#4 Hashish?  Cocaine?  Pretty lady to love you all night?

We were offered all these riches and more as we passed through the ancient walls that separates modern Cartagena with the historic old walled City.  I know I shouldn’t have been surprised, this being the nation who’s most widely known countryman is Pablo Escobar and most famous export is the white powder, but to be fair it had only just gone lunchtime. 

The funniest offer was from a short, tubby, greasy skinned man with the kind of moustache that should require a license who propositioned us with “I take you dancing with me, it is almost free, we have a great time, I stay with you all night! I luuuuuuuurrrrrrrrvvvvvvve cocaine!”  On what planet in which dimension would that possibly be considered a good idea?  I started to feel my lunch rising up just at the thought.

Welcome to Colombia!

Tom’s making an admirable effort to speak the lingo and tried saying “please can you leave us alone” in Spanish to the many people who hassled us but this only engaged them more.  We finally found that a very firm slightly shouty “No!” with a waggy finger and stern face (a bit like you’d do to a toddler who was trying to stick its hand in the fire) seemed to have the best impact. One popular money making pitch is to follow the tourist and start rapping often with another guy providing the beatbox presumably so that they get paid to go away.  Tom’s vague resemblance to Shaggy out of Scooby Do seemed to provide one guy with endless material at his expense.  They were actually pretty good but if you brought out your wallet they would descend on you like pigeons in a town square around a child holding birdseed.

We have been here three days now having sailed the 200 mile, 30 hour passage from the San Blas Islands.  I say sailed but we actually motored for all but about 4 hours of it due to lack of wind.  There was some minor drama when the mainsail baton screws started popping out but we managed to save all but one of the screws and all the batons so not too much of an issue.  My fault for not checking they were screwed in properly but now I know how the batons work.  The only other drama was some massive thunder and lightning storms but with our good friend the radar we were able to steer around them and kept a safe distance to watch the show. We did 3 hour night watches that worked well and I slept soundly when off watch which shows the faith I have in my trusty crew Tom. All in all, a successful, if uneventful first overnight passage.

Cartagena has been mostly about admin and boat jobs but with a little bit of tourism squeezed in.  Most of us have one or two irrational insecurities about certain things and, confession time, mine is a complete lack of confidence that I can fix things. This is not a good thing when you’re cruising for months away from civilisation and you need to be reliant on your owns skills and ingenuity to maintain and repair vital systems.  Its particularly embarrassing being an engineer as everyone assumes you are good at figuring out how things work and repairing them.  Instead, I go into a cold sweat just grasping the hammer/chisel/screwdriver/angle grinder and trying to figure out just where to start.  Anyway, I know this is just in my head and one of my goals of this trip is to address this irrational fear and it started in Colombia.

First job, find a temporary fix for the main sail baton screw that was missing. Now I admit I did enlist the help of a “sailmaker” but only because I couldn’t get a sail repair kit and to be fair he was just a lacky with some sailcloth, thread and a needle with dubious skills and experience mixed with poor hygiene and so we developed the repair solution together.  Next came the engine: check the oil, top up the engine whose oil was low, have a panic attack that you’ve used the wrong grade of oil, frantic research and then relief.  Engine sorted.  Next water maker.  I’d noticed it wasn’t actually making any water when it was switched on and happily pumping away. Now I am no expert but making water should be the primary function of a water maker shouldn’t it?.  Out with the manual, find the filter screw, remove the absolutely disgusting smelling black blob of a thing that was in there. Insert a shiny new white one from the spares I found under the floorboards.  Voila! Water maker working!  And so it goes.  With each success I felt my confidence grow.  I’ll be fixing Boeings by the time I get back to Australia!

Today we have completed our last jobs before the 1,200 mile, 7 day passage north to Grand Bahama just 55 miles off the Florida coast.  It will be my 3^rd longest passage and Tom’s longest, my longest as skipper and one of the most technically challenging.  Essentially, we head north into the Easterly trade winds for 4 days which should be good reaching conditions, then pop through the windward passage which as its name suggests is likely to be against both wind and current, then hang a hard left and sail with both the trade winds and Gulf Stream behind us in a lazy arc between Grand Bahama Bank and Cuba before reaching our destination at West End, Grand Bahama. Hurricane season officially runs for another month so I am nervous about late season hurricanes, but they are rare and should come with plenty of notice allowing us to avoid them.  We are incredibly lucky to have Jess van Kinderen who is the best meteorologist I know (although to be fair I don’t know that many) and also a brilliant sailor and experienced ocean racer as our shoreside support from her West Indian home as we head north keeping an eye on the bigger picture and alerting us to anything we need to worry about.  Its very kind of Jess to do this and it will provide great peace of mind and definitely help me sleep at night.  Thanks Jess!

So tonight its about having our last feed on shore for a week, a few beers to steady the nerves and get the courage up and then it will be up at first light, fill the boat with diesel and water (hopefully into the right tanks) and head off into the Caribbean Sea.

I’m anxious and excited in equal measure.  It will be nice to know people are following us so if you want to see where we are right now you can do so by clicking the imaginatively titled “where are we now?” menu.

Wish us luck!

Alex and Tom