Sailing the Caribbean Sea

  Cartagena to Panama - 8 days on a yacht, Colombia
Tuesday, November 7, 2006

There were no Pirates or treasure or anything like that. Just a few tiny islands filled with palm trees and coconuts.
I'm now in Panama city, after 8 crazy sailing days. I had an awesome time which went like this

Day 1 - Dealing with the authorities
it's sorted. I'm going to Panama, via the Sandblast Islands. 8 days sailing the Caribbean seas. With an Italian 35ft yacht called ´Fenicia´ Phoenix and a total of 4 people - our 32 year old Captain - Fabio Massimo and a 30 year old Kiwi couple, and your humble narrator.
We arranged to meet captain Massimo at club Nautico at 8am, to get our immigration sorted out to leave Colombia. But being Colombians, they made it difficult and said it would take at least 24 hours. El Capitan wasn't too happy and arranged for it to be done by 5pm - don't ask how.
I went back at 5pm, but of course the passports weren't ready. They said maybe by 8pm, it will be done.
So, we decided to wait on the yacht, and get everything ship shape ready to leave as soon as our passports were returned.
After a matter of minutes, we realized our reliable and responsible Capitan wasn't too opposed to a bit of a puff on the local herbs, pretty much chain smoking one non-stop joint all the way to Panama.
So, just as they promised, our passports were ready and stamped at 8pm and we were ready to haul the anchor and set sail.
We pulled up the anchor and motored through the harbour towards the wide open Caribbean Sea. Fabio had himself another few puffs or so along the way and pretty much lost his vision. So after less than an hour on this yacht, Shane - the kiwi guy and I had taken control of the thing, navigating through the red and green lights, keeping the green on the right, the red on the left, while Fabio sat back and enjoyed his funny smelling cigarettes.
Then something out of a movie happened. A go fast boat came speeding up, with a huge spotlight on us. Captain Fabio seemed kool and collected, expecting this to happen. He tossed his ´cigarette´ overboard and before we knew it, we were boarded by the coast guard. There were 4 of them. 2 came onto our yacht, one piloted the go fast boat - circling around us, and the other held a spotlight on us.
This was all standard procedure apparently. While one rummaged through the boat, looking for anything illegal - Captain Fabio must have had his stash well hidden - the other checked the passports and paperwork and faster than you could say ¨corrupt Colombian police¨, they were back on their go fast boat wishing us a bon voyage and were speeding off into the darkness.
While Fabio enjoyed another few ´cigarettes´ Shane and I motored out into the Caribbean Sea and as we cleared the heads, Fabio got himself into motion and hauled up the main and jib and shut off the motor and for the first time we were sailing the Caribbean Sea!
We knew this would be a relaxed sail, but we didn't realise that on the first night, we would be sailing the thing without a captain.
Fabio was getting himself into a state of no return, so in his final minutes, we got a crash course on how to sail and next thing we knew, he was passed out in the galley, not waking until the morning.
So Shane and I sat up, working out which rope does what and sussing the thing out and then after a while, when it was fairly smooth sailing, decided to do shift work. I started with the first shift, from midnight until 3am. Shane would do from 3am until first light, then wake the not so reliable captain Massimo. We kept our bearing through the night - heading 270 degrees towards Panama - the wind staying fairly consistent all night.
Fabio arose from his self induced coma with the sun and congratulated us on a perfect first night. Only 7 to go!

Day 2 - A Horizon of Sea
We left Colombia behind and woke to an amazing sunrise over the sea. It was an easy day, with a light, but consistent wind. We only had to tack a few times and i didn't get too many blisters, the wind was taking us around 3.5 knots an hour. We spent the day eating fresh fish that we had caught with our trawling line, sleeping, reading, chess, chat and swimming, then staring in awe at an amazing sunset over the Caribbean Sea!

Day 3 - What happened to the Wind?
At some point during our night shifts, while the captain slept, the wind dropped and dropped and by morning, there wasn't enough to move a feather.
We spent the whole day, bobbing around, getting sucked with the currents - loosing 6 miles in as many hours.
It wasn't so bad. We had the sea! The beautiful warm, clear Caribbean sea! We spent the day in the water, hurling ourselves overboard in the middle of the Caribbean Sea - nothing but water as far as you could see. We caught fish with the spear gun and swam around. The water was clearer than the air! It was spectacular! I wish I had an under water camera, the visibility was almost unlimited!

Day 4 - Were moving again
Slowly but surely the wind picked up and we were back to where we left off, catching up on the 6 miles we lost the day before and slowly heading towards the Sandblast Islands and Panama. More shift work, but with the almost full moon, and bazillions of bright stars satellites and shooting stars, the 3 hour shifts flew by and auto pilot behaved itself this time.

Day 5 - The Sandblast islands
In the slowest time ever recorded - 84 hours - the norm being around 40odd hours, we reached the islands. Spectacular. There are something like 360 islands in the Archipelago of the Sandblast. Some are relatively big, others, no more than a patch of sand and one had a single palm tree! Which we stopped at. It was almost as if it was man made. Id seen stuff like this in the movies but I didn't actually think that there was a white sand island with a single palm tree, but there sure was. Checkout the photos! It took me exactly 50 seconds to walk around it!
The Sandblast Islands are inhabited by a completely independent race called the Kuna. The Kuna people are nomadic among these islands. Staying on one island for a few months, then packing up their very few possessions, and paddling their family in a dugout canoe to the next, once the fish and lobster supply was low.
We visited 6 different islands. At each one, the locals would paddle their dugout up to our yacht and sell the local handcrafts called ´Molas´ - a colorful stitching of fish and the like.
But this day, they came up with lobsters! 2 massive lobsters. We bought them both for 5 US each! And boiled up some water and before you could say yum yum yum, we had a hammer and were smashing them open and sucking the succulent flesh from their legs.
We sailed to a protected area and anchored for the night, watching yet another magical sunset over the Caribbean Sea.

Just one palm

Day 6 - Waking up in Paradise
We spent the night in a cove, surrounded by countless tiny tiny islands. We woke, threw ourselves overboard and snorkeled around the small islands. There were reefs and fish and islands and palm trees and white sand everywhere you look. We visited a few more islands and ate fish and coconut rice for dinner, followed by rum and coconut juice.

Day 7 - Welcome to Panama
This time it was easy. We sailed to the governing island, got a stamp in our passport and were welcomed to Panama. We sailed 7 hours towards the Panama coast and spent the night in a place called Isla Grande and drank the remains of our rum, beer and coconuts and ate a big meal of fish and enjoyed our last night on board.

Day 8 - it's all over
Waking up with another sunrise over the Caribbean Sea, we jumped in the water, ate the remains of our food and got in our dingy and paddled to dry land. Ending an amazing Caribbean adventure.
I caught a bus to Panama City and my sea legs are still making me sway all over the place. Today I'm chilling in the hostel, trying to walk in a straight line, but tomorrow, I'm heading to the lookout over the Panama Canal to see the huge super tankers going through the locks. Then ill be spending my days in the port, once again, surrounded by scurvy pirates, looking for a yacht through the Canal and on to Puerto Rico, Jamaica and Cuba.