Sailing one of the top 5 most dangerous seas

After spending 3 months in Curacao it is finally time to move on to one of our most anticipated destinations yet Colombia!

One of the first things I would like to mention is that there is scant reliable information for this passage.

However, It's one of the 5 most dangerous passages in the world we are told. I scanned all the documents I could find to substantiate this but wasn't able to really pinpoint the problem accurately.

I concluded that the issue was to do with the rapid shallowing out of the sea bed to the west of Aruba right up to Santa Marta, coupled with what appears to be an acceleration zone for winds along that coast. There are also issues with any southerly winds forecast and probably some occasional katobatic winds too off the mountains close to the coast.

I spotted on the Internet a story of how to navigate to Colombia by shore hugging and stopping along the way. However, we decided to forget that idea and elect for an offshore route, as I decided that the strong winds might not be favourable at that time to do that safely given the shallow areas present on that route.

We planned to leave Curaçao on Sunday 1st July, but because the winds on the Thursday looked unfavourable, (which would be our arrival day) we decided to leave earlier on the Saturday instead. We scurried to prepare and provision the boat for sea and booked Joseph, a local diver to scrape the Hull etc. Who we would very much recommend, his number in Curaçao is +5999 514 5765

We set off from the anchorage in the Spanish waters at 13.00hr local. After clearing the entrance, we decided to just use the Genoa as the downwind component was good and the main would probably be a pain with setting up the preventers and blocking the genoa, plus each leg was fairly short as well.

I plotted a course NW from Curaçao keeping Aruba well to out port side. We sailed out 100 miles in this direction cog 329 degrees before bearing left and tacking to parallel the mainland. 172 nm cog 269 degrees. In truth, we cut the corner but then held true our new plotted course until we nearly reached our second way point and cut the corner again.

Our plotted Way point 2 to 3 was 128 nm and 222 degrees cog, however, it was becoming apparent to me the the forecast wind strength was a tad low and we also encountered 50 kt squalls and the odd thunderstorm that we weren't expecting. We put the nav tablets and phones in the oven a couple of times for safety, but thankfully we weren't struck by lightning.

This is when I decided that our approach angle given the direction of the wind and the waves was more important than anything else. My biggest concern was the possibility of very short steep waves near Santa Marta and high winds.

We get our weather direct to the Satphone from Stephanie at MeteoGib.com who provides weather routing for Sailors around the world. Stephanie sent me a text advising of 4 metre waves near Santa Marta and strong gusts of 35 kts. I then altered course to make best advantage of that information.

We were frequently hit by strong rouge waves and the wind was howling on the approach to Santa Marta. It's this last leg that I believe to be the biggest danger area and its advisable to have the best weather data in real time on approach.

I was looking for the best angle to the waves so that we wasn't at 90 degrees. This meant cutting corners again but we were settled at best approach in bad conditions. The strong winds appeared suddenly because of the acceleration zone. We also had to put the washboards up because the large waves were sometimes breaking into the cockpit.

Because Steel Appeal is a Van de Stadt design and built for the North seas, the worse it got, the better she seemed to like it (unlike us!) It was a bit violent at times but the motion below was could have been worse but once we had gained enough shelter from the open Caribbean as we approached Santa Marta, life did became much better.

We did all of the passage with no main sail and usually just 1/3 genoa. We still saw 7.5 kts cog at times which included about a kt of current.

We arrived at 1 am local time. (Its GMT - 5 here.) When we radioed the port authorities they seemed surprised that there were only 2 people on board coming front Curaçao. Also they seemed to think we were continuing on to Cartagena. Unfortunately because of our late arrival the marina was of course shut at this time of night. However there is an anchorage just outside and we anchored easily in a very lovely calm bay. After we dropped anchor, we drank a bottle of wine and crashed out!

The next morning, we entered the marina, who take care of all the customs and immigration stuff for free if you stay a week. I believe there is a 100, USD cruising tax to pay though. But it is totally hassle free and the marina staff are super friendly even though the day before we (England) had knocked Colombia out of the world cup.

After talking to others in the marina who had done the same route we found out that many boats had arrived at the same sort of time as us and also experienced a rough passage but sustained varying states of damage to sails and rigging one boat had even lost there mast on this passage! Thankfully for us everything stayed intact this trip.

We don't consider ourselves as very experienced salty seadog sailors, but if I was to offer any advise for others planning on taking this passage, my feeling is that it would be to use as little sail as possible at all times, Especially near Santa Marta or any Colombian coast probably and as mentioned before to have the best real time weather data. In addition, my plan B was to keep going if the situation near Santa Marta was unnavigable and get down to Puerto Valero or Cartagena. Where seas would be more settled (in theory ) You are supposed to arrive at your declared port, but I think you could change that if you clear it with them on channel 16. They were very pleasant on the radio.

Here are some pictures of our first view in the morning we woke up in Santa Marta, Colombia from the anchorage outside the marina.

#Colombia #Sailing #Curacao #2018 #Passageplanning #SouthAmerica