With a prayer to the wind Gods (and a careful look at weather predictions) we fueled Volpaia, readied our sails, secured anything that could possibly move, provisioned, checked fluids, pumps, belts...pre-cooked & froze meals, tied down everything, covered hatches, sealed, stuffed, tucked & tidied. And set sail with Bruce, Veronica and our newest crew, Romain (pronounced Romaine like the lettuce... which coincidentally, he has never heard of). Romain is a young rock climbing, sailing, new graduate of finance and friend of the owner of our boat who needed an adventure, so he joined us for almost a month of sailing from Panama. We were planning to head for the San Blas then South to Cartagena, Columbia in order to get a good wind angle; however, the weather charts seemed to show a window that, if it
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