Sailing to Columbia

Ok so I have a hell of a lot of info to squeeze in in not very much time, so I will try to get as much in as possible. I am sure that most of you have heard from me that are sailing trip was not as good as we had hoped. I do have a lot of funny stories from it though so I might have to fill you in on that when I get home. So here we go....

Joel, Myself, and are two aussie friends travelled with us to Portobelo in Panama to catch our boat. We met up with our Swedish Captain who was 73 and his 24 year old Columbian girlfriend... slightly odd. We followed them to the jetty to get the dinghy over to the ship. First impressions...the boat was smelly, damp, and there were 3 beds between 6 of us. hmmm....This should be interesting. He kept telling me that one of the beds was a double and I kept asking if it folded out....it didn't and was broken so it sloped toward the ground. Joel and I had to squeeze in top to toe and hold ourselves in all night.

The Captain then told us that we had to do nightwatch. We kinds though he was joking so just laughed, but he shortly said that we would be operating a warm bed policy. Basically, we all share beds... pretty disgusting when you want to get into bed and its soaking wet because the Captain has been sleeping and all the alcohol he has consumed is seeping out of his pores....yummo!!! He then tells us we cannot have our luggage in the cabin so he puts them in bin bags and straps them to the front of the boat, and tells us to keep an eye so that they don't fall off...riiiight. So we all try and ignore the smelly, dirty, damp, alcohlic captain, no bed thing and go and see what food he has bought for us and he tells us its the first time he has included food on a trip. So we rummage through the bags only to find 50 packets of Oreo cookies...thats it!!!!!

So we set sail, a little uncertain, but keen to get to San Blas, and lets face it we don't really have a choice as we have paid him already. He shortly explains nightwatch to us. In pairs, we will take 2, 2 hour shifts a night and sail his boat ALONE through thr night while he sleeps. Again a little baffled, a ask him how and he just says, follow the compass and watch of for boats, storms, and clouds. So I ask him.. "what do I do if I see a boat" and he just says "avoid it" ahahaha, and oh dear all at the same time.

Ok, so we get to San blas, its INCREDIBLY beautiful, just like in the pics. We spend 2 nights there and have a great time swimming with the dolphins and snorkelling and pretty much spending as much time away from the Captain and the boat as possible.

Right so we shortly run out of oreo cookies to eat, Joel and I are very seasick and we find out the only water we have to drink is discolured with big black bits in it. Even the captain says not to drink it as it will make us sick!! So basically from the on, no food, no water, shit captain who won't stop talking about Jesus, Prositute girlfriend who is weird, so beds AAAND he gets us lost out to sea! No No, that is not just it...we hit probably the worst storm I have ever seen in the nightime. No joke at all there was it was pissing with rain, lighting, waves crashing into the boat and the boats sail was not far off horizontal to the water. The Captain then throws a tantrum and says he is tired of sailing so if we don't go up there he will just turn off the engine, out to sea and we will drift and hit a barge!!!! AAAAAHHH, by this point I am pisssssed off, I scream at him to give me a rainjacket then and I will bloody well sail us to Columbia. He says he doesn'y have wont so I go up there in my bikini and do my best to stay standing, let alone steer the bloody boat. I sit there f-ing and blinding as loud as I could.

So the whole trip is meant to take 5 days. 8 days later we finally pull into Cartegena, about a stone lighter in weight and extremely dehyrdrated. I am actually surprised we could go that long without water. WE get in juuust at immigration is closing, so he tells us we have to spend another night on that shitty, smelly, no food, no water boat which we would be more than happy to burn right now...along with the captain. Oh yes, also our bags strapped to the boat were drenched...nic3e!

Anyway we are finally in Columbia, loving it. It seems like such a luxury to be on land. We have been to Cartegena which I loveeed and are now in Santa Marta and will be walking, crossing rivers through the jungle for 5 days tomorrow...eeeeek!

I hope your all en joying reading my blog and get a good laugh out of it!

Lots of love xxxxx