09:33.407N 78:56.969W

Marita3
Mark & Helen Syrett
Wed 8 Feb 2012 20:50
Bonaire to St Blas Islands.
We have arrived and are anchored at Porvenir, one of the islands of the archipelago of San Blas where there is a customs and immigration hut.
The passage here lived up to its reputation---our apprehension before the start was well founded. The route is described in Jimmy Cornell' book on World Cruising Routes as ''.....this can be a very rough passage, confirmed by the fact that many experienced sailors describe their passage across the Caribbean Sea perhaps as the roughest part of their voyage around the world...''. There is more but perhaps best not recorded here!
We charted our intended course very carefully following advice to go out to sea and not follow the coast line. We went about 150 miles to the northwest to the 4,000 metre depth contour line and then turned westward to run parallel to the Venezuelan coast. Camelot came with us but Karacool and Oyster Moon,who both left a day earlier, only went out to the 1,500 metre contour. We had the advantage of receiving their weather and sea condition reports on the SSB and from what they described we were very relieved to have gone further out. They experienced some very tough conditions with big seas, confused by swell and cross currents---a real maelstrom.
We had similar conditions on Sunday night/Monday morning with winds of 30 to 35 knots, 5 metre waves building behind us and cross waves slamming our side. Marita was amazing because just as we thought that the foaming mass of water rising behind us was going to come over her stern and poop us she seemed to lift her skirt, stick her bottom in the air and allow the water to rush below her. She kept a steady line without veering off course and Gavin (hydrovane self steering) who steered throughout the passage merely waved his vane to adjust his rudder to help keep her straight. We had about 12 hours of this and we are not sure if the action was better in the glint of a full moon or in daylight. Fortunately we had rigged the boat in readiness by deploying the spinnaker pole before reaching the really rough water. This entailed Mark doing his circus clown act of standing on the foredeck (strapped on) and trying to move a heavy 10 foot pole from a vertical position to a horizontal position out over the side of the boat with a multitude of lines attached and whilst the motion of the boat is somewhat erratic. Helen, on the helm, watches the act and tries to keep Marita as steady as possible. The resulting boomed out pole with genny (handkerchief size)and deep reefed (3 reefs) main gave us propulsion and stability---if one can call a bucking bronco stable!
We knew from previous reports that that this passage would be difficult but we were hoping to be lucky with more benign conditions--not so.
Stacey, the tow generator, tried hard but found the pace of life in excess of seven knots too much and we subsequently found that the prop which is on the end of 30 metres of line had jumped out of the water and twisted into a knot which caused vibration along the rope to the boat and slowed us down. A real case of getting her knickers in a twist!
Whist all this was going on a variety of cooked food, drinks etc etc appeared from below albeit that it was difficult to stand up without holding on with both hands.
Hopefully this will turn out to have been our most testing passage,
We are now going to visit a few of the islands before moving on to Portobello and then Panama.
Distance: 700 miles
Time: 124 hours
Avg speed: 5.64 knots
Engine time: 2 hours at the end to charge batteries
There is no internet here and we are now UTC-5.

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