Hello All,

 

We are currently in Santa Marta Marina, Columbia provisioning the boat for five weeks as the next destination, The San Blas Islands are a very remote group of tropical Islands off the coast of Panama.

The Islands are inhabited by the Kuna Indians who are fiercely independent of Panama. https://sanblas-islands.com/ The San Blas are likened to the remote Pacific Atolls.

So we will be without fresh vegetables, bread and fresh meat.  Fortunately amongst the many items comprising of our enormous excess baggage cost this year was a bread maker.

The Kuna Indians provide fresh fish, lobster, dodgy chicken  and vegetables but not as we know them!

In preparation I recently baked an enormous cottage pie and took on board several cases of beer. I have to say that the beer brewed by the Bogota Brewery company (BBC) is very comparable to the Skinners brewery in Truro and by closing your eyes and using a little imagination you could be supping Betty Stoggs!

Once we leave the San Blas, we will be heading for The Rio Dulce in Guatemala where we will haul out ready for our return to Cornwall in early April, but only if you can sort out the weather!

So that concludes our future plans as I feel by the time we reach Rio Dulce there may not be time for a further blog although I may be able to post some photographs. We will be without internet until we reach Guatemala.

 

So John and Cilla joined us in Bonaire, we carried on making good friends and diving quite a bit. Our leaving party was an excellent affair, we both feel that we have made some lifelong friends.

 

Lynn's Dread!

The passage from Bonaire was some 370 miles which took two days, however the last 50 miles is classed as having the most challenging weather and sea conditions in the Caribbean.

This is caused by the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta which are a range of Mountains that rise to a height of 19,000 feet and are just 26 miles from the coast, snow can be seen from the sea!

This feature gives rise to abnormal storm conditions which are caused by the cold air falling off the mountains meeting the warm air from the sea, this phenomena is called katabatic wind.

In addition the sea bed rises very steeply quickly close inshore, the current pushes the mass of water up to produce steep and confused seas.

 

Now I have set the scene.

In a matter of minutes we went from pretty benign conditions to forty knots of wind and confused, steep 15 feet waves coming from different directions.

We had prepared Out-Rageous by reefing the sails and turning off the auto pilot; its important to try and keep the big rollers behind us and by hand steering you can anticipate this.

The helm position on Out-Rageous is at the very stern and there were times when I was looking down at the bows.

Out-Rageous loves nothing better than to surf and surf we did, only my board was 47’ long by 25’ wide and weighs 18 tonnes! For my part it was very exhilarating and it takes a lot to get me exhilarated nowadays.

More than one big floppy wave hit the boat side on, drenching both John and I whilst Lynn and Cilla were in the saloon discussing the virtues of flying in a Boeing!

 

Needless to say it was over as soon as we entered the shelter of Santa Marta harbour although the wind has stayed with for almost our entire three week stay. We have seen 48 knots across the boat in the marina. Glasses blown off the table, walking down the pontoon was dangerous and then the worst thing was the sand!

We are close to the beach and every morning it became a ritual to sweep the sand from the cockpit, due to the heat we can’t live without opening the windows, so the inside of the boat is like a sandpit too!

Santa Marta Marina is the most inhospitable marina we have ever visited.

 

Columbia, a delightful Country with very friendly and kind people. Very Colonial Spanish. I have my very own version of Spainglish  which I speak very well!

We visited Cartagena which dates back to the 16th centaury and was the port where much of the Spanish  gold left South America bound for Spain and even now the name of Sir Francis Drake is well known.

 

Whilst in Santa Marta we have also visited the mountains and a coffee plantation where they still use machinery supplied by a London company in the eighteenth century for processing the coffee beans.

The one thing missing from the photos was the smell of roasting beans.

 

Enough from us, enjoy the Pictures.

 

Derek & Lynn

 

Out-Rageous.

 

PS.  I have not mentioned to Lynn that there are Saltwater Crocodiles living on some of the Islands in the San Blas!  http://sanblasrivieranayarit.com/en/crocodiles-a-friendly-inhabitant-of-san-blas/