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Published: December 11th 2007
I’d bought a new rod and reel, I didn’t want to be catching whales, or anything bigger than I could eat, so I went for a medium size reel with 200m of 50lb line. I chose this reel because it has a little arm that swings back and forth, laying out the line as it’s reeled in. The old reel was slightly larger but I had to be guiding the line onto the reel with finger or thumb. This was exceedingly difficult when reeling in something substantial. Hey, even the little tunas fight like fury!
Anyway, the first time out with the new rig. 30 minutes or so later, I’m dozing off, and the line starts screaming out. There was just no way to wind in the tensioner. I tried to grab the line by hand. (still a little sleepy!) 3 weeks on and I still have a to-the-bone cut on the first joint of my index finger and pinky, fortunately the heat cauterised the cuts so no bleeding! ..some consolation….. Eventually the end of the line came and went. Without flinching the elaborately tied and secured line departed with a final flick.The empty spool kept spinning for 5 minutes,
mocking me all the way. The ratchet was burnt out, the reel wrecked!
What had it been? What could have been? In some ways just as well, altho’ I feel pretty awful about some giant tuna getting around with a new piercing and 200m of line hanging off it’s top lip……..but what was I going to do with a tuna the size of a Volkswagen. I’ve seen them in the market. They have to cut them up to carry them to shore!
Tomorrow I’m going looking for the BIG reel and 500m of 80lb line….. Maybe.
I put the old reel on the new rod and pulled in 5 nice tuna next day. Sashimi central. Situation normal.
Sailing down the coast of Venezuela and Colombia to Cartagena. A brief overnighter in Aruba, then a night at a rock in the middle of nowhere, Las Manjes. Twin volcanic plugs, side by side, suddenly sticking up in the middle of the ocean. Big, smooth plugs, white guano coated with a little lighthouse on top. It’s the last Venezuela outpost and they have blasted and bulldozed a wall across the gap between the two plugs making a sheltered mooring. A rope runs
across this little shelter and the yachts pull up and tie on. Looks like a row of horses tethered outside the bar in some Western movie. The Coast Guard send three of their finest to sign us in, or out(?) We offer them cigarettes and beer. Smiles all round…..bit of chit chat….30 men on the island. Where are they all?…it’s pretty small…they are divided between coast guard and lighthouse and do a 2 month on, 1 month off cycle…v isolated, so they are keen to talk and drink and smoke with us….
I took the ding over to a fisherboat and negotiated 7 good size lobster tails for a pack of Marlboro and 200 grand of useless (to us) Bolivars. Fresh lobster, lobster curry, hot lobster, cold lobster. Not really looking for too much more at the moment. But we are off to the San Blas islands in a couple of days and I reckon I will be able to face them again by then!
Just sailing along about 10 miles off the coast and a butterfly flounces into the cockpit, flits around in it’s puppety, jerky flight and heads off again…out to sea!! The next land that way
is 600 miles away…Was this some remedial butterfly? Did his friends call him ‘moth’ at school? Where did he think he was going? Interestingly, a few hours later a butterfly did the same thing but this time heading for shore! Could it have been the same one? Is this some weird migration pattern? Flutter north for the wet season?
We pulled in to another overnight bay at some small island in the middle of nowhere and managed to collect a fishnet. Coño! In the morning I spent an hour or so with the hooker and weights cutting it off. Unbelievably tightly wound around the prop. I’m covered in blue switches (from the anti foul) and rips and tears on arms and head from the barnacles. And then the negotiations with the fishermen….. Hey, but you didn’t have any lights…..Hey but we’re going to dob you in to the Customs….. We want 200 dollars for a new net……We’ll give you 50….and so on. Ultimately they left with $100 and another 200 grand of Bolivars, 2 T-shirts, a half-pack of Marlboro and some chocolate for the kids. I got 2 small lobsters. We were all happy with the outcome and in fact
it had been a cool sort of interaction…all v laid back.
Is it a byproduct of watching the Sopranos? I bought a box of Cubanos, Romeo and Juliets. Fine cigars. I’m smoking one a night or so. I keep the box in a plastic bag in the fridge on instructions from the cigar man in Curacao. The cigar box is next to the ziplok bag of fish. A little incongruous, or is that a juxtaposition? Whatever, which will affect the flavour of the other? Currently they exist independently.
The coast of Colombia as we get in closer is absolutely forbidding. Black basaltic rocks with an overlay of something more sedimentary. From a distance the furry green mountains drop down to the sea in almost vertical plunges…and then continue on down. In the last half mile approaching the coast the bottom went from nearly 1,000m to 100m v quickly.
Out back are some serious mountains. Over 5,000m I think. Snow capped even. Altho’ this is not unusual with snow capped mountains at Merida south of here and Cotapaxi at 5900m is almost right on the equator in Ecuador and has always-snow.
The vegetation is lush and thick. It’s only right at
the edge where the rocks are exposed and the big swells pound into the shoreline. Just no way you could ever land a boat on most of this coast. From several miles out I watch the huge swells sweeping under us and hurtling on to thrash themselves against the rocks. I can see the waves crashing onto the rocks. Well, actually what I can see is great walls of spray rising up, metres into the air, hanging for ever. Don’t go there…..occasional settlements on the flatter coast…oil refinery, a bunch of battery boats harvesting electricity from a giant wind farm…only 15 towers but I can see them from 10 miles out…enormous…
Then a set of bays. We take the 3rd on the left. It’s ‘5 Bays’. The third is the preferred. Goes in about a kilometre and gives us relief from the relentless surging swells that have been rolling under us all night.
Ah, the Night Shift! We are only 2 so with a couple of overnight sails we started a 4 hour shift regime. I took the midnight to 4am the first night as that seems to suit me. So, sleep 8 - 12, on watch 12 - 4,
sleep 4 - 8 etc etc.
It must be that basic survival instincts are sharpened by the solitude and the heightened awareness of impending death. So thoughts inevitably turn to the most powerful basic instincts (after Breathing and Drinking)…...Sex and Food……planning menus, mentally going thru the pantry, designing lavish spreads, snacks, conjuring up images of past experiences, ideas whirling….then snapped back to reality…where are we?…what’s going on?…check the instruments….ah, another half hour has slipped by! The time actually goes by much faster on night watch than day watch…well, for me anyway!
I’m setting myself little targets to get thru the night. At 1am I’ll have a cup-o-soup, at 2am a coffee and bun, at 3am some cold chicken and at 4am a shot of rum to sleep on.
A couple of nights later we had another overnight sail down to Cartagena and ran into some strong winds that had us flying at up to 11.5 knts. The huge red spinnaker, Big Red, must be about 2 or 3 acres in size, bulging out of it’s skin, hauling 24 tonnes across the water at this speed, incredible. It imbues everything with a red hue, the topsides and even down into
the water. It has attracted our dolphin friends again. Grinning inanely and frolicking inches off the bows, plunging down, leaping out, always a cheerful diversion.
Ah, and the sunsets. Always that bit of something extra in a sunset at sea. Waiting for the green flash. Yes, my dearest, there are still people taking it seriously! I kid you not.
But nonetheless, a sunset this night of exquisite design and colour, texture too. No camera could ever do it justice. The enormity of the canvas, it encompasses the entire sky. Really mind boggling. Gives me a shiver down the spine like some Paul Kelly song that just reaches right inside your chest.
And then the long night, this time I’m on 8 - 12 and then 4 - 8am…slipping quietly past the hordes of pirates lurking in their hidey holes……yeah, right…. Lights of occasional towns onshore. A quarter moon gives plenty of visibility but still I’m scanning the horizon and the radar and the GPS nav system, constantly monitoring speed, direction, anxiety levels, bowel gripping glimpses of huge tankers approaching…they all miss!..more cups-o-soup, cold chicken and coke (as in coca cola), tea and bikkies, rum……menus on menus and, of course,
the mind wandering over all manner of other things!!…..
Ah Cartagena againa…we’re approaching right on dawn, a Hendrixian purple haze, turning pinker, the first glowing red orb of sun rises slowly over a low hill like molten steel, the only time you can look right at the sun without having the green dot for hours. The redness of the sun is uncanny, all powerful, an unearthly intensity of redness…..certainly much more worth bowing down and supplicating in front of than most religious icons!
The city skyline is colourless grey and hazy. Looks like the bottom row of Tetris, I’m waiting for the blocks to fall, rotating, from the sky, to fill the gaps.
Cartagena is a pretty city, row of high rises around the bay and along the malecon where the main beaches and toury hotels are.
Again I’m struck with the differences in view, understanding and interaction between the land traveller and the boat world. It gets me every time I’m visiting somewhere in the boat where I’d previously been on moto….such a different view, almost a totally different city!..and the people I meet…
There are 2 marinas in the bay, a couple of hundred cruisers, a few navy
vessels, the local fisherpeople, motor launches of the rich and famous, cigar boats, the odd gin palace……, we’ve parked out in the harbour, right next to the container wharf which has been endlessly entertaining (?)
The nearest marina, Club Nautico, is pretty cool, nice little bar, laundry and the usual assembly of old yachties, locals offering all sorts of cleaning and maintenance services…and it’s always good to catch up with friends from previous stops.
So it’s almost Christmas and do they go for it here……more tinsel, plastic santas and flashing lights than most places…don’t know what the natives make of it but after 500 years I guess they feel it’s ok…..the balconies of the high rises all festooned in lights and tinsels and santas…gardens chockers with plastic jesus nativity scenes, even the boat next to us has a sheet of lights hanging from the boom, the erratically flashing patterns hypnotise me thru the hatch…
I’m doing a leg of lamb (local and really really good) it’s on the BBQ hanging out the back….a coast guard cutter is circling, they are sniffing the air…they’ve got the sniffer dogs out…where is that roast lamb we can smell…they’re getting closer!!…should I set a
few more places?….they pull away, frustrated and disappointed….and I found more fresh mint, lovely spuds, brokky, punkin, gravy..jajaja……
Now it’s almost over….I’ve been shopping the last few days…..I reckon I’ve got enough food onboard to last us 6 months but it will be 4 weeks to Colon and much will run out or rot away…v difficult to keep fruit and veges…..the port forward cabin looks like a green grocers stall…pineapples, avocados, bananas, plantains, mangoes, avocados, mandarinos, pawpaws, pumpkins, spuds, carrots, limes and other stuff I can’t remember….and the fridges and freezer also full up……don’t know where we’ll be for the 25th…probably in the San Blas islands…..I decided against the turkey option…
So, last gasp…no more internet until Colon, Panama around the 7 Jan. I’m flying to Havana Cuba on the 9th and back on the 8 Feb.
M has 2 buddies coming aboard on the 14 Jan, I think, for 6 months or so…also 2 friends from Canada are coming down for a month in Jan…..I don’t know where the boat will be when I get back from Cuba but I expect still in Colon and ready to transit the Canal and then off to the Galapagos etc….looks like
I’ve committed to the crossing……
So, Feliz Navidad to you all…have a safe and happy festive season…
Love to you all, at least the ‘peace on earth and goodwill to man’ thing isn’t too bad?
Here’s some pix…..
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