We were out of San Blas.  Really out.  Something like 20 miles out, doing 7.5 knots into a 5 foot sea as the sun set over the islands where I’ve been diving, exploring, and sailing for almost a year off and on.  But our minds weren’t really on leaving – more on the voyage to Colombia. 

Amanda was still ill, she was below trying to sleep.  But at 7.5 knots, the water makes quite a bit of noise as it slides by the hull.  Let alone the pounding we were doing into the seas, which can make a special kind of bone-tingling thud. Rob called me when we were offshore and we managed a quick phone call before we lost reception.  Always good to hear a friendly voice before one takes off on a crossing. 

To Colombia

Luke was up moving around.  He’d become so fixated on Colombia that he was having trouble keeping a smile off his face.

I was happy to be moving on, but a little nervous about taking a crew of relative greenhorns across what can be a very nasty sea, this time of year.  And Amanda was ill. And we really needed to slow down – I’d planned between 4 and 5 knots.  Not 7.5, which is what we were doing now.  But I was confident in the fact that we’d done most (if not all) of the necessary stuff before we’d pulled anchor.  Finally, the trip wasn’t very long, for voyaging standards. 

This was my first real crossing.  Nothing too crazy, really – we were prepared.  I’d studied the weather for over a month, looking for the right time.  I’d cross referenced every weather-window.  I’d talked with everyone I knew who made the crossing.  I had shed my fair share of blood, sweat, and tears in the engine rooms.  We had all the safety gear ready.  I explained clipping off, and how to use the harnesses.  Luke knew how to sail her by himself.  We had food prepped.  Our paperwork was in order.  In short there was no apparent reason to worry – besides the obvious:  shit always breaks, and you never know what it will be until it happens. 

Before the sun set I reefed the genoa to try to slow us down. Then I took in more on the genoa.  Then I just pulled it in completely.  We were still doing 6 knots, and the genoa was helping us point into the wind.  So I put it back out.  Luke helped me put a reef in the main.  Then we put in another.  Then the main was fully reefed, the genoa was fully out and we were doing 6 knots again.  Apparently I should have planned for 6 knots. 

When Luke took his nap in preparation for his shift, we were doing 5.5 knots with the main fully reefed and the genoa with a single reef.  The winds and waves were just a bit more than they’d called for.  The good news:  it didn’t look like we’d need to do much motoring;  the bad news:  it was going to be a bit more bumpy than we thought. 

The next two days were a blur.  We spent some time under motor, but most time was spent trying to slow down while pointing as deeply as possible into the wind.  For all the talk about catamarans (except daggerboard catamarans) not pointing into the wind – we do pretty well.  In fact, a good portion of the monohull sailors I speak with point about as well as I do. Sure, it depends on the catamaran, the sails, the load, and the sailor – but sailing a catamaran doesn’t mean you can only motor in tight wind angles.    We can always use “just another 5 degrees” into the wind, but when you’re doing 7 knots into 5 foot seas, and only 35 degrees off the wind – well. That’s hard to complain about, considering you’re in a floating condo with less than 38 foot of waterline.  But back to the crossing…

Amanda was slowly recovering. Crossing the Carribean at this time of year probably wouldn’t be the doctor’s orders – but she was keeping down crackers and some fluids.  That was improvement.  Luke was doing well.  I could see the shifts wearing on him a little.  I was feeling it too, but I’ve done far worse shifts in far worse places.  At least here there weren’t roadside bombs here.  We had a few minor goofs – but overall, we were kicking royal ass. 

The biggest issue was that the hardware holding up my dinghy, wasn’t holding up.  We had the dinghy well-secured, but the pounding was taking it’s toll on the (apparently) lightweight hardware. 

The Dinghy Is Down

There are a myriad of potential problems I thought about and mentally prepared for.  Failures in my dinghy-holding hardware was not one of them.  I thought about the stress on the davits, the lines, etc – but never expected the hardware itself to fail. That was metal, I used to have more faith in metal things…

Amanda was shaking me awake and though she was calm, I could tell there was some urgency in her voice.  She said:  the dinghy is down.  I jumped up and ran upstairs.  As I passed out into the cockpit Luke said:  “Autopilot is off, she’s pointed into the wind.”  Which is exactly what he should have done. A+ for Team NOMAD. 

Looking back, the ass-end of my dinghy was banging against the inside of my starboard hull.  Upon inspection, in the middle of the night, while the waves smashed around, I found that one of the stainless steel connections on the block used to raise the dinghy, had sheared off.  Fixing it was precarious, but necessary.  I used some spectra to tie the area that had sheared, then we lifted it back up.  I was unhappy with the failure but happy with the fix and soon we were off to the races again.  Naturally that screwed up my sleeping pattern, a little bit of adrenaline makes it hard to go back to sleep. 

Soon enough it was daylight and we were cruising across the open blue – in something like 1500 meters of water.  That’s deep.  It’s been so long since I’ve been out in the blue that I really missed the feeling of not seeing land (or the bottom) – everything fading into the horizon (or into the blue).  I took the opportunity in between one of our tacks to jump overboard and remove some fishing line from our port prop.  Which made me miss bluewater diving even more.

That night in the middle of my shift we again reached 7.5 knots and the seas increased.  We were pounding through the slop at what seemed like warp-speed.  I needed to correct our course a bit, so I kept full sheets out.  We were about to turn deep into the wind anyways, which would definitely slow us down.  As our plans took us into the Rosarios in the morning, slowing down was fine – but speeding up would mean we’d be flopping around offshore waiting on the daylight. 

7.9 Knots …

Long story short, shortly after I went back to bed from this shift – just when I was starting to feel like we were going to make it to Colombia without any more issues:  I was woken up by a familiar person with a familiar sentence:  the dinghy is down (again).  My brain wasn’t quite working, so what would have typically been a long string of profanity turned into:  what, really? 

I was sure that the Spectra rig I’d tied had either:  a) come untied or b) chaffed through.  I saw those being potential issues so I tied safety knots and arranged things to protect the Spectra from chafe.  The Spectra didn’t fail. It was the damn chain that was holding my dinghy up.  Let me repeat that – the chain failed.  This isn’t anchor chain, it’s not rated for 25 tons of shock-load, but it is chain.  It should be fine for this limited application.  Apparently not.

At this point we were close to shore and I was completely done fighting this fight. It was a stupid fight. We dropped the dinghy from the davits and towed it.  Clearly, among the variety of other things that I need to replace, rethink, and fix in Cartagena – my dinghy-carrying rig is on that list.  After all of this, I’m considering heavy-duty Spectra as my material:  it’s lightweight, has incredible strength, and is very simple to tie/untie/secure. 

Land Ho!

After this last minor failure – I took another hour nap and then came up and took control for our final approach into the Colombian islands:  the Rosarios.  We eased in under power at about 9 AM, perfect timing.   We navigated around a couple shallow reefs and watched our anchor drop in 15 foot of crystal clear water, and we were the only yacht in sight. 

Land!

After some inspection of the dinghy and the dinghy engine we decided we could get to shore – we wanted to get a feel for this place.  We went in search of a fruit plate, egg arepa and a drink.  $10 US for this, at a resort.  I have a feeling Colombia and I are going to get along famously.

When we got back it was finally after 11AM, which is our time-rule for drinking onboard.  We had been saving two ice-cold Balboa beers for our “Anchor Beers” here.  Saving two ice cold beers for more than a week onboard S/V NOMAD is a record, surely.  So Luke and I had our anchor beers – in another set of beautiful islands, in another country.  And we earned these.

The rest of the day we spent relaxing in calm, blue water.  It is beautiful in the Rosarios, but very different from Panama.  The coast is desert (ish), and this being a tourist-type area – everything is nicer.  There’s some pride in the country here.  

Hopefully this “rain” shit stays away for a while – I won’t miss it.  Right now, Panama seems like a fraction of the country that Colombia is – but this is pretty early in my relationship with it, and I haven’t seen much of it yet.  All that said, the people seem prettier, nicer and I can’t complain about the prices and the landscape.  And Cartagena is well known for quality boat-labor;  which makes me happy just thinking about it. 

Fingers crossed, I hope this country-relationship is a gratifying one. 

To Colombia