Our first passage! 2 nights at sea…Smooth sailing, Dolphins and our Dramatic arrival at Santa Marta, Columbia!

It was hard to leave Kuna Yala. We were treated to the blood red eclipse and a swim with three nurse sharks in the days before we left… A ray came up to TIKA to say goodbye as we got ship shape for the passage…..We shared a coconut, a last swim in the aqua waters and it was time to leave our magic little anchorage and  head East….

As we passed through the ‘swimming pool’ one late afternoon to slip through the reefs and out to sea, it was touching that our neighbours appeared on their decks to wave us goodbye, honk horns, wish us happy sailing and even honour us with a slow, mesmerising conch shell salute…. Although Russ has of course cruised before, we are total noobs on this voyage and I am a rookie to living on a boat, so it means a lot to experience community from seasoned yachties at such an early stage of our trip. We were even given a small bag of coffee beans for our passage and I was eternally grateful (particularly  4 hours into my first late-night watch ) to ‘La Luna’ for this precious gift!

As the islands disappeared behind us, we saw 2 waterspouts. One was close enough for us to be both in awe and also a little wary…They were amazing to see (see picture) but we didn’t want to get too close!

Our first evening out Kai, Jaiya and I all got seasick! I was feeling fine until I jumped into the saloon and took over from Russ with cooking duties…After that I was woozy but still O.K…Strangely (or not) as the sun set and I found that I could no longer see the sea or the horizon, nausea hit me and I was basically useless I couldn’t touch my food and really didn’t want to move far from the starboard hull where I had slumped taking gulps of fresh air! …Russ gave us all these wonderful little pills, I passed out for 2 hours, woke up starving and ready for my first shift on watch and was totally fine for the rest of the passage! Kai and Jaiya both passed out for the night and were also good from then on …..Phew!

The passage was smooth and relatively relaxed…We motored for the first 18 hours but after that the wind came in at 8-10 knots and Tika sailed like a dream… Russ had one watch with many sail changes (he complains but he loves it) as we dodged a few tropical squalls but other than that we set the sails and concentrated on boat school, drinking tea, reading and sea/horizon watching (from my limited experience, being at sea is like being stoned, fire-gazing or going into suspended animation!) We saw a number of ships with one passenger liner coming fairly close which was exciting. The kids were treated to a sunrise visit from dolphins who swam alongside TIKA pacing her starboard hull and jumping through the inky dawn sea…

Captain .R. Underpants is (annoyingly) one of those people who is good at pretty much everything he sets his mind to… but he WAS actually born into this world to sail a yacht and I don’t think anyone truly knows him until they witness him industriously checking and cross-checking weather charts, route planning, sail setting, sail tweaking, horizon checking and boat systems-maintaining. With the wind in his hair and salt spray on his face!…the kids and I gave up trying to keep up with Russ a long time ago but we are very grateful for his highly analysed and intelligent weather forecasting (he has been mapping the winds and rainfall of this area for many months) his ability to function with very little sleep, his drive and determination and his absolute competency as a skipper! Love ya captain undies!!!

You know that it’s time to wash your hair when a bird tries to nest in it! This little guy flew into the saloon when we were at least 20 miles from land…and perched straight onto my head as I was cooking dinner. And to the delight of Kai and Jaiya he stayed there as I finished cooking and even sat down to eat! Russ had to remove him… well I guess my hair is messy but we figured he must have been pretty tired not to care that I was moving about so much!..

We could clearly see the Columbian coast-line on the morning of our second day and as the day wore on we got a strong scent of the land (in my  mind it smelt like tobacco!) As we cruised passed the big, coastal city of Barrinquilla the water turned a muddy brown from mountain rainfall and the earthy smell got stronger. Welcome to Columbia!

We don’t really want to talk about our disastrous entry into Santa Marta Marina but in the interest of keeping this blog raw, real and honest: here it is.

We rubbed coming onto the fuel deck (no damage but we were all fairly stressed out).

Next. We attempted to leave the fuel dock with a 15-20knot cross breeze pinning us to the dock, wrapped a rope around our port prop and broke all 4 of our port engine mounts. Bloody. Hell. (I am afraid to say that the language was a tad stronger during and immediately after this character building event and we may have scarred our children for life..(or at the very least taught them how to curse like sailors)

As this is being written, we understand that the problem is, in fact ‘no problemo’ and we have new mounts being fabricated….. but initially we thought it may be a show-stopper and after 2 nights at sea we probably over-reacted and a few ‘moments ‘ were had by all 4 of us.

It felt like a while to our frazzled brains and battered egos, but it really was only a (miserable) hour or so before the marina mechanic assured us that he could replace the mounts. Next, the wind completely died out, we easily manoeuvred into our berth and our lovely neighbour greeted us with a glass of red wine (yes please!) and some traditional Columbian deep fried ‘platanitos’ (savoury banana chips)… the highs and lows of sailing!

We did a post mortem of the entry, determined to learn from the experience. The bottom line was that we allowed ourselves to be rushed. As we approached the marina we had planned to come into the wind, down the mainsail at a leisurely pace and take our own sweet time to get the boat ready (fenders out, lines on and decks tidied so we’re not tripping over ropes) Our plan was faultless- we approach super-slowly to check out the lay of the land (or marina) so we know where we are heading to fuel up and then get into our berth….we get super organised before taking a few deep breaths and then wandering in (this is our first entry into a marina on TIKA- the largest yacht we have sailed and the first catamaran so our plan allowed for our inexperience…)

But it wasn’t to be- the officious Marina dudes saw us coming and were out in their zodiac shouting “do you have a reservation?? how big are you?” and “O.K. right… Follow me!!”  before we had got our sail down or shaken out of our ‘out at sea’ stupor..

Instead of requesting time and letting them know we were nervous novices at manoeuvring a 55ft cat into a marina after limited sleep from our first ever passage on a new boat in a 15-20 knot breeze blowing us onto the dock…We smiled. And nodded. And headed in while frantically trying to get fenders and mooring lines out.

Fingers crossed the damage can be repaired and it won’t hold us up…we will pay a handsome ‘tuition fee’ for the new mounts but well worth it as next time we will be doing what we need to do. In our own time.

This is a series of raw clips from the passage….we wanted to reflect life on our boat so we didn’t do a lot of polishing on this one!

▶

JavaScript required to play this video.

coming soon…Santa Marta and an unforgettable trip to Peru!