Sailing - Caribbean Sea (Part II)

The sail was far from problem-free. Hearing what happened to the other boats, we quickly realised that things could easily go wrong out on the sea in a small boat. It did certainly not help that our boat was a floating dump, which lacked maintenance in most ways. Normally when a boat is not well maintained, it only lacks a bit of paint or cleaning but on this particular boat, things that were not absolutely necessary to make it to Cartagena were not functional at all. In addition to the paint and cleaning that is.

However, after sailing four days along the coast, we decided to cross the ocean to get to Cartagena faster as the wind direction made it possible.

During the trip, we managed to rip two sails, which made it difficult to go with full speed. When the second sail ripped, it did it in such a way that the line holding it up disappeared up in the mast and got stuck. We therefore had to rely a lot on the engine.

Unfortunately, it was no longer possible to check how much diesel was left in the two tanks due to broken gages. The captain had to check the levels with a stick but as they were somewhat cone-shaped we thought it would be almost impossible to estimate the level of the fuel. When the first tank almost finished and the captain wanted to switch to the second, the tank was broken and all the diesel had leaked out. We only found this out later as his official story was that the diesel in the second tank was dirty and could not be used. I guess the captain was worried and did not want to cause panic as the three extra people on board had made food and water supplies very low. We therefore had to cross the sea on half sail with unfavourable wind and with no engine, doing about two knots to saving diesel in order to be able to get to the nearest island with a diesel pump. With a bit more unfavourable wind, we could easily have drifted around on the ocean for a couple of days without engine.

For this reason, the captain was eager to get the front sail to work. He was in fact so keen that he wanted to get winched up in the mast to get the line down, during the journey at open sea. The waves were not merciful and at the top of the mast, the oscillations were severe. Not knowing the seriousness of the situation, we thought it could wait until we anchored outside the island but the captain got up in the mast anyway. In the current weather, the task was also too difficult and he came down in pain after having hit his ribs towards the mast halfway up.

We sailed during all night taking shifts to steer the boat as the autopilot was broken and it had to be steered manually and finally arrived to the island in the afternoon next day. After stocking up on diesel (the captain had only dollars so he was ripped off by the locals on the exchange rate when buying diesel, he was not too happy at that point), we sailed through the night again and arrived to Cartagena at mid-day on the eight day at sea.

As if the problems were never going to stop, one hour before us a super cruiser with 1500 passengers arrived to the port in Cartagena (it sailed past us on the way in) making the customs clearance difficult as they had a mountain with passports to go through before serving us. We had to leave our passports to the captain and get them back the next day. A bit worrying as it was difficult to recall anything that the captain had said since we departed that actually had come true. Fortunately I got my passport back the next day. With the stamp. Viva Colombia.

Below follows some various pictures from the latter part of the sailtrip, until arriving in Cartagena.