From Santa Marta to Kalungirrup - a time maschine trip 09.35N78.41W

Salsa af Stavsnas
Ellinor Ristoff Staffan Ehde
Mon 11 Mar 2013 20:21
Let´s start with the good news, we are in San Blas!
Wow what a contrast! First you are sleeping in a harbour in the middle of a 500.000 people city, with car horns etc.
Now we just arrived to a small group of islands that are ... uninhabited, mostly, some Kuna indians live here.
We are anchored on a sandy bottom, with coral reefs all around us.
What was the best that could happen after a tought trip?
Being welcomed by the family of Hittingers, on their boat Windarra. We asked them if they wanted to come up for coffe, but they did not want to, they thought they could take our children to one of the islands and snorkel while we could catch up some sleep!!!!!
And did we? Slept for almost three hours in the middle of the day.
The kids are still there playing with playmobile.
There are perhaps 7 boats spread out in this small archipellago and Windarra happened to be here! What a treat.
 
The bad news?
The trip getting here was tought! We have never had a wet trip like this before. We ended up sitting all family in the cockpit with life jackets and harness on. We flew forward in winds between 25-35 knots (12-17 m/s) but worse was that we had long lasting gusts at about 46 knots (23 m/s). With them rolled wave trains that where huge and steep. Salsa performed very well and we had no fear that something was going to happen. It's just that when the waves crash onto the boat it builds up big spray and you do not want it in the boat so you have to  close her up.
When she is rolling like crazy nobody wants to be in the boat.
So we had a 24 hour start that was hard, little sleep for the adults (the kids can probably sleep hanging upside down).
We also had a lot of traffic with cargo ships, and on top of that Ria Magdalena, a river that flows out from Colombia with a lot of debris (we did not  see anything) so we where told to really watch in the water. But the current came out miles from the coast and affected the water color and wave movements.
After leaving over to Panama, the wind started to settle down, still big waves but longer and smoother.
So we flew at good speed all the way over here and everybody was exhausted (even the kids started to behave crazy).
 
Technical problem...chapter 13473
Well you try to think of everything that can happen on a boat, and prepare. Then the boat will always surprise you with something you did not think of. In the middle of the gale I wanted to go down and prepare some food, what happens when I try to open tha hatch? Nothing.
It is stuck! We have to open the boards and crawl in and out of the boat, in lousy conditions!
That is really a bad thing, when you feel inside that you cannot just run up. I know, I know there are a lot of worse things that can happen, loose the mast etc. But we managed, of course, what's the choice? Get off? When things settled I hopened a panel above the hatch and found an old pice of tubing that must have been there for ages. Probably it rolled down in the bad weather and locked the hatch!