Start of Leg 2 Santa Marta to San Blas

Take Off
Jörgen Wennberg
Thu 21 Jan 2016 03:16
The start of Leg 2 right outside of Santa Marta was nothing else than totally undramatic! We passed the starting line in 2-3 knots wondering what had happened to these heavy winds.

  

All sails were hanging loose and most boats passed the starting line by motor. They could not bother enter the leg properly, it was more important to get going. But not for our captain… we stick to our plan: we are sailors! To Alex’s delight as he considers all boats motoring to cheat! He was soooo disappointed at Spirit (our fierce Swedish competitor with the pro-sailors and a national meteorologist) motoring…

  

After a few miles from shore the wind picked up, forcing to rmake us do 1 and then 2 reefs on the mainsail! The winds were now up to nearly 32 knots and the waves quite impressive up to 4-5 meters. When helming the boat we came up to some surf waves lifting up the boat at 4-5 m giving you nearly some fright for the height! For the first 24h it was more sailing to ”survive” which meant just to make it through it. During this first day all energy was focused on taking care of a seasick Inez and helming Take Off on the wave’s surfs! Dinner consisted of pasta and pesto and water. No one wanted to be down below for too long.

The night was also quite a challenge: the doors to the cupboards above the stove flew off as the boat strongly bounced back and forth. So all the plates, glasses (luckily all in plastic!), jam, mustard, tea, coffee and more flew all over the kitchen. Luckily only one plate broke. Once we managed to tidy this up Louise checked on the bilges right before going off her watch at 4.30 in the morning to realise that there were more water than needed. So the next 2 hours were spent in pouring out the water from the bilges. We managed to make them dry and realised then that the water did not come from below…. ouf! However none of us 3 had had some proper sleep so the morning of day 2 we were all out of energy. However Ellen managed to squeeze out her last energy and made us the best ham and cheese toasts! And once we finished our breakfast we got the visit of 10 dolphins playing around witt the bow! All our efforts were paid off!

  

  

The rest of the day, the wind dropped as well as the waves and we had a wonderful sailing day, especially when we realised that the sea was so calm that Helmer could take over. What a relief! 


Our last sailing night into San Blas was with the full moon : amazing, magic and beautiful!