Here we come (back)!
Yalçın recorded a short video as we took off from LA and jokingly called it season 3. I guess that must be it. The first season was our fast way down the coast, mostly of Mexico and before our forced slow down due to my injury. Season 2 was the painfully slow past year in the rainy tropical doldrums, with the low mobility injury times, our two months waiting for the cruising permit at the entrance of Panama, and the failed attempt to cross the canal because of a last minute covid followed by a month of travel abroad to finally transit the canal and work (and wait for bottom paint) for a month in the yard. In short, a lot of "adventures" but very little miles - at least compared to our 3500 nm of "season 1" during which 150-250 nm sails weren't uncommon - not even scary...
I'll be honest, the full year spent sailing 600 nm has taken a toll, especially on Yalçın. Don't get me wrong, we are both sailors and love sailing, we both appreciate the sense of beauty of a well-balanced sailboat powering through the sea propelled by the sole force of the elements and we both find peace when making progress on the large navionics chart of the world, but… And I know you expect a "but" after so much lyricism… Yalçın is here to make miles and develop his sailing skills when I am the traveler of the couple. So, overall, I may have suffered less for that much lingering, while suffering first hand the Archille's tendon injury! Anyway, long story short, we are eager for this season 3 which is hopefully going to mean being back to this more intense sailing mode that fulfilled us for the first 6 months - it may also mean more regular blogs since we may finally have things to say again. It is still summer, which means hurricanes are passing by in the Caribbean sea just North of us, and that means we may still have to make some long stopover on our way as obviously, we don't want to enter this hurricane zone before the end of the hurricane season (can go up to November), but here is the tentative plan - emphasis on 'tentative', after 1.5 years of cruising!!
Our goal is to reach the Caribbean leeward and windward islands, more or less the string of little islands that extend in the eastern side of the Caribbean. Problem: the wind blows mostly from the east, meaning against us if we want to sail to those islands. And winds again you, means a hard navigation as a sailboat cannot directly go into the wind. That's all for the theoretical sailing for today though, let's do geography instead! We would keep going east in northern Panama to reach a short stretch of coast in Colombia, probably entering the country in the famously beautiful Carthagena, stopping in Santa-Marta and launching from there for the ABC islands - aka the Dutch indies or something like that as they used to be Dutch colonies. Now independent countries, successive stopovers in Aruba, Curaçao and Bonaire (they are not alphabetically ordered, it would be too neat!) could help us creep our way against the wind (and current… our favorite!) towards our goal while finally getting out of the zone we currently are where summer are filled with daily heavy - I mean drenched heavy - rain. We would then follow our way East to eventually reach Grenada and Santa Lucia, officially windward islands I believe (which means we would have reached our upwind goal! Fingers crossed!) where Yalçın could start the process of applying for a visa to visit the French Caribbean Islands of Guadeloupe, Martinique and Saint-Barthelemy. Ain't it ironic that the islands of the country I reside in are the hardest for Yalçın to get a visa for and the country he resides in is the hardest for me… Now you know the plan but once again, the dedicated formula is something along the lines of cruising plans being written in the sand - some even add at low tide to stress on the fact that they are very very likely to change. Administrative, sailing and health constraints may decide otherwise, but for now, as we fly back from Los Angeles to Panama City, we are quite motived by the idea that season 3 is about to begin!
