When I'm lying down, I still feel the
rocking of the waves ...
All too soon, however, the boat trip
from Cartagena, Colombia to Porvenir, Panama will cease to be a body
memory, though in all other ways the memory of this lovely journey
will stay with me for a long time.
This is what I wrote a couple of days ago in Panama City, fresh off the boat. Already that prediction has come true: now, in the quiet town of El Valle, only about 100km from busy Panama City, the ocean seems worlds away. I better finish writing about it, then, so that I can move on to other things.
We had booked a trip on the beautiful
72-foot 'Vanett' through the 'Blue Sailing' agency in Cartagena a
couple of months ago. Ever since we first heard about it from two
Australians in Peru seven years ago Johann had wanted to do this, but
it took a considerable amount of time to convince me that this was
indeed a good idea. The first thing I found when looking for
information was the recounting of a pirate attack on a small yacht,
not the kind of experience I wanted to subject myself to. When we
visited Cartagena in the spring of 2018 we stopped by the 'Blue
Sailing' office, where not only we got all the information we needed
but my fears were finally dispelled. Thus the plan to have this be
part of this year's travels was born.
When I wrote last we were sitting on
the balcony of the hostel in Cartagena, waiting to take our luggage
to the boat and meet our captain. We found that we were in easy
walking distance to 'Club Nautico' and didn't need a taxi, and at a
quarter to six we shouldered our packs, crossed the bridge and turned
right to walk along the water until we reached the marina. Still
trying to figure out how to get to our boat we heard 'Vanett' behind
us: a young couple from Australia was looking, too, and together we
wandered in the direction we were pointed to at the gate, soon joined
by a couple of girls from Germany and the Netherlands. We found the
Vanett moored in her place at the end of the dock, quietly rocking in
the near-dark. Captain Tahsin awaited us on board, together with
Rengin, his wife, Turkish-American both of them, and Zoe and Juan,
the young crew. Within the next fifteen minutes the rest of the
passengers arrived: a couple from Croatia, another one from the
Netherlands, yet another Dutch girl and a man from Germany, all but
the latter at most the age of our kids. Except for Tahsin we were the
oldest by far. Right away we could see that this would, once again,
not matter at all.
Once we were all assembled on deck we
were shown our beds one by one. When we booked and asked for a
private cabin we didn't know that we'd be the privileged ones who got
the master bedroom, the bed huge, even with a private bathroom, the
room with the most stowage space, too, thus used for the many bottles
of drinking water needed for the journey. Besides ours, in the back
(or stern, or aft), there were three more, smaller cabins with two
beds – two of those with bunks -, one more single one, and the
three remaining people slept on benches and mattresses in the
'salon', the main cabin that, if the boat were privately used, would
be the dining/living room under deck. Tahsin, Rengin, Zoe and Juan
found sleeping space where they could, often on the benches beside
the wheel.
We weren't going to leave before
sometime between midnight and two in the morning, we were told, when
the current was right, and were sent off to do some shopping or have
a meal somewhere in the neighbourhood. Beer was one of the things on
the shopping list for several of us, some needed snacks, but the
meals, we were assured, would be sufficient to keep us well fed.
While we were waiting for our food at a
restaurant – an interminable wait until it finally appeared after
almost an hour – I was starting to feel a bit strange, and when the
food finally arrived I found myself unable to eat it. Not a good omen
...
Back on the boat I soon disappeared
under deck, grateful for the spacious cabin and the little fan. I was
not feeling well at all. Somewhere I had done what I almost always
have been able to avoid during our travels, contrary to Johann, who
is so often afflicted: I picked up a stomach bug. Nevertheless I fell
asleep soon. Sometime in the middle of the night I woke to the rumble
of the engine. A glance at my watch told me that it was shortly after
three, later than expected – and then the rumble quit, and once
again the quieter noise of the generator prevailed. Unable to rouse
myself enough to question this too much I fell asleep again. What a
surprise, then, when we found ourselves in the morning exactly where
we had been at night: moored still, all quiet. It turned out that there was a problem with the electrical system, and Tahsin had left messages with both the mechanic and the electrician as soon as he noticed in the middle of the night. They both arrived fairly early in the morning, and several times throughout the day the engine started, ran for an hour or so and was shut off again.Once,
early in the afternoon, we even left port, but turned around again
after an hour because things were still not working as they should.
It took most of the day until they were satisfied that the problems were taken care of. Now all that was needed was to wait for the current to be right at night again. 
All
obstacles removed, we were on our way sometime during the night, and
whenever I woke I felt the heaving and rocking of the waves, even
though I was still sick and would remain so for much of the day not
an unpleasant feeling at all. Seasickness, I think I can safely say
now, is not a problem for either one of us. We hadn't assumed it to
be, but of course there is only one way to find out, and the sea was
rough enough that only very few of our fellow passengers were not
affected at all. I had bought the suggested anti-seasickness
medication, just in case. Being on deck in the fresh air and wind
proved to help me to feel better, and we sat and watched the dipping
and rising of the nose of our boat while it made its way toward the
calmer waters around the San Blas islands.
We
had expected this trip to be a sailing trip, with the motor as a
backup, but it soon became clear that, at least during this trip, the
sails would be for ornamental purposes mostly, in fact would be
lowered for most of the journey. With the San Blas islands the main
focus of the trip (something else we hadn't realized) we needed to
get there in as short a time as possible, and we had lost a lot of
time waiting for the boat to be fixed. Also, Rengin – a capable
sailor like Tahsin – explained, we just entered the windy season
and didn't have enough wind to make good speed yet. Later in the
season that will change, presumably.
 |
| Tahsin at the helm |
For a while the sails aided the
engine, and the currents were so much in our favour that not only did
we catch up, but made the crossing in record time, 29 hours. The
average time is about 33 hours, and it can take up to 36.
Once
while I was still sick a couple of dolphins came playing beside the
boat, and now, nearing the islands, another pair appeared and kept us
company for a while. Other than that the only animals we saw during
the crossing was a moth, clinging to the back of the captain's chair
for much of the journey, and, twice, a butterfly, appearing seemingly
out of nowhere, gone again just as fast. Gulls, then, were the first
sign that we were about to reach land, and soon after, about 10:30 or
eleven in the morning, the first palm trees appeared in the distance.
We could see several small islands, most of them seemingly
uninhabited, gems with white sand, surrounded by turquoise water. The
waves became wavelets as soon as we had entered the protection of the
reef. We had arrived. Rengin carefully steered us close to one of the
islands, and Tahsin dropped the anchor: time for the first swim.
Suddenly even the people with the palest faces had regained their
colour, the ones that had spent the whole crossing under deck
appeared again: the ordeal was over - time for fun!
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