And away we go
We left our dock in the marina just before midday to move over to the fuel dock. We had planned to take on 1800 gallons of diesel, 750 of which would go into the ATL fuel bladders. There is a 300 gallon bladder on the foredeck, and 3 x 150 gallon bladders in the aft cockpit. Frank decided to go for the 150gallon bladders because the lazaret would be inaccessible while the bladders were full so we would be able to empty the centre bladder early in the voyage. It took over 2 hours to load all the diesel.
Also, we could not leave the marina before high tide at 16:30. The tide would be 16ft and we would need all of that in order to get out over the sand bank that had developed near the entrance to the marina. Captain Paul of Striker fishing had kindly offered to go ahead of us in his SportFisher boat to check the depth and to tow us if we got stuck. Fortunately we managed to get out without any issues and waved goodbye to Captain Paul, Filipe and everybody else in Buenaventura.
As we sailed into the sunset, the sea was quite lumpy with 6ft following seas. Kariwa was very heavy and heaved up and over the swells quite comfortably. The lumpy seas continued through the night and in to the morning and eventually settled around midday on Monday.