FROM CHRISTOBEL IN CRISTOBAL

Maurice Sumner

(After their encounter with Hurricane Luis in St Maarten -- see Flying Fish 1995/2 -- Maurice and Rosie headed south to Trinidad for repairs to their Halmatic 30 Christobel before pushing on westwards.)

Greetings from Cristobal Colon, the Caribbean exit to the Panama Canal and the Pacific. From first impressions and by reputation Colon (Columbus's name) looks a seedy city with potential muggers on every street corner. The advice is to go everywhere by taxi and carry only those things you are prepared to lose. The name is coincidentally well chosen as the `anus' of the Caribbean. However as a resupply place it has most things we need for the next leg and we plan to take care.

To fill in the gap since Flying Fish 1995/2, the hurricane season (a bumper year) gradually expired through the autumn with rain and squally weather. Hurricane Marilyn passed harmlessly to the south of St Maarten but badly damaged St Thomas in the US Virgin Islands to the northwest. We then decided that the only way to get our repairs done was to head south out of the hurricane belt to Trinidad, where we should have been in the first place! St Maarten had begun the slow and painful recovery with an island-wide clean-up of debris and the awesome task of boat salvage. This aftermath was in some ways worse than the storm itself with recriminations, rumours and arguments, and mounting bad feeling between salvagers and the uninsured, stricken, impoverished yachties recovering costs. The curfew was lifted and services gradually returned to something like normal. Then, as if the storm damage was not enough, the big Foodcentre Supermarket went up in smoke and was totally destroyed, making food distribution even more difficult. The closure of many holiday hotel complexes due to storm damage and the resultant loss of many local jobs will ensure that the legacy of Luis will be felt for years.

Rosie busied herself daily at the church soup kitchen, helping to feed the homeless and boatless, while I prepared Christobel for the 500 mile journey south to Trinidad for haulout and repairs. We were relieved to be able to sail away in early October, but not without guilt feelings of deserting a sinking ship as friends with whom we had experienced so much waved us goodbye from their boats, still stranded on the shore. The voyage to Trinidad down the island chain of the Leewards and Windwards was a pleasant relief from the tensions of St Maarten, with a mixture of strong winds off Guadeloupe and calm motorsailing conditions past Martinique, St Lucia, St Vincent and the Grenadines, stopping briefly at Prickly Bay, Grenada to avoid extortionate overtime charges in Trinidad for boat clearance at weekends.

Trinidad proved to be a delightful and friendly place in spite of one of the highest murder rates anywhere. The Asian influence predominates and the first Asian Prime Minister has just been elected. The young Asian ladies are also a sight to behold. At Chaguaramas Bay near Port of Spain we rejoined many old cruising friends who had had the sense to avoid the hurricane zones. The facilities for repair were excellent and by early November Christobel was ashore receiving the tender loving care needed to restore her to full ocean fitness. Day-to-day living in Trinidad is very cheap by European standards, which means that you eat out in bars and restaurants more often.

The departing remarks of cruisers leaving Trinidad is `I can't afford to save any more money in this inexpensive place!'. The weather at the end of the year was humid with rain showers every day and superb rain forests to prove it. We toured the sights, from bird sanctuaries and scarlet ibis rookeries to asphalt pitch lakes and the Hilton Hotel for Sunday brunch. Two outings to the Oval cricket ground were washed out by rain, but we did see Brian Lara in a one-day competition just before he sensationally withdrew from the West Indies touring team to Australia in December.

Christobel was relaunched at the end of November and we headed west for Venezuela in early December, calling first at Isla Margarita, a tourist island with incredibly cheap shopping. On the booze front, rum cost 95p a bottle, Gordons Gin œ2 a bottle and excellent Chilean wine œ12 per dozen. Petrol was almost given away at 1«p per litre, so you could fill a car for under œ2. No wonder Venezuela has chronic political and economic problems in spite of a wealth of natural resources. Again we did the obligatory tour of the island, including a pricey microlite aeroplane flight. From Margarita we sailed to Puerto la Cruz on the mainland and settled into the Bahia Redonda marina for Christmas and the New Year, with the cruising fraternity forming an ideal nomadic group for the festive season.

Early in the New Year several of us hired a minibus complete with Venezuelan driver/courier/interpreter called Andres who took us 500km into the interior, up to Merida in the High Andes. The scenery was breathtaking up to 14,000ft and we had an hilarious seven days getting into all sorts of scrapes and thoroughly enjoying it. The Venezuelan ladies are an improvement on Trinidad, which is saying something! The capital, Caracas, is a riot of modern architecture alongside shanty slums -- all typically South American.

In mid January we again headed west to Tortuga and Las Aves, a group of coral atolls with great snorkelling and birdlife. Then on to the ABC islands of Aruba, Bonaire and Curacao. Bonaire is a pleasant Dutch toy town devoted to reef diving for tourists, which is as good as it comes anywhere. Curacao was more industrialised with a oil refinery and storage for Venezuelan oil. We skipped Aruba and headed around the coast of Colombia and down the Spanish Main in the wake of Drake, Hawkins and Morgan looking for Spanish galleons loaded with silver and gold from Peru.

The trade winds blow at their strongest at this time of the year, giving us a blistering slalom ride with some of the roughest seas we have encountered anywhere. Poor Rosie got a black eye when she was pitched across the cabin and bounced off the cooker. This leg of the journey west has long been considered risky for small boats due to the criminal activities of the Colombian drug runners, and the advice was to keep a hundred miles offshore and not to stop for anyone. As we entered Colombian waters with high winds and big following seas a large and powerful motorboat came close in the dark hours to have a good look at us. Rosie was on watch at the time and she decided not to wake me. Instead she switched on the cockpit light and waved at them until they sped away, presumably satisfied. I nearly had kittens when she told me later, but if they had been bad guys there was not much we could have done anyway. With a big clean-up of the offshore drugs trade in recent years this passage is now deemed safe, and the patrolboat is clear evidence of this. Whew!

After four days of exhilarating but tiring sailing we entered the historic harbour of Cartagena via Boca Chica, just as Drake had done. But I was too tired to sack, rape or pillage so we had a drink and a good night's sleep instead.

The old walled city of Cartagena is very well preserved, with narrow streets lined with old buildings cascading flowers from overhanging balconies. The fortifications, Palace of the Inquisition and the museums made a fascinating tour through history and we thoroughly enjoyed our week there. In contrast, the Miami skyline of the new Cartagena, with tower blocks and hotels plus regular cruise liners calling, shows its growing popularity for tourists.

Then, ever onwards, we headed 200 miles west to a very special region on the north Panamanian coast, the San Blas islands. This shallow reef-strewn area is the home of the Kuna Indians, reputed to be the last surviving descendants of the original Caribs who were virtually wiped out during the centuries of Spanish colonialism. These small, attractive people live a semi-autonomous life farming coconuts on a multitude of small offshore islands, supplemented by fishing from dugout canoes and trading with yachts and other tourists. They live in strong family units with marriage forbidden outside the tribe, and so far have managed to resist the pressures of the modern world. On entering an anchorage it is necessary to visit the local chief and request permission to stay -- modest dress is essential and some gift of cigarettes or coffee for the chief and sweets for the children is appropriate. With his permission you are welcomed and shown around the village or temporary seasonal settlement. Lobster, crab and fish can be bought or bartered, but their speciality is hand-embroidered panels known as molas. These panels are complex, multicoloured designs of birds, animals or fish in layers of cloth basted together in a technique called `reverse appliqu''. Here I must rest my knowledge because I don't know what I am talking about! Suffice it to say that they are very attractive and beautifully made, to adorn a blouse or cushion-cover or a plaque to hang on the wall. The Kuna ladies wear gold rings in their noses and strap their arms and legs with tight bands of colour beads to keep their limbs thin. I personally prefer the pulchritude of the Trinidad ladies!

The San Blas are poorly charted and navigation is largely by eyeball. You only travel when the sun is high, so that you can see the reef you are about to hit rather than be surprised! It was an enchanting view of a bygone world and we could have spent much longer there to do it justice; maybe the next time around?

From San Blas we continued west, calling at the historic Spanish harbours of Nombre de Dios and Portobelo where the gold and silver shipments from Peru were embarked on galleons bound for Spain. What an awful eastbound passage those square-rigged ships must have had, plus pirates en route hoping to relieve them of their rich cargo. The fact that they did it for over 400 years puts our sailing into perspective. A short hop around the coast, and we entered the massive harbour of Cristobal Colon -- and confused the Port Radio station by requesting permission for Yacht Christobel to enter Cristobal.

As I write in late February, Christobel is moored at the Panama Canal Yacht Club while I wait for Rosie to return from the UK in mid March. Then we plan to transit the Canal and head west into the Pacific, first stop the Galapagos Islands.