prepared a dinner centred on the leftover prawns from the previous evening and using as much of the remaining perishables as made sense. We then cleaned-out and shut down the one fridge and one freezer we still had operating; we had last week consolidated contents and shut-down the others. We closed the last of the through-hulls and called for a launch, giving to the boatman the leftover frozen food.

There was a strange feeling as we slowly motored away from Sequitur. She had been our very comfortable home for ten months and she given us so many experiences. Over the last eight-and-a-half months she has brought us safely down the west coast of North America, across to the Galapagos and then onward to Peru, nearly a quarter of the way around the world. We know she is a bit tired and in need of a refit, but as we pulled away we watched her sitting placid and uncomplaining at her mooring, waiting for our return.