FROM BEAUTIFUL SAN BLAS, ONWARDS…
18 May 2008
Current position: 24 34 25 N
Key West, Florida 81 48 27 W

And so on the 11th of March, we upped anchor from Snug Harbour in the eastern San Blas Islands, having said our goodbyes to Maverick, Pangea and Song Line, and set out for Cartagena, Colombia. It was a beat to windward for 3 and a half days, with it’s difficult moments, but we arrived in Cartagena at 0730 hours, 14th March to find our friends from Finistere and Sucre, laying peacefully at anchor in the bay. The trip served to reinforce our feelings about Aphrodite and her ability, or severe lack of it, to make passage to windward; an item that will feature at the top of our shopping list for our next boat! We anchored off Club Nautico (and for those of you heading that way), it is charming and ramshackle, but a very warm welcome is given and lots of information proffered regarding local services - it would seem that everything is available in Cartagena. With a good aerial, Wi-fi is also available at anchor - pay John at Club Nautico. Colombia insists that cruisers employ the services of an Agent to check into the country - but it was cheap ($60-00 in total for in and out) and efficient. Later that morning our friends Celeste and Gary on Solsurfin arrived and so naturally a party was in order.
Cartagena has a wonderful walled ‘old-city’ that is a World Heritage site and is beautiful. We spent much our of time in Cartagena wandering around this intriguing place with its amazing architecture and the surrounding forts. Towards the end we hauled Aphrodite at Club de Pesca, for a bottom clean and re-packed our stern gland. The marina offers a 48 hour haul-out deal. You drive into a submerged cradle which they then hydraulically lift out of the water. 2008 prices $180-00 (US) for 48 hours. Before we knew it we had spent almost 4 weeks in Cartagena and needed to start making our way across the Caribbean - we have to be in North Florida by early June.
On 11th April we said our goodbyes again and set out for Grand Cayman - 699 miles north east of Colombia. Our forecast for the first 3 days was winds 15 - 23 knots and seas 12 - 15 feet at 5 seconds! We knew it was going to be bumpy!! We made very little headway during the first few hours - celebrating when we saw 3 knots on the GPS! The problem was the closeness of the seas, 12 to 15 feet seas in essence aren’t a problem at 12 - 14 seconds, but at 5 - 7 seconds, they made for a constant ‘stop/start’ bash that saw us taking a lot of water over the decks. Aphrodite tried really hard, but just couldn’t keep up her momentum in those conditions. Regardless, we plodded on and as darkness fell I checked our bilge (a little weakness of mine) to find it very full of water. Alarmed I drew Paul’s attention to the problem who immediately checked all the seacocks only to find nothing leaking. By this point I was using our huge manual bilge pump and was just keeping pace with whatever was coming in from wherever. Naturally it was dark - it always is when problems identify themselves, and I was all for turning back - 60 miles from Cartagena, 630 from Grand Cayman seemed like a no-brainer to me but Paul for the time being wanted to continue. Long story short, we were heeled hard over on port tack (for 8 days as it turned out) and our electric bilge pump, which we had used briefly earlier, had somehow vacuumed when we switched it off and had reversed it’s purpose, pumping gallons on water INTO our boat. We isolated the pump, I emptied the bilge with the hand-pump and we regained our status quo. The wind was howling and the seas up and so I finally gave in to not standing watch in the cockpit and we both relaxed below, maintaining our 20 minute ‘look-see’s’ for shipping.
By our fourth day, the seas subsided to around 6 - 8 feet and the wind dropped a little but also veered slightly more to the east, allowing us to ease off a little and picking our speed up to around 5 knots. By day five, things had eased a little more the seas down to around 5 feet, 15 - 20 knots of easterly wind and we were cruising along between 7 and 8 knots, sun shinning, happy faces!!! The best sailing we had had for some time, all four sails set - 270 miles to Grand Cayman. Then the wind died. We decided we would engine on through the night, hoping that we would have more wind in the morning. During the night we clogged 3(!!!!!) racor filters at $36-00 a filter, changed them all out and switched off the engine - at this rate we could have flown there for less. We continued to sail, with the wind dropping off, as we neared Cayman. At 0100 on the 17th of April I called up Port Security (we had just passed inside their 12 mile limit) to inform them or our anticipated dawn arrival. They took details of our boat, gave us a lat/long of the buoy they wished us to tie up to, informed us that we were in the middle of 5 cruise ships also all heading towards George Town with a similar ETA and suggested that we keep a sharp look- out!!!
0800 hours on 17th April on a beautiful sunny, but once again, very windy morning, we secured to our FREE mooring buoy off George Town in 20 feet of crystal water and radioed Port Security to confirm our arrival.
699 nautical miles (all to windward)
189.5 hours
21.2 engine hours
In Grand Cayman you are not allowed to leave your boat until checked in, and due to the 5 cruise ships in port that day, we were not called until 1600 hours. For anyone intending heading that way, check in is free, very efficient and friendly and you are allowed to remain on the FREE (!!!) buoy for as long as you like - within reason. It is also possible to anchor, but you must notify Port Security of your intended lat/long for approval. The waters around the boat were full of coral and just standing on the side decks we could see sizeable and colourful fish.
We spent a very relaxing 9 days in Grand Cayman - very odd to be in an ‘English-speaking’ country for the first time in 18 months.
We had thought hard and long about our next stop - Cuba - we really wanted to spend a week or two there, but knew that potentially it could cause us real problems on our entry into the USA. Although George hasn’t banned ‘foreigners’ from entering the USA from Cuba, he has introduced very stringent policies to discourage Americans from visiting Cuba - including fines of up to $250,000-00 and/or imprisonment. I had called US Customs when we were in Colombia to double-check whether we would be breaking any laws, as non-Americans, by coming to the USA from Cuba. He confirmed that we were not committing an illegal act but that we would very probably undergo a heavy-duty check in once we reached Key West.
We decided that we could live with that and so set out for Maria La Gorda, Cuba on
26th April 2008. We set off on a gusty wind with one reef in the main and the mizzen and staysail, just off the wind and so expected a slightly easier passage. We had read all sorts of conflicting information regarding Cuba - we would be boarded 12 miles out, had to have copious amounts of paperwork available, if not boarded then had to call the Guarda Frontera as soon as we entered Cuban waters which, depending upon which book or website you read were anything from 12 to 25 miles off. There is still very little information available regarding Cuba, even Noonsite doesn’t carry correct information. We did come to find, after our arrival, that Nigel Calder has written a GREAT cruising guide to Cuba, a copy of which was very generously given to us by an English cruising couple (Jeffery and Jerry on Katinka) and really is a must for anyone considering cruising Cuba. We left Grand Cayman with a lat/long for the marina at Maria La Gorda (the ‘Fat Prostitute!’) still not knowing quite what we would find there. There is in fact, no marina, no buoys, just an anchorage off a diving resort, in a lovely bay, in, once more, absolutely crystal clear waters where you can still clearly see the corals and fish in the 30 feet we dropped anchor in. We had repeatedly called the Guarda Frontera through the night as we approached Cuba, but raised no response. As we closed Maria La Gorda the next morning I continued to call the Guarda. Hearing nothing I then put out a call for ‘Any Vessel’ and got a response from the English sailing boat Katinka, who informed us that our lat/long was good but that there was no marina, just an anchorage. We dropped anchor, tried to raise the officials one more time and then gave up. It was 0800 hours, 29th April 2008, 245 nautical miles from Grand Cayman.
Katinka arrived back in the anchorage and told us to expect a ‘boat load’ of officials at any time, and so we relaxed and waited. When we dropped our anchor the water was like a mirror, by the time the dive boat arrived with the 8 (possibly 9, I can’t clearly remember) officials the surface had picked up to quite a chop, so much so that we had to remove our solar panel in order for the dive boat to come alongside safely and disgorge it’s cargo of ‘officials’ on to our boat. Not knowing quite what to expect, from the various information we had been able to garner prior to heading to Cuba, I had decided it might be prudent to ply them with home-made chocolate cake and had got the oven on as soon as we had dropped anchor. We had read all sorts of things about people arriving in Cuba and being turned away, straight back out to sea - our anchor was down and I wanted it to stay that way for at least 24 hours!
So we had, the ‘Resort’ manager - a lovely lady who had come along as translator and general organiser. A doctor, female, to make sure that Paul and I were free of scurvy and the pox! An Agricultural Advisor, to check every bean, lentil and grain of rice on board, along with vegetables, fruit and anything else edible that he might potentially be able to confiscate for himself! A vet, a Port Captain, a Custom’s Agent with a lovely drug dog, and a security guard to make sure that we didn’t try and give anything nice to any of the officials. By now the boat had a good rock on with the building chop and I was starting to get a little concerned about how the dive boat was going to get back alongside us to remove Tom Cobley and all without clouting and damaging us, when the first of our officials started to feel sea-sick. Small mercies eh? Within 15/20 minutes most of them were ready to part with their breakfasts and my fudge brownies (all of which were devoured in record time) and were quite happy to leave without too much fuss - although we were left with a mountain of paperwork, and instructions to head ashore within the next 10 minutes to pay various officials, various amounts of money.
They returned ashore and we followed to a ‘wet landing’ Cuba is expensive to check into - all those officials! Outside of Guatemala it’s the most expensive place we’ve checked into. The resort was much like any other dive resort I’ve been too - we were initially surprised to see so many Americans there, and on talking to them, discovered that they leave the States for somewhere like Cayman or Cancun and then come to Cuba - where they don’t stamp anyone’s passport - and then return to the USA the same way. We spent four relaxing days there doing very little and then left for Havana on 4th May, my birthday.
The trip to Havana was approximately 260 nautical miles (as the crow flies) and we anticipated around 2 to 3 days with the current we expected to get once we had rounded the south west peninsula. It was, once again, however, all going to be to wind. Our first 24 hours saw us make 42 miles!!!! This was going to be a pain. Day 2 saw us in the Florida Straits, close to Cuba, tacking across the shipping lanes and a line wrapped around our prop! We argued who would go over the side mid ocean to cut it off. My argument was that I should as if anything went wrong, Paul was more able to haul me back aboard than I would be able to him, but in the end he won out with, ‘if I let you do that and something awful happened, your Mother would NEVER forgive me.‘ We had to dump all sail and even then were unable to stop the boat but Paul got into the deep blue, wearing a harness and line that I gripped as if his life depended on it! In the end it was all very easy and he was back on board in less than 15 minutes, warmed up, dried off, we got the sails back up and continued on our very frustrating way. We were sailing well - from side to side!!! In the first three days (72 hours) we had sailed 269 miles and had actually made 76 in the direction we wanted to go!! By day 4 the wind altered slightly making it even harder to make Havana, but giving us a good course for Key West, Florida - my mind was made up - I just had to convince Paul that Havana was always going to be there. So we agreed, altered course for Key West putting us on a tack crossing just east of the shipping lanes due west of Havana. It was late afternoon, I’m contemplating the culinary delights I’m going to conjure up from the galley now that we are on an easier tack, when my ‘bilge-a-phobia’ creeps up on me and I take a peek. We are FULL TO THE TOP - the worst I have ever seen it. So much so that I get out my biggest saucepan and start bailing. Paul as usual is all casual and relaxed - which personally I find hugely irritating when the boat’s filling up with water! I emptied the majority of the bilge and started searching for potential leak sources. I’d had my suspicions regarding the stern gland since we (that’s Paul) repacked it in Colombia and concentrated my search there. It was dripping as it should be, but then, in the torch beam I saw a ‘gush’ of water run in along the side. Not knowing where this could be coming from I handed over to Paul who traced it back to the starboard cockpit locker and the cockpit drain. We opened the locker and I was horrified to see the remnants of the pipe hanging on by a corroded jubilee clip. The pipe split and water gushing through as we pounded - for once it was daylight! We tacked to get the inlet above the waterline and then Paul set about temporary measures - we didn’t have a piece of pipe of sufficient length to replace the rotted piece so Paul turned it around, the opposite end still in reasonably good condition and then jammed a bung into the open end. - giving me something else to examine every 30 seconds for the next 24 hours!!!! While this was on going we had a little encounter with two container ships zeroing in on us as they exited the eastbound shipping lane. Calling them both as Merchant Vessels at position, etc, etc, I informed them that we were undertaking repairs to our vessel and were unable to alter our course and would they please take avoiding action. Neither responded, and so on Paul’s advice I issued a Securite to which the US Coast Guard responded, but neither of the vessels, then much to my relief one made an abrupt course alteration and passed behind us, the other continued on his collision course and I spilled the main and attempted to bear away behind him while Paul laboured in the starboard locker. Thankfully, at what seemed like the last possible moment, the damn boat seemed to understand the situation and suddenly piled on the revs, passing ahead of us, by not much! 24 hours later we made our way into Key West where we happily dropped our anchor - now all we had to do was get through US Customs and Immigration - we knew it wouldn’t be easy. For the last 24 hours we had had a non-stop fruit/cheese/egg/veg fest. We had stocked up on the above as we expected supplies in Havana to be thin on the ground and so had left Grand Cayman with a full fridge and freezer. Having aborted our trip to Havana we now had a stash of produce that we either had to eat or dump.
We dropped our anchor at Fleming Quay in Key West at 1230 hours, 9th May 2008 and headed ashore to notify Customs and Coast Guard, expecting a full shake-down. Following instructions we telephoned Customs, and, to our amazement were told to call back the following day around mid-day as there was no-one available to check us in!!! We were astonished. Thankfully I asked the officer for his name, made a note of it and said that we would call back. We wandered around Key West, reminiscing about our trip here three years previously when we had been looking for a sail boat and an adventure. The following day we called Customs and Immigration, as instructed at mid-day, and were requested to come to the airport for check-in. Right up to the point where they asked us where we had come from I was going to say Cuba, I fully intended to tell the truth. The question came and all of a sudden I heard myself say Grand Cayman, I think I was more surprised than Paul. Anyway, once again, long story short, I think the officials wanted to get off as much as we wanted to get away and so there was no real probing. They were, I think, a little embarrassed that we had entered the United States of America 24 hours earlier and had been told to check back the next day! Not only that, but when I gave them the name of the officer that had told us to come back the next day, they revealed that it was their boss - the head of Customs and Immigration! So much for 9/11.
And that just about brings us up to date. We’ve been relaxing between replacing pipes and bilge pumps oh, and I forgot, had our diesel polished when 12 hours out of Key West we discovered gallons of salt water in both of our diesel tanks. We think that with the beating of the last 1000 miles we have taken seawater into our fuel tank vents. We found a diesel polisher and spent one night in a marina in Key West - $120-00 for one night!!! We were soon back out an anchor and, the following morning. woke to a lovely surprise. To those of you that know them, we awoke to find Kurt and Agatha and their son and family, anchored right next to us! We really had not expected to see them again since leaving Panama and so were delighted. They are now heading for Virginia where they will be putting their boat on the market, and we for Fort Lauderdale/Fort Pierce and then starting our Atlantic crossing towards Europe.