250205 Wooden Botes in Manta
We pulled up to the pier in Manta at 5 AM. A group was leaving the ship for an early flight to the Gallipolis Islands. Suzi and I were still in isolation, and I was not sure that we would be able to get off the ship. We sailed in past fleets of fishing vessels.
There are three fishing fleets in Manta. Fibras are fiberglass boats with outboards that fish close to shore. They range up to 7 and a half meters (24 feet) long. The second fleet is made up of botes wooden ships 15 to 22 meters (50 to 72 feet) in length. Together they make up Mantas’s artisanal fishing fleet. Often the botes support the fibras by acting as tenders and towing them to the fishing grounds. Then there is the commercial, or industrial fleet. While the fleet is primarily a fishing fleet some have taken to moonlighting running drugs off the coast of South America according to news reports. The Legend Class US Coast Guard Cutter James was also tied up on our pier. In the past USCG cutters have been on drug interdiction patrols the west coast of South America.
Manta is a tuna port. It has plants for Bumble Bee and Van Camp as well as other brands. It is the biggest fishing port in Ecuador. We tied up with the industrial fleet but had a good view of the anchored botes. I noticed the artwork on the bows of the botes accompanying the ships’ names so zoomed in to take pictures.
At around noon I was cleared by the medical staff to leave isolation and our room.) Suzi wasn’t cleared until around 5 PM.) I decided to go ashore to look around. We had been to Manta a decade ago on Prinsendam (You can click to see the link to that old blog post, here.)
There’s a shuttle bus through the commercial fishing port to the new cruise terminal. By the time I had gotten off most of the passengers were long off and half of them were back on. With the light traffic the shuttle was a glorified golf cart, which gave me a good view of port activities.
Once through the terminal I started to walk but I soon gave out. Three days of feeling ill, being confined to quarters and not eating much, sapped my energy. I got in a cab and asked him to take me to the boat yard. Shipwrights work on a hard packed sand beach. We had been past that beach on a city bus in 2015. This is where botes are built and repaired.
The cabbie and I communicated via Google Translate and when he heard I lived in a fishing town in Alaska insisted on taking me to the fish market, which was closed. It operates from sunup until around noon. So, we cruised around. He was looking for guys selling fish on the street so I could see what the tuna looked like. We found some who displayed their catch.
Back on the Ship Suzi and had our first non-room service meal in three days and then sat on our balcony as we sailed out of the commercial fishing port and into the cold-water Humbolt Current that enables the rich marine life off the west coast of South America.
