Curacao to San Blas
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Curacao to San Blas Last night’s winds and lumpy seas eventually calm down and we start a lovely day’s sailing. A fantastic dolphin show after lunch proves too fast for my camera sadly. Our fishing for this section of the trip comes to an abrupt halt, when we get the largest tuna we’ve ever caught on the end of the line. The handle from the reel sheers off as Mike gets him about halfway to the boat. About 30 feet away, however, the dead fish somehow happens to fall off the hook so we never manage to land him and have only a broken reel to show for Mike’s efforts!
Then we get an exciting dolphin show, sadly the photographer isn’t as quick as they are!
Off Santa Marta, Colombia, we hove to for a couple of hours waiting for a storm to leave, having travelled 283 nms. Dino, is appointed our agent and he spends several days forgetting to bring forms, bringing the Customs man – who forgets to bring forms and taking 191000Pesos for a cruising permit.
Usual
pursuits, including catching up with sleep for Mike, fill our days! We meet Steve and Angela from Pannikin
(apparently an Australian name for a drinking container and not that they are
Panicking!)
We head off on 4 hour bus journey to Cartagena leaving RT safely tied up in the marina at Santa Marta. Taxi (and other) prices seem a lot higher in Cartagena, but we are dropped at the door of our Casa, just outside the old city walls, one block from the sea. So we spend a couple of days exploring the city, including a tortuous taxi ride to try and buy a new fishing reel, to no avail. It poured with rain on Sunday so a lot of that day spent in bar/restaurant. Our Spanish has not improved, so Mike gets a steak when he ordered fish, so I get to eat that in place of my lovely fish dish! Cartagena is pretty but hot, but we have lovely aircon, wifiid room to escape to at midday.
This was a road we walked in on, before it rained, and a view from the back of the taxi. Pretty Cartagena
This square entirely paved with Glasgow bricks
Biggest moth on our bedroom door and I’m sure we saw exactly this building in the Sahara desert – it’s another film studios
Back in Santa Marta, we track down a man to mend our boarding ladder and he says he can make us a new bit for the reel of the fishing line. We wait with bated breath! He turns up with repaired ladder next day, but the reel part is obviously trickier and manana follows manana! Dino shows up, finally, with our cruising permit. It only took a week! We have to give him 2 business days’ notice of when we want to leave so we opt for 3 days time in the vain hope he will have managed our clearance by then! Isabella, with Mike and Jane on board, turned up while we are away. We last saw them in Bonaire in May so stories to be swapped over a couple of beers on board RT! We, basically, hang around for a week while I clear up some Internet stuff and wait for Dino to arrive.
We motored the whole day, passing a river entrance which was disgorging timber and other vegetation. Wouldn’t have liked to have done that in the dark. We dropped anchor after 55.1 fairly boring miles. It’s a very protected anchorage with one other British boat and no others. A small marina and a few houses but very tranquil. The first time we’ve spent in Colombia without evening music blaring out and early morning exercise class music following swiftly on. Silence only invaded by an “Armada nacionale” boat with 3 guys on board wanting to see our papers. Thankfully, they seem to be approved so we settle down in the heat.
Next anchorage,we are the only ones there, a few dugouts passing and fishing but no sign of the Armada!
Mike woke early as we were starting to swing over to shallower ground so he starts the motor at 3am. The day goes on, partly sailing, partly motoring and quite a lot of motor-sailing. Odd scare during the morning as the plotter for some reason stops. Mike then notices that the batteries aren’t charging but show that we are losing 10 amps with the engine running so the alternator has stopped charging. He takes things apart, tests current on the batteries, can’t find anything wrong and puts it all back together. Switch the engine back on and we are back in business. Hate these intermittent faults. Dark clouds gather and lightning and thunder are all around us. We try to outrun the storms and land up heading off SE instead of SW to avoid them. It’s all guesswork as the storms keep changing direction. No idea how many times I counted the gap between lightning and thunder but we eventually, gratefully, worked out that either they, or we, were moving away! Mike spots that the wind angle is reading wrong as we appear to be able to sail at 10 degrees to the wind, we wish! It’s more annoying as we had the wretched thing serviced at vast expense last time RT was back in UK.
This is the furthest South we’ve been on this boat so far.
Bit of history about this bit of land which is on the mainland of Panama but within the Kuna Yala Indians national park taken from our cruising guide to Panama
“In 1698 William Patterson, a cofounder of the bank of England, organized and financed an expedition to found a settlement in the bay of Puerto Escoses. The 1300 Scots that built Fort Andrew, of which today only ruins remain, ended up having a terrible time, faced with starvation and disease. In the end the project became a fiasco and after less than two years those that remained alive returned to Scotland. Just after they left, a fleet with reinforcements arrived from Scotland and made a second attempt to survive. They suffered the same problems as their predecessors and Fort Andrew was given up for good in 1702. Of the nearly 3000 people involved, over 2000 died.”
The cost of this project virtually bankrupted Scotland and was one of the factors that eventually decided them to enter a Union with England. Particularly pertinent now as we have just had the vote for Scotland to part with England.
During the morning a dugout approaches with 2 Kuna on board, we assume they are going to try and sell us the coconuts, lemons and plantains on board. Not a bit of it! He is Mr Green and is a “secretary to the chief and a champion footballer who also is involved with the local school and did we have any matches?” Matches are duly swapped for 3 lemons and, as we are anchored off his land, a $5 anchoring fee is duly paid. Unfortunately he doesn’t have change for our $10 but he invites us to visit his community tomorrow and come and eat coconut rice with his family and he will give us the change then. He has been gesturing North as he speaks and says he will come back tomorrow around 10am to take us there. We decide to inflate the dinghy and if, and when, he arrives we will up anchor, follow him North, reanchor near and dinghy ashore. The afternoon brings yet more rain and thunderstorms but we sleep like logs after another early night.
The cockpit is full of small dead insects again attracted by the fairy lights round the bimini. Needless to say, Mr Green and our $5 change were never seen again! We moved the boat anyway to Saladup, hung around there a bit. Another Kuna approached in his dugout for a chat but we couldn’t understand each other so he took a good look round the cockpit and left. This decided us to move on. Motored/ sailed to an anchorage off Pinos. The rain stops sufficiently for drinks in the cockpit and now we are back to playing cards in the dark early evenings with very early nights.
The Village of the Dead, sacred ground
The
advantage of early nights is early mornings, so tea happens before 6am and we
agree to move on to Ustupu before the rain starts again. We got Internet and a
mobile phone service so we stayed 2 nights. Bread rolls for 30c, it’s stopped
raining, sun is out, and we’re in clover!
Caught a little mackerel on the way, which is just as well as we are running out of fresh food and have only potatoes and onions left in the veg baskets. On our way to Achutupu, we spot the first sailboat anchored since we left Columbia, in Mamitupu, so we diverted there. It’s a mauve French boat with 3 or 4 on board.
We are motoring every day, so another short hop to the next island which has a bread shop and another $5 anchoring fee. The bread here is $1, we must be going up-market! There is a smaller island next door, Dolphin Island, which has a Kuna hotel on it so we dinghy over to book supper. He speaks good English so we book lobster and he says he has wine too! We settle for beers instead and the meal is huge and OK and has vegetables which is great as we haven’t had any for a while! We are, of course, the only ones dining, not exactly fine dining but a pleasant change from cooking. However, the no-see-ums are biting like mad so it’s time to move on.
We motor, sail, motor, sail, motor 18.36nms taking 3.5 hours back to our favourite island. On our plotter chart this is marked as Tupile Islands, the pilot book has it as Farewell Islands but we christened it Goldrich Island last time we were here as it felt like no-one had ever been there before, so it’s ours! This time a bit more Kuna action including $5 for2 lobsters and tourist boats passing through but we are still the only ones anchored here, so it’s still ours!
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