Photo: Marie's birthday, The Pier, Spanish Waters, Curaçao


It's been close to a year since our last post. To those of you who follow us I apologise, the last twelve months has not been easy. It's been tough, it's been hard. It's been like, well, you know, like those times we always hoped would never happen. It's something you know already because you're more in touch with reality than we are, when you might lose someone, someone you cherish, you know what I mean, you know the hurting pain of loss.

Last year, it all began well enough, I already told you about our escape from the madcap world of covid Panama, about our time in the magical San Blas islands, about our stormy voyage to Cartagena in Colombia when we lost every one of our sails. You read all about that, you know it's what we do because we don't have better to choose from, that it's our way of life, our dream, our nemesis, our stupid existence that was always gonna turnaround and kick us hard. Well it did kick hard, I got kicked and Marie, she got kicked too.

In March we left Sänna in Cartagena to fly to England for a long awaited wedding. Unexpected, a couple of weeks later, my mom, bizarrely, out-of-the-blue, stupidly, she passed away. Okay, she was old, she was eighty-nine, she was always gonna go when she finally decided it was time to teach me a lesson. What made it harder, awful in fact, was that four days after my mom died Marie got diagnosed with something not good, the bad one, the one you wouldn't wish on your worst enemy. You know the one I mean but Marie has banned me from using the 'C' word. We always knew our good times might one day turn bad, but me, I never realised that fighting that bastard storm to Colombia, that heaving down our ripped sails with Marie pinned back against the stanchions, the angry green ocean breaking all over her, was not that much compared to what we had ahead of us.

Writing these sail blogs, for me, was always a convenient way of keeping my ageing mother informed of where we were, what we were up to without the tiresome chore of actually calling her. She religiously printed out every blog post I ever wrote to keep them in a cardboard file, to proudly read each one to all her elderly friends at the conservative club or the pensioner's bowls club, so I wrote them in a way to make her laugh, in her own way proud. Now she's not around anymore there's not the reasons to write - also we've had a real fight on our hands with Marie's cancer. I apologise, of course, I should've written more. And I should've called my mom.

Where the hell do we go from here? Well, we're running low on our double-down reserves of steam. I still heave coal into the fire-pit of life tho every two or three shovel loads I pause to wipe the sweaty coal-dust from my black-faced brow. I dutifully crank up the engine revs when Marie pipes down 'full steam ahead'... but when I tap the pressure gauge hard to see what steam we have left that cold feeling of sadness draws over me, when I see the needle hover well below where I would like it to be.

Of course, at this time of writing things are improving. We are in Willemstad, in Curaçao, in the Dutch ABC islands. In the end we left Cartagena in a hurry, we had to, the gang in the marina there were giving us a hard time. So, we headed out, Marie in pain, we sailed one of the four supposed toughest passages in the world, Cartagena to Aruba. Marie is fine, she is getting well, her cancer is not cancer, her doctor told her it's something else, something more curable...
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Please visit our SV Sänna website for more details of our circumnavigation voyage from the UK. Also at www.facebook.com/SV.Sanna. Like our Facebook page if you'd like to receive more news about our sail adventure. You can contact us here.

Read more about the mishaps and mayhem of Nellie, The Ship's Cat

Photo: Marion - without her glasses, they made her eyes look big...

The story goes here in Sherwood that Robin Hood was only ever a pillar of Sherwood's respected middle class nobility, he was a local lad with a flashing smile and an eye for flaxen-haired women, that is, until he was unjustly outlawed by the evil Sheriff. Rebellion was fermenting - taxes had been raised, the poor were being squeezed and the scoundrel king John stole the English crown from his lion-hearted brother. When Robin then fell in love with the beautiful Marion the Sheriff was beside himself with rage - the conniving Sheriff had plans to install the same Maid Marion as his own concubine wife and step-mother to his pizza-eating children. By this time the castle's underground catacomb dungeons were full. Then, when Robin disguised himself to famously split his opponents arrow and shoot his next shot right through the apple on Will Scarlet's head there was deep unrest in the forest, law and order was in free-fall and the price of mead was going through the roof. Sherwood's reputation has never recovered.

More than a thousand years later, when I myself was born in Sherwood, nothing much had changed. The three pubs here are still hotbeds of rebellion, men cast more than a twinkling eye at local women, even today whispered plots are hatched to storm the Sheriff's castle. Being branded a citizen of Sherwood carries the same dangers the merry men endured in their desire to right Sherwood's wrongs - in particular the more fairer distribution of wealth that so enraged the Sheriff. Those of us who lived in Sherwood have never been forgiven - we're still vigorously pursued for taxes, post-code prejudice is unjust, bylaws are fiercely enforced and outlawism is viewed as something only electrocution-therapy cures. Talk to anyone in today's marketplace and there is something in the water hereabouts. Rebellion and discontent is endemic, we citizens of Sherwood wear the heart of Robin Hood on our sleeves, we will revere his brand of people-politics until the day we draw our last breath. Not that I lived that long in Sherwood, two weeks after being born in the maternity ward my mother took me home.

Home in my early days was not Sherwood. Home was in the slums that slurried and nested at the foot of Nottingham castle. Home was where infant survival depended upon the scant goodwill of the rent-collecting landlord, the caring support of loving neighbours. Home was barefoot kids and smelly outside toilets. Home was my mother's sweet aroma, her sugar and banana sandwiches and her dark-rimmed glasses that made her eyes look big. Home was where Robin Hood never ventured because there was no greenwood forest, no babbling trickling brooks or those tree-singing larks you hear in the movies. No matter, my birth certificate is the living proof that I'm undeniably a citizen of Sherwood. I'm a merry man, being an outlaw is in my blood, I carry the same inexplicable hatred of the Sheriff of Nottingham that's buried so deep in my DNA that it can never be chiselled out.

When a kid, in the dark hours before I was sent to bed, my mother read me the fascinating tales of Robin Hood who, she said, was born in the same maternity home room as me over a thousand years before. I listened with wide-eyed rapture, Robin's fight on the log with the giant Little John, Friar Tuck who could get the Sheriff drunk then drink every one of his swordsmen under the table, about Alan-a-Dale, the wandering minstrel who sang love ballads under Sherwood's oak trees - and Maid Marion, who I loved with all my heart and would one day marry. I was myself a Sherwood boy, a rebel of the forest, robbing the rich to give to the poor would always be in my blood.

Then, in my growing years my mother would take me on the bus from Nottingham, a short ride up the Mansfield Road that passes through the old medieval township of Sherwood. Of course, everything in my young days had changed, it was a bustling Nottingham suburb with Dewhurst butchers, Boots and Woolworths - but from upstairs on the bus my mother would show me the exact place where both me and Robin were born. I imagined the open window where Robin shot his last arrow moments before he died - the unknown place where his arrow landed marks the grave where my hero still lies buried.

Then, when I met a Sherwood girl many years later it was inevitable we would fall in love. My wife isn't really a Sherwood girl - she's from Derbyshire, a land of sheep and not one brave outlaw, but she owned a home in Sherwood which was enough for me to realise our two destinies would be forever entwined. My wife's home, where we live now, is not that far from the nursing home where my mother and I spent our first days together - just the two of us, side-by-side with me held in her arms, with Marion in her midwife uniform and Alan-a-Dale singing the nicest song you ever heard outside the open window. When my mother died, I worked out that where I live now, in Sherwood, is only an arrow flight from where my mother was the moment I was born - it's the exact place where an arrow would land if shot from an open window, from where my mother screamed out loud in child labour with Maid Marion right beside her side.

A few days after she died, when again there was just the two of us together, when she'd been lying unconscious day after day until the angel came to take her, I unlocked the closed gate of the care home to let myself inside. I scaled the wall in the same way that Robin did when he rescued his merry men from the dungeons of the evil Sheriff's castle. I skirted under the security camera, easily dodging the myriad of deadly arrows fired by the Sheriff's men from behind the castle walls. I found the open window, where I'd been showed a million times from upstairs on the bus was where I was with my mother when she loved me for the first time. I sat and cried, I cried so much that it's difficult for me to describe, in that way you do when you've lost the one you love, your mother who promised you she would always be by your side, when you thought she would be there forever. A lady came, of course she had seen me on the overhead camera but why was she dressed in those medieval tweeds? With kind blue-eyes that tried to understand? With her golden flaxen-hair braided down her right side in the same way that Robin adored.

The lady, she called the security guard and I was politely marched outside. I told the guard about my mother, that it was right here where I was born, before The Firs became a nursing care home though it still has the same name. He wasn't impressed, it was his job, he couldn't have strange men breaking into the grounds of their old people's home. The guard, he told me about his own mother who died, when he was just a young kid, when he too lived here in Sherwood. He still lived around the corner, with his wife, another Sherwood girl. He smiled, with half a tear, when I showed him where Robin's arrow would fly, when I explained where it might land, where I live now. You see, me, the guard and Robin Hood, we're all Sherwood boys, our mothers loved us and, all three of us, we fell in love with Sherwood girls, girls who'll always be there by our side.

Shirley Patricia Cole, 1934 - 2022.
Funeral Order of Service Booklet
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Please visit our SV Sänna website for more details of our circumnavigation voyage from the UK. Also at www.facebook.com/SV.Sanna. Like our Facebook page if you'd like to receive more news about our sail adventure. You can contact us here.

Read more about the mishaps and mayhem of Nellie, The Ship's Cat

This post describes our final leaving of Panama. After nearly two years of covid pandemic we made our way through Panama's remote San Blas islands, heading to Colombia in South America.

Cartagena, our destination, opened into a whole new world - though our task of getting there turned into a trial of endurance and hardship. Savage seas and big winds, broken sails and followed nearly all the way by a lonely albatross.

On the way we found tropical island paradise - the magical San Blas, friendly indigenous Kuna and the loving romance of two young people...

Read post....
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Please visit our SV Sänna website for more details of our circumnavigation voyage from the UK. Also at www.facebook.com/SV.Sanna. Like our Facebook page if you'd like to receive more news about our sail adventure. You can contact us here.

Read more about the mishaps and mayhem of Nellie, The Ship's Cat

SOMETIMES THE WORLD REALLY IS YOUR OYSTER. This well thought-out marketing slogan is the main headline banner for the famous Oyster Bay Winery, one of New Zealand's foremost vineyards producing wines that 'Capture the special character of the region's cool climate viticulture ... Elegant assertive wines with glorious fruit flavours'. I bet you're tempted to buy a bottle already - it's there, it's nice wine, we've seen Oyster Bay on supermarket shelves everywhere. Marie loves a tipple of their white sauvignon blanc whenever she's in the mood... which can be described as more than frequent, but a little less than most days.

Oyster Bay, in marketing brand awareness parlay, has positioned itself as a low to mid-range priced wine - one that's widely available off the shelf in most wine-drinking countries. Whether it really is elegant and assertive, with glorious fruit flavours, is down to your interpretation of what it says about the wine on the label - are you buying it because it's assertiveness makes you feel elegant? Or are you attracted by the price when you scan the price of every other brand sitting alongside it. Perhaps you just like wines with glorious fruit flavours. Think about it - it is important.

Both Marie and I know a thing or two about the psychological tricks of marketing. Advertising is our work life background... at one time I made my living writing the colourful splurge found on wine and coffee labels, I would liaise with a professional taster who would give me the lead on which flavours to lean on - usually on the basis of filling a gap in the client's stable or jumping on the back of a competitor's successful brand in the same price range. Sometimes, quite often in fact, the expert taster is given a steer by the marketing man of what flavours are needed. For certain, there are high class wines that cost money, but professional wine makers and middle-men sellers, for wine to drink themselves, rarely they pay more than twenty quid.

So, you might wonder why am I telling you all this. When the Oyster Yachts World Rally hit Panama's Shelter Bay, Shelter Bay was smugly renamed Oyster Bay by the more cynical of disgruntled boat owners of whom there were many already there in the marina. Most of these fiercely independent sailors, ourselves included, had battled their way across the pacific or the Atlantic, some had even fought their way up from the southern cape of South America or slipped down from the cold icy fiords of Alaska - which we had done - in the absolute requirement to transit the all-important Panama Canal. Which is why the Oyster Yacht Rally was here, in Oyster Bay, to transit the canal.

Even a smallish Oyster yacht is gonna set you back a few million. Twenty-six multi-million quid yachts will make their mark in the confines of a small marina containing a hundred boats or so that cost their owners nothing like this - so straightaway there is a social dividing line that's not based upon seagoing experience or the knowledge of what keeps you alive when the ocean is crashing over your bows threatening to completely overwhelm you. Which is, in my marketing and business building experience, precisely what the makers of Oyster Yachts intended. Oyster Bay sauvignon blanc has its place on supermarket shelves, an Oyster Yacht is for those who would choose to pay much more for their wine - and likely do not have the same seamanship skills to cross an ocean. Most Oyster owners onboard hire skippers or captains with crews to do it for them - but not every time. I myself have a friend who has bought two Oyster yachts - he's experienced, he has crossed the Atlantic three times though the last bottle of wine we both shared cost him over three-hundred quid. Oyster boats are fine, they're good yachts, but are they better than all the other vessels in Shelter Bay?

What happened in Shelter Bay was out-and-out aspirational brand marketing in its most brutal form. The makers of Oysters are having a rough time of it right now, they went bankrupt when the keel fell off a big ten-million quider that sank just off Spain - the insolvent business was rescued by an investor that urgently needed to resurrect the damaged brand. Oyster needs to reestablish its premier position - ongoing the company strives to elevate itself back above its competitors of which there are many. What better than to show a whole fleet of Oyster yachts sailing in hardcore redneck luxury around the world, the strength and reliability of their build...

Of course, it's the razzmatazz that's important. When the twenty-six or so Oysters berth side-by-side, with their magnificent Oyster banner flags flying from every single yardarm, it's the photographic media that's key. The media feeds the brand message right through the sailing world - glossy magazines, YouTube channels - social media. It's magnificent, it's immensely powerful and it works.

The meaner side of all this is the deliberate demeaning of the lesser brands - an important tactical tool of aspirational advertising. Yes - you are the social live-aboard scum if you do not own an Oyster. For me, this was the depressing feature of the Oyster Yachts World Rally in Shelter Bay. Straightaway both me and Marie knew what Oyster's game was, we saw how important it was to overwhelm the other brands in the marina. It made things worse on a practical level - the multitude of Oyster chefs and cooks (most of the Oyster rally boats carry their own chef) descended on the vital once-per-week travelling vegetable & fruit market and pretty much cleaned it out when it came to provisioning to leave - with the requisite ritual photo-shoot of good, wholesome organic local produce being loaded onboard.

There was great resentment and grumbling from most other yacht owners, the whispers of dissent were spread from boat to boat before the midnight hour without anyone really understanding why. You don't know why, that's the power of advertising, you don't know why you envy that person who has something you haven't got, that person you say you don't respect - it's called aspirational reverse, but for this concept reversal there has to be an opposite forward motion, the laws of physics - aspirational marketing in its finest form.

But there's also a more neater trick, it might make you feel good. The cost of each Oyster vessel entry into the rally is twenty grand each, paid by the Oyster owner. On top of this each crew member has a cost of between two and three grand paid to the rally organisers depending upon their status and experience in the crew. These cumulative funds are used by the rally team to provide a support mechanic (yes - Oysters experience the same maintenance breakdowns as the rest of us), administrative costs and, more importantly, the marketing & advertising of the rally itself which, of course, means the advertising of Oyster Yachts. In essence, the vessel owners are paying a major cost contribution to the company's re-establishment in the luxury yacht market. This, in advertising speak, is called customer cost participation or, at the agency working-desk level who manage the budgets, mug money.

Mine's any decent sauvignon blanc, if you don't mind...
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Please visit our SV Sänna website for more details of our circumnavigation voyage from the UK. Also at www.facebook.com/SV.Sanna. Like our Facebook page if you'd like to receive more news about our sail adventure. You can contact us here.

Read more about the mishaps and mayhem of Nellie, The Ship's Cat

Photo: Approaching the Atlantic Bridge, Caribbean Panama Canal

'The Atlantic Ocean and the Caribbean Sea didn't look much different to the Pacific, both oceans are a relentless mass of heaving water that has no emotional attachment or care for an insignifIcant sailing yacht, especially one trying to make its way fighting with the wind. In a strange way, now that we'd transited through the canal, we expected something different from the ocean - perhaps a more benevolent attitude or even a friendly gesture by allowing us an easy passage to Bocas Del Torro. No, what we got was a hard overnight slog, driven back by a fierce three-knot current flowing against nearly twenty-five knots of breeze - the kind of wind against current that mariners fear with good reason, one that creates a maelstrom sea deliberately thrown upon us to kick our backsides big time. 'Welcome to the Atlantic,' I thought to myself with grim foreboding...'

This blog describes both our transit of the Panama Canal and the trauma of returning to Sänna in Vista Mar after eighteen months of the covid pandemic. Our trials and tribulations were emotional and sometimes heartbreaking... but we somehow triumphed against the strangeness of the odds thrown against us...

Panama 2021, The Panama Canal

Read more...
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Please visit our SV Sänna website for more details of our circumnavigation voyage from the UK. Also at www.facebook.com/SV.Sanna. Like our Facebook page if you'd like to receive more news about our sail adventure. You can contact us here.

Read more about the mishaps and mayhem of Nellie, The Ship's Cat

Photo: Hauled out joy...

Each evening, before finishing up, Marie and I have the same conversation. What was going to be worse... wading thigh-deep to cross the fast-flowing river, the long walk in the stifling humidity to San Carlos or one more night in Ollie's El Capitan guest house? We'd long decided that we couldn't at this time stay onboard Sänna - the interior is in such bad state after eighteen months abandoned in Panama, it was gonna take at least another two weeks before she was anything like shipshape. Once more we agreed - it was the overnight confinement in the gloom of El Capitan.

Not that El Capitan is anything like the worse place we've ever stayed, but it's the bunkbeds in the windowless bunkhouse rattled by the din of the air conditioning, there is nothing to do except lie on the bed glued to our devices - no bars or restaurants in the nearby village of San Carlos, everything is closed because of covid. So, in the manner of two weary explorers, we descend the ladder down to the boatyard roadway, we cross the breakwater to the tidal deluge of the river, decide where the ever-changing sandbanks offers the safest crossing, we wade across thigh-deep, precariously, then walk the abandoned public beach in the twilight darkness to the road before we trekk the half-mile or so to the locked gate of El Capitan. Then the bit I dread the most - Ollie's five free-roaming dogs. The dogs are friendly enough, delightful in their own way, but once thru the locked gate then comes Dante's hell - the walk in the by now darkness thru dog-shit alley. Every night I feel the soft warm experience between my feet and toes, that gleeful sensation when you know you've trod in something you'd rather not, the ritual of washing my feet and flip-flops under the cold running tap before unlocking the bunkhouse kitchen door into freedom sanctuary. Marie, somehow, never treads in anything.

The defects list on Sänna is horrendous. The radar has seized, so has the fridge, so too both toilet heads, the cockpit lights, Raymarine instruments, the anchor windlass, our watermaker... the list goes on and on - even our expensive ornamental brass maritime clock has locked up solid. Both of us are bewildered and downhearted, we knew it would be bad but not like this. Marie comes up with the answer... to get thru the workload without falling down we need to take a break. Marie suggests we make the four-hour bus ride into Panama City at the weekend, the historic old town quarter, joy, bars & restaurants, a nice cheap hotel then back to the Monday morning drudgery in the Vista Mar boatyard.

In the end, somehow, we got thru, we launch Sänna back into the water then withstood the relentless surge of the Pacific Ocean that blights this marina. We have made new friends, Richard & Caroline on the English sailboat Midnight Breeze. Henry joins us from England - it all suddenly comes together. Marie suggests we go for the Panama Canal - we're not ready I say, but Marie insists, we need the break, we need to achieve, we've gotta have the challenge. Without even half the onboard problems fixed we head south to the canal, I declare on the canal authority forms that we are safe and seaworthy when I know we're not - we're nowhere near. I check tick boxes on the authority form that I should never have ticked but we get given a transit date - we're ready to leave the pacific ocean to go thru the Panama Canal. Nearly ten years in the pacific but we think nothing of it when the canal pilot climbs aboard at the number four red buoy…

Bastard covid, bastard bastard covid - wading the river, treading in dog shit...
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Please visit our SV Sänna website for more details of our circumnavigation voyage from the UK. Also at www.facebook.com/SV.Sanna. Like our Facebook page if you'd like to receive more news about our sail adventure. You can contact us here.

Read more about the mishaps and mayhem of Nellie, The Ship's Cat

Photo: Mine's an IPA...

This last weekend, Marie and I travelled to Off The Tracks, a music & beer festival across the not too distant Derbyshire border. We had a wonderful time over the four days - camping, watching live music, drinking exceptionally good beer - between listening to Test Match cricket at its best on Radio Five Live. I tell you - life doesn't get better than this.

By Thursday this week I'd tested positive for covid. Wednesday, I was coughing, Thursday coughing and feeling lousy - by Friday, coughing, feeling more lousy and actually quite scared. My rattling chest and breathing pains made for exceptionally hard going, my blood oxygen on the oximeter left on the doorstep by my eldest daughter read 91-92... a worryingly low level. In the desperate way of thinking that has from time to time blighted my life, I concocted my own made-up potion of paracetamol and ibuprofen mixed with powdered Lemsip, because I really could not take much more of the debilitating pain. It might be a 'man flu' syndrome thing but you women out there don't know how bad man flu can be. In the event, my anxiety declined, my breathing became less painful, my rattle and wheezing lessened - and my oxygen climbed back to 95-96 which is right where it normally should be. Of course, Marie went berserk, in her usual loving discerning manner - saying that over-the-counter drugs shouldn't be mixed like this - which is exactly right in that caring way she is.

Some years ago I was diagnosed with pneumonia, the cause of which today I can't exactly remember. At an ATM cashpoint I collapsed in an unconscious heap, a mystery guardian angel called the emergency medics before robbing me of the two-hundred quid in my wallet. My hospitalisation was brief, I walked out after seven hours laid on a trolley in an overcrowded corridor - but by the next day I was sheepishly back on the ward with double pneumonia. In 2019, I got the dengue fever in El Salvador - so I was never gonna be that high in the survival stakes against covid, nor are my overworked and ageing lungs worthy of donating to medical science. Earlier this year I got the two Pfizer vaccines. Let me tell you this - I'm in no doubt that Pfizer (or perhaps those marvellous festival beers) have since saved my bacon. Marie, she was with me at every twist & turn during the festival except when it was her turn to buy the beer. So why, I ask, is Marie testing negative? We've slept side-by-side, we've snogged and exchanged bodily fluids - so why is Marie cheerfully exuberant and still negative?

The many theories out there are mind-bogglingly wacky and bonkers. My true belief is that Pfizer saved me from something far more horrid - Marie maybe has a different make up, or her Zeneca vaccine is more suited to the Derbyshire sunshine climate. Maybe there was something different in our beers. These vaccines might not be to everyone's taste but they are the best and only defence against this ferocious and vicious virus. It's exceptional what these vaccine immunologists have achieved - it's also insane how the anti-vax brigadiers lie and spin such trollop.

Get vaccinated, don't listen to those who have no means of saving your life. Their lies will kill you. Get the vaccine.
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Footnote update: The day following the publication of this post, I was ambulanced into Accident & Emergency with pain to my lower left ribs, my chest and to my right front shoulder. X-rays and ECG showed inflammation to my spleen and to the cartilage muscles of my lungs - usual covid stuff. The doctor and ECG nurse explained that my blood oxygen levels were fine which, they said, is down to Pfizer vaccines. Not needing emergency oxygen I was discharged the next day. The ECG nurse also said that Pfizer and the other vaccines do not prevent Delta covid, but they hugely reduce the need for oxygen intensive care that generally goes on to damage vital organs.

It was like battle carnage in A&E, almost all covid. The nurse explained that most of the emergency admitted patients unvaccinated would be sent direct to ICU, a few with one vaccine but hardly anyone with both vaccines. Here in the UK, in the period between January and August 2021, there were 58,281 covid deaths, of those only 256 were double vaxed and these in the majority were over the age of eighty. 38,964 were unvaxed, the difference made up by those with only one vaccination or when the second vaccination was still under fourteen days.

Please don't listen to those anti-vaxers out there, nor should you trust your lives upon fringe-theory medicines - like the horse drug Ivermectin or those other wacko cures widely touted on social media. You must get the vaccines.

... and Marie has since tested positive for covid...
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Please visit our SV Sänna website for more details of our circumnavigation voyage from the UK. Also at www.facebook.com/SV.Sanna. Like our Facebook page if you'd like to receive more news about our sail adventure. You can contact us here.

Read more about the mishaps and mayhem of Nellie, The Ship's Cat

Photo: Unrelinquished dream? Or lost Love...

Did you ever in your life think that daylight would never come? Have you ever danced naked under a starry moonlit sky? Did you once whisper a prayer with your one hand raised high? Do you believe in sea monsters and fiery dragons, did you know that strange beasts live at the end of the world, where only murdering thieves and the incurably insane find their way to die. Did you ever see the meanest pirate fall in love, then wonder why? Or do you think it is me who is secretly unhinged, or suffering the scourge of an unsound mind. Do you believe that I am the one who is senseless, deranged or the most ridiculous man you might find….

Did I ever tell you why I stand shaking, then cry?

Read more of this post....
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Please visit our SV Sänna website for more details of our circumnavigation voyage from the UK. Also at www.facebook.com/SV.Sanna. Like our Facebook page if you'd like to receive more news about our sail adventure. You can contact us here.

Read more about the mishaps and mayhem of Nellie, The Ship's Cat

Photo: Which side is the planet on?

Are you one of the growing band who are taking a different view of the virus? Might it be that it's existence is being brazenly misunderstood? Like all sprouting lifeforms that have evolved over the last billion or so years, SARS-CoV-2, or coronavirus by it's everyday name, is doing what every other microbe has always done, it is procreating itself to claim its place alongside countless other microorganisms that live on this blue-ocean planet while it hurtles relentlessly around the sun.

Almost all lifeforms our eyes cannot see do exactly the same. In fact, every embryonic squiggly little squirmy worm-thing you see in microscopic petro-dishes exist with the same motive in mind - to reproduce. In the same way, more advanced carbon biotic life seeks to increases its popularity with organisms of the opposite sex to produce their own versions of adolescent newborns - lots of them. Now, between you and me, I know lots of men who have similar thoughts just about every day. So do male elephants and rhinoceroses, snakes and spiders, most testosterone-driven politicians and those incumbent foreign leaders who never condescend to leave office. What I'm saying to you is this, this SARS virus is not doing anything unusual, it's only doing what we ourselves like to do, it's doing what every other example of ambient life has ever done - it's endeavouring to survive, to spread its wings just like everything else that breaths and spits in this fertile garden-world that might not be alone in the cosmos.

Where this train of thought begins to get complicated is, which side of this conflict between procreating man and procreating microscopic lifeforms is this planet on? Could it be our planet is finally choosing sides? All life survives solely on the generosity of our slowly revolving world - a world that could conceivably decide the winner. Take the dinosaurs for example, dinosaurs trampled the earth for far longer than we ourselves have - now they exist only as bone fragments inside slabs of rock - like prisoners in a tomb. This planet creates life, our planet also takes life away, then we came along to ruthlessly replicate one of the planet's more unforgiving roles - it's fair to say we've taken the task of life-eradication to a whole new level.

Right now, as the direct descendants of the original homo-erectus race, we are setting our stall out to systematically eradicate this deadly virus. We're the planet's pinnacle lifeform, we have technology and science on our side, we have the skills to ensure our continued prosperity and survival. Of course, as you well know, we homo-sapiens are well experienced in the art of species extinction - we've practiced among ourselves often enough on numerous occasions. Aboriginal Indians, ethnic minority slaughter, the decimated populations when empire building, these are historic examples of our unique abilities in climbing to the top of the tree. We got rid of those bothersome neanderthals because of their cave-like ways, their horrible knack of looking different. And if the virus was more sizeable and recognisable, might we be considering less frontier-science ways to control its desire to establish itself, like torture camps or life-restricting chemicals? Or perhaps another religious crusade to convert the virus to one of our many violent and conflicting views of God. The creator. Our saviour. Our habitual slaughter of each other puts us in good stead to eradicate this spikey little microbe, to end this viral global pandemic that dares to threaten our existence. Because, like all viruses before it, it searches out our weakness, it probes our fears, it knows we have a vulnerability that might project its own vision of our oxygen generating planet.

I ask you this, what if our planet is definitely not on our side? What if this world that orbits swiftly through time and space has had enough? What if our cosmic homestead can take no more? Maybe our ravaged planet has come to a decision, that it can't rely upon one more meteorite comet to crash into our seas like before, to end the billion-year reign of rampaging dinosaurs, lunging beasts that showed no signs of scientific environmental advancement. Or the volcanic orbital creator of our biosphere has worked out that we could quite easily follow the fate of those spear-chucking neanderthals, who could not stand up to suave-looking humans that came hunting for neanderthal women. Could it be our worldly planet is fiercely on the side of the deadly mutating SARS-CoV-2?

Perhaps we are the virus. Think about it - this SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus could be the planet's vaccine - its way of ensuring its own survival.

If this is the case, and virologist are already beginning to sense we may be just two or three mutations away from something far more deadly, then surely we must try to resolve our misunderstanding of this virus, maybe take heed of why it is trying to kill us. Coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 in its original guise was not something especially unique, but it has evolved, each time we have found a way to defeat its infiltration techniques it has changed, it morphs, it begins to sidestep our science - could the virus be performing the task given to it by our atmospheric world that's third in line from the sun? Instead of trying to fruitlessly destroy the virus, should we be trying to understand why it exists? Perhaps consider a truce, a ceasefire or armistice, a cessation of hostilities with our life-supporting planet - or at least consider how we treat each other. The virus might be a foot-soldier, an honest loyal trooper tasked to hunt us. Maybe those Hollywood world-annihilation screenwriters and science-fiction novelists are really far-seeing prophets, not media moguls making mega-bucks when they write stories about humans being eradicated from existence. Maybe we need to show more respect to the virus, look at it in different ways to learn why it wants to destroy us.

We ourselves, Marie and I, we tried to leave mainstream living behind, it was our conscious decision to sail away to find ways of existing that meant we maintained a semblance of bondship with the atmospheric water-covered rock we depend on. We failed, what we've found along the way is wholesale human destruction, widespread maggoty infiltration of wilderness, a wasteland of plastic dumped waste - there is no doubt in our minds that humankind is systematically destroying the environment we live in. If the planet is fighting back then it stands to reason this mutant virus might be the good guy, you know, the mean-faced gun-toting hero who appears in every movie, the Bruce Willis or Tom Cruise that exists in the exciting world of microorganism viruses.

If humankind is the bad guy, all of us, every single one of us, then look no further than the fate of those former prehistoric monsters. Also, the demise of those browless neanderthals, ugly grunting bipedal competitors who no longer exist. Extinction is a fickle fate, it's an ongoing foregoing outcome that's hard historical fact - we must take note of the countless species we are in the advanced process of slaughtering to destruction.

If we are up against the full might of a revengeful planet, if perpetual micro-creation is our final nemesis, if we are staring at defeat or facing unconditional surrender to the good guy, then should we begin to think of how we renegotiate our survival? Forest fires, floods, rising sea levels, hurricanes and tornadoes - now this deadly coronavirus. It's a full-on frontal attack upon human sustainability, payback for species extinctions and planetary devastation...

Long live the king, long live the virus.
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Please visit our SV Sänna website for more details of our circumnavigation voyage from the UK. Also at www.facebook.com/SV.Sanna. Like our Facebook page if you'd like to receive more news about our sail adventure. You can contact us here.

Read more about the mishaps and mayhem of Nellie, The Ship's Cat

Photo: Sänna is hauled from the water following a stressful crisis

Situation update from the UK Foreign & Commonwealth Office - Central America Desk. April 2021. Subject: Panama & Central America...

"The general covid situation in both the Caribbean and Central & South America is highly unpredictable. Vaccine supplies continue to be erratic and will remain so with the major manufacturing nations combating new covid waves and variants of the virus in their own countries. The situation in Brazil and other South American countries greatly affect the Caribbean and Central America, therefore it would be prudent to expect at least twelve to eighteen months before normality returns to the region. This advice is being extended to all UK companies with business activities in Central America, in particular to trade relating to Mexico and Panama. Both countries are currently social planning at government level against the expected threat of second and third waves of the virus."

Clearly the dire situation now wreaking havoc in India is a warning to anyone who thought we had the virus beat. Here in England, many of us who follow the sport of cricket watched horrified during January and February when the India v England Test series was underway, packed grounds of non-social-distancing spectators without masks cheered and hooted every Indian run and each England wicket. Those of us under stringent lockdown during the rainiest of English winters watched with envy, seeing a nation that had beaten the virus put to torch the best English cricket side we could muster.

Now everything has changed, or has it? Here in England we too are convinced we have the virus beat, our vaccination programme is the envy of the world, our renowned and much respected pharmaceutical industries have discovered and created vaccines that are driving the virus back into the Chinese bat caves from where it came. But the economic and social upheavals are surely, without doubt, going to be with us for some considerable time.

Meanwhile, back in Panama...

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Please visit our SV Sänna website for more details of our circumnavigation voyage from the UK. Also at www.facebook.com/SV.Sanna. Like our Facebook page if you'd like to receive more news about our sail adventure. You can contact us here.

Read more about the mishaps and mayhem of Nellie, The Ship's Cat

Photo: Join the WhatsApp Viking Funeral group...

When we left the Mediterranean back in 2007 to begin our unplanned circumnavigation, we found the Red Sea about as remote as anything we could then imagine. Of course, GPS and plotters had long replaced our reliance upon paper charts, old-fashioned dead-reckoning and my dust-covered sextant were distant memories I had to read up to remember. These new wonders of electronic science have changed everything. With GPS, sailing suddenly became a safer way of life in terms of knowing where we were - rather than a guesstimate of where we might be within a five mile radius. But the glories of onboard internet and data was still a far off dream.

Communications at that time had not changed much in thirty years. We still relied upon our short range VHF radio, our sometimes temperamental SSB long-range radio and the even more unreliable satellite phone system - iridium at that time had gone bust. Email was, on land, well established but only back home or whenever we could find an internet cafe... which in the Red Sea countries of Egypt, Sudan, Eritrea and Yemen were mostly nonexistent. We had our little flip-phones which could allegedly 'roam' but never did, in these remote countries this option did not exist, we still sent postcards home by Airmail telling everyone we were safe and well. We loved it, we were living by our wits and own endeavours, it was the ultimate dropout adventure, we really were living off-grid.

Once we reached the more western tourist-ridden ports of southeast Asia we were able to roam our mobile phones (cellphones) more easily, we discovered for the first time the excitement of buying a local SIM - no longer did we experience the horrendous international call charges of Vodafone. But still, the offering of mass data browsing on your hand device was science-fiction talk of the tech savvy and those bottle-rimmed glasses types. Only when we sailed into El Nido up on the Philippine island of Palawan did we first come across this strange overwhelming powerhouse called Facebook. In El Nido, electricity was a joy to be experienced only a split nine hours per day, and when power was restored in the early evenings there were huge young-backpacker rushes for the internet cafes - it was fascinating to watch these young travellers scramble over each other to get to a screen and keyboard. Following puzzled enquiries, I was told these intrepid one year thrill-seekers were anxious to get their photos and travelling stories uploaded to something called Facebook.

2012 found us in New Zealand, by now we had mastered the rudiments of smartphones and finding pathetic monthly data deals of a mere five-hundred megabytes - but we could at least download our emails and basic weather. Even in Alaska in 2014, we prided ourselves in discovering wonderful AT&T monthly data offers that meant we could get detailed weather forecasts instantly onboard, we could download our emails and indulge in amazing internet browsing until just beyond the middle of the month when our data package was all used up. By comparison, British Columbia was a retrograde step backward into the proverbial data dark-ages with Telus, though once down on the west coast of the US the world of hand-held data just opened up. But only when we headed south to cross the US-Mexican sea border did we really discover the whole fascinating world of Facebook and WhatsApp sailing.

I'm not sure if we were behind the times, but never did we realise that living off-grid was so much simpler with wall-to-wall internet. Of course, we thought ourselves entirely self-sufficient with our solar panels, wind generator and watermaker - we could power our electronics and shower till our hearts content - so much removed from my early days of subsistence sailing when water onboard was rationed, when we used seawater to cook and wash dishes. But sailing nowadays has undoubtedly followed the onshore route of frantic social-media communities which, to me, shakes the foundations of why we choose to live this life of freedom from mainstream living. It's a curious phenomenon, no doubt there's those of you out there who'll say it's the way the world has changed - get used to it. Right now, where we are in Panama, we're surrounded by English-language Facebook and WhatsApp groups for everything. A good German friend of ours, who sails a trimaran solo, calls these self-formed communities 'Facebook Sailors' which is a description I myself have taken up using whilst I try to understand exactly what is happening to our hallowed world of blue-water sailing. To me, maybe for you too, long-distance sailing is about making our own way, exploring what we find and learn, living off our wits in strange countries - not banding together in English-speaking communities that aren't unlike the black & white olden days of the British Empire. There are now growing numbers of financially comfortable westerners who have abandoned their possessions and sold their homes, they've purchased their dream with canvas sails, they've waved goodbye to friends and family on the dockside to sail off into the dreamlike sunset - to then join the local sailing social-media WhatsApp and Facebook group. I'm not commenting either way - I'm just saying, this is how off-grid living is these days.

Of course, this is not is not just a sailing phenomenon. It's a worldwide social mega-change well anticipated by the Zuckerburg's of this world, who are now self-made billionaires in the process. The old greybeard grey-heads like me, with their sextants and leather-banded pony-tails, are still to be found lurking in secluded little-known anchorages... they themselves know a thing or two about survival sailing. But they will soon be gone, their rusting sailing hulks left to sink and founder, creating little reefs of marine-life splendour in their memory.

If only we ageing mariners could be set afloat in that old Viking manner, our vessels set alight then gently pushed out to sea to burn our bent decrepit bodies. But, no doubt, in fact without any shadow of doubt, some new-generation sailor would record it on their smartphone then post it on the Viking Burial Facebook group - which would then be shared on the WhatsApp Remember Those Good Old Sailing Days group. God forbid, my own Viking burning is posted on that new-generational SnapChat thing which, I'm told, self-delete after five seconds or so.

Of course, this social-media blog and our Sänna Facebook page, they're both programmed to self-delete on the 23rd June of... so hurry, join this group I've created on WhatsApp, it's called 'If you wanna be buried like a Viking' group.

My good wife Marie, she's standing here next to me right now, she has a box of old fashioned matches she found free on Facebook. And how to burn a moaning old goat sailor is all there on YouTube...
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Please visit our SV Sänna website for more details of our circumnavigation voyage from the UK. Also at www.facebook.com/SV.Sanna. Like our Facebook page if you'd like to receive more news about our sail adventure. You can contact us here.

Read more about the mishaps and mayhem of Nellie, The Ship's Cat

Photo: One in two-hundred and fifty thousand risk...

A good friend of mine told me there is a one in two-hundred and fifty thousand risk of a blood clot from the Astra-Zeneca vaccine. Whereas, he explained, the odds of being hit by a meteorite are one in forty-thousand - the same as flipping a coin the correct way forty times in succession. He figured that getting the vaccine might be safer than walking across an empty street with a fiery streak unexpectedly lighting up the nighttime sky. The next day, my friend was hit by a meteorite.

Not in the physical sense of course, the meteor rock didn't alter its ten-zillion years of circling around the sun to take specific aim at my friends head, what happened was he suffered a heart attack hours after taking the Zeneca vaccine. Worse, my friend didn't even want the jab, he was marched kicking and shouting to the virus inoculation centre without an appointment by his overly-anxious wife. I suppose you might describe this as a 'proverbial' meteorite, the one with odds of two-hundred and fifty thousand.

I tell you this because, whilst he received tons of get well messages when lying desperately ill in his hospital ward, I contacted him asking if he could perhaps suggest the six numbers necessary for the coming weeks euro lottery. My friend happily obliged - and I nearly won one-hundred and thirty-six million euros. I didn't quite win - two of the numbers weren't right - but four out of the six isn't bad, in fact, I'd say it's pretty good, I've never before had more than one correct number.

You might ask why I'm writing this rubbish, this nonsense about my friend who got the Oxford vaccine then suffered the one in either forty-thousand or two-hundred and fifty thousand odds depending upon which way your view of odds goes. Well, I got into thinking about the whole game of chance, partly because we're in virus lockdown in England with nothing to do and, also, because I'm right now feeling lucky that Sänna recently survived her near disastrous sinking by the skin of her hull. At the time, when frantic phone calls were being made in the middle of the night to and from Panama, I felt desperately unlucky, in fact nearly suicidal. Now, after the event, with Sänna safely hauled from the water, I feel massively lucky, lucky that she is safe. But have no doubt, this game of risk and chance is a murky obscure world of shadowy dark-cloaked pinstripe-suited experts with slide-rules and calculators - mathematical types who tell you if you might one day get lucky or unlucky.

My friend, he now considers himself exceptionally lucky too, he survived his heart attack and the twice-cancelled emergency operation that saved his life. Not so the unvaccinated guy who arrived by emergency ambulance from the West Midlands that necessitated the first cancellation of my friends surgical operation. The man tested negative for covid upon arrival - but positive five days later, the day before he died. And the three unvaccinated guys who shared my friends recovery ward - two of those died from covid too.

My friend tells me how lucky he was to be forcibly given the Zeneca vaccine, saying that being hit by a meteorite saved his life. He didn't know he had heart disease. I told him how unlucky we both were not to win the lottery's top prize, that technically he would have been entitled to one-sixth and a bit based upon current slide-rule mathematics and theoretical chance-luck calculations. My friend, he then got thirty-two and one-third percent sad.

I reckon it's your call on the Oxford-Zeneca vaccine, getting any of the vaccines might almost certainly save your life. If not then don't cross the empty road at night - not when meteors all of a sudden light up the proverbial nighttime sky.

Get the vaccine, any damn vaccine you can - deep down you know it might make sense.
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Please visit our SV Sänna website for more details of our circumnavigation voyage from the UK. Also at www.facebook.com/SV.Sanna. Like our Facebook page if you'd like to receive more news about our sail adventure. You can contact us here.

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Winterton even today bears strong links with the sea

One year ago yesterday I arrived here in Norfolk all the way from distant Panama - emergency evacuated by the British embassy because of the deadly Zandam cruise-ship incident and the vicious virus pandemic. It was stipulated that I went immediately into fourteen-day quarantine - hence I was delivered triumphantly into the small, traditional backwater fishing village of Winterton-on-Sea.

Of course, the locals were universally appalled. Into their midsts came a coronavirus covid-ridden overseas traveller carrying the dreadful contagious disease not unlike the Black Death that swept through the village back in the sixteen-hundreds that is still talked about to this day - along with the lone German bomber that offloaded its cargo in 1943 when chased by an intercepting spitfire, forcing the sausage-eating pilot to turn back out to sea minus its deadly bomb load. One of those bombs took the roof off the house I write this blog from now - another bomb unashamedly destroyed the local pub. Two local women, Mrs Kate Brown and Mrs Edna Hodds died when ten village homes were bombed. The rogue bomber never did survive, after the spitfire's victory roll three of the unfortunate crew were buried in the nearby churchyard which is where many of today's locals said I myself would soon be interned along with a good number of their own.

It's difficult to blame the people of Winterton for their nervous disposition. The whole world back then was in the process of falling off a cliff. Emergency laws said I should not be in the village or using the holiday-home for my quarantine - but I had been given a vital letter of safe passage by our embassy in Panama requesting hassle-free assistance in both Spanish and English that was to prove its worth during my two-month stay in this quaint fisherman's cottage - even today the locals talk knowledgeably about its 'new' roof. I was visited by the police on three occasions, asking why I was contravening emergency travel laws using a holiday-home against strict government decrees ratified by parliament. My embassy letter once more worked a treat - except the police pointed out that it was intended for the army police in Panama, not themselves in Norfolk. When I asked them to point out where it specifically said this in my letter they demurred then agreed, I made them a cup of tea then chatted about all things Norfolk - never-high crime rates were down, one of their wives was expecting a baby.

For those of you who are not familiar, Norfolk is a curious backcountry shire located on the extreme east-coast of England right on the shores of the tempestuous North Sea. The flat East Anglian wetlands are remote, with old traditional English villages dotted throughout and thatched-roof cottages built in the style of little fishermen houses. The blue-eyed girls here still wear their flaxen hair in pigtails reminiscent of their ancient Anglo-Saxon and Viking heritage - with occasional flashes of Spanish blood from when remnants of the defeated Spanish Armada were washed ashore to find an unwelcome pitchfork greeting that's still not uncommon to this day.

Of course, Norfolk is Nelson's own personal shire. It's where the greatest of English fighting admirals was born, where many of the local pubs still bear his name with reverence. The Woodfords brewery's 'Nelsons Revenge' is easily my favourite tipple, although you foreigners never quite get your heads around room-temperature flat-brown English beer. A fine upstanding German friend of ours who once stayed with us in Winterton suggested there was a good reason one of their bombs landed in the beer cellar of the local Fishermans Arms.

So, today, I find myself back here in this most wonderful of Norfolk backwaters. Sänna is still left moored forlornly in Panama after her near-sinking experience and the Chinese pandemic rages. Over one-hundred and twenty thousand of us have died - we're battered and confused, as a nation we're bruised and bitter though these fantastic British created Astra/Zeneca Oxford vaccines are giving us a rapid way out of this murderous virus the Chinese have launched upon us. The government right now allows us limited travel, I am here to rejuvenate both Henrys Cottage and the state of my tumbling upside-down mind. Not much has changed here one year on, when I open our small five-foot fisherman's door I'm once more confronted by pitchfork-wielding locals demanding to see the English version of my embassy letter, when I point to our new roof they immediately put down their three-pronged forks to tell me where those poor German bastards were buried. The Germans, they tell me, got the pub, now it's closed again because of these global-economy bat-eating people from the far-east. Never did the people of Norfolk like troubling foreigners which, I'm told, includes letter-wielding Englishmen of dubious descent who can't pronounce their 'r's in the same way they do.

They tell me here our greatest seafaring admiral Horatio Nelson would never have stood for it. Nelson would have seen off this virus in his own inimitable style, in the same way he saw off those Napoleonic frog-eating French. The Spanish... well, there's one or two Norfolk girls with brown eyes who tell me the Spanish aren't so bad, so I show them my letter in which it states clearly in Spanish that English girls from Norfolk will always have easy passage, letter-wielding Spanish-looking girls are free, that they can go wherever whenever they please...
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Note: Winterton is the old Anglo-Saxon name for winter town, meaning the settlement 'Ton' where the original Saxon and Viking settlers would have moved their grazing cattle during the winter months for higher, drier ground. During these colder days the Saxons would fish from the sea rather than grow their summer crops. Nearby, more inland, is the small equally quaint village of Somerton, or summer town, where cattle could find more succulent summer grasses. The Saxons would move from their winter dwellings to their summer homesteads during these warmer months. Other well-known Saxon derivative settlements include Brighton and Luton, though 'Ham' and 'Burgh' are also common place-names that date back to our marauding Nordic and Germanic cousins.

Vice-Admiral, 1st Viscount Horatio Nelson, 1st Duke of Bronté (1758 - 1805), known simply as Admiral Nelson, was a British officer in the Royal Navy. His inspirational leadership, grasp of strategy and unconventional tactics inspired a large number of decisive British naval victories during the Napoleonic Wars.


Sir Francis Drake (1540 - 1596) was an English explorer, sea captain, slave trader, pirate privateer, naval officer, and politician. Drake is best known for his circumnavigation of the world in a single expedition, from 1577 to 1580 before his defeat of the invading Spanish Armada in 1588.

If you would like more information about Henry's Cottage, a fine traditional Norfolk pitchfork welcome and wonderful Winterton-on-Sea, please click here.
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Please visit our SV Sänna website for more details of our circumnavigation voyage from the UK. Also at www.facebook.com/SV.Sanna. Like our Facebook page if you'd like to receive more news about our sail adventure. You can contact us here.

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Photo: A hard daybreak emergency haulout...

Our grateful thanks to Ollie and his boys, the marina staff of Vista Mar and to Jacqui for saving Sänna from a near-sinking disaster, when a suddenly leaking thru-hull fitting threatened to flood the main cabin bilges and the whole boat. Ollie's keen eyes and quick thinking with extra pumps, a diver and a wooden bung graciously supplied by our good friend Bob onboard Singularity saved the day. Jacqui and Cesar arranged to quickly haul Sänna out of the water, a precarious high-tide crack-of-dawn exercise fraught with problems given Sänna's fifty-foot length.

Meanwhile, back in covid-ridden authoritarian misgoverned England, we ourselves were totally powerless to intervene...

Thanks to everyone involved.

More haulout images here.
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Please visit our SV Sänna website for more details of our circumnavigation voyage from the UK. Also at www.facebook.com/SV.Sanna. Like our Facebook page if you'd like to receive more news about our sail adventure. You can contact us here.

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So I went ahead and got my Pfizer vaccine.

It's five days now. In this time I haven't grown two heads, nor have I received a personal message from Bill Gates welcoming me as an honorary ant to the Bill & Melinda Humanity Foundation. So far my DNA appears to be unaltered - it still seems as tangled and erratic as it's always been. And I can't for the life of me feel a microscopic chip implanted into my upper-arm, one that has somehow managed to squeeze its way through the pinprick needle the nice young lady used to put the deadly serum into my blood. I was amazed to see that my vaccinator did not possess those evil eyes of Annie Wilkes, the murderous nurse played by the wonderful Kathy Bates in the film Misery - a truly scary movie adapted from the equally terrifying novel penned by the fist of Stephen King. In fact - even King could not have dreamed up some of the astonishing covid conspiracy stuff I've received from the more wacky of my friends since I confessed to having the vaccine. I've even got dire warnings of doom from people I've never met.

It's become something of a frenzy. Did I know the whole pandemic is a hoax? I've been told I have limited time before I keel over foaming at the mouth, dribbling like a demented halfwit with my brain turned to chicken shit. So far the grey-matter in my head is performing in its usual dysfunctional way, ways that've been worrying me far longer than this Chinese bat virus. I still go to the toilet three times during the middle of each night, I still don't understand those bizarre people who eat celery. So nothing much has changed - though I'm reliably informed I've not given this evil fluid inside my body enough time.

Of course, either the war against Bill Gates, the devil Chinese or the pharmaceutical giants wishing to control the world is already well lost - or this coronavirus is being beaten by the pure wonders of modern science that might be the pinnacle of human endurance - and the best will to survive humankind has yet experienced. Next, it might be that giant science-fiction leap to the stars - perhaps your point of view largely depends upon the stability of your mind. To those of you who say the vaccines have not been tested safely - so what? What does it matter? If evil governments are trying to bend my mind - who cares? Where's your proof? 1984 was only a scary movie that made big money for its producers - the book was hardly read.

Let me tell you this.

For those of you who say this virus is one big hoax - please get real. It's you that's trying to control my mind. Don't try to convince me it's all made up, not when my fit & healthy thirty-two year old daughter lies recovering from the ravages of this SARS-CoV-2 called covid, with her lung tissue scarred and her chest hardly able to breath. If you have the courage to tell me that I'm easily fooled, that I'm an idiot for believing what I was reliably told by doctors who themselves know a thing or two, more than you on your social-media keyboard, then you will need more than a simple jab to see yourself into ripe old-age my friend.

So why did I decide to ignore crackpots telling me over and over that I'm an easily led fool? It's simple and easy to explain. As long-distance ocean sailors we're well used to enormous sea-born risks, we have a keen instinct that warns us when our lives are in danger. This is why we know this vaccine isn't going to kill us and no conspiracy guru, government, president or man in uniform will ever dictate either way. It's a simple question really - when will we again be allowed to sail Sänna from anchorage to anchorage, harbour to harbour, from one immigration official to another? So what's the half-baked answer? Only when we've beaten this vile 2019-nCoV virus, a virus that's done what every virus that's crawled from rotting animal flesh has always done. Was the H1N1 1918 Spanish Flu virus all a clever hoax? Fifty million dead? Did you know that H1N1's remains are still found in pigs to this day? Was HKU1 (beta) Hong Kong Flu all made up? Then there's 229E (alpha) or its near cousins NL63 (alpha) and OC43 (beta) - you know them by more common names, Google them up. And those deadly poxes we call gonorrhoea and syphilis? How about smallpox and ebola eh?

Get the vaccine. It's the only way out of this shitty mess, all of these weirdo conspiracy theories have been debunked. Don't listen to any idiot who might be even remotely stupid.
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Please visit our SV Sänna website for more details of our circumnavigation voyage from the UK. Also at www.facebook.com/SV.Sanna. Like our Facebook page if you'd like to receive more news about our sail adventure. You can contact us here.

Read more about the mishaps and mayhem of Nellie, The Ship's Cat

Photo: Robin, sometimes spotted in the greenwoods of Panama...

They tell me in the Sherwood Forester pub here in my home town of Sherwood, that it's where Robin Hood would meet Maid Marion for their regular early-doors tipple, that they'd whisper secrets into each others' ears with his sneaky hand on her lap while they counted his days takings from out on the trail. His was a room-temperature English beer, hers a rough-hewn flagon of elderflower mead. On the weekends they'd be joined by Will Scarlet and Friar Tuck - and sometimes by a few more of their men who'd sing rousing rebel songs before spending a good deal of time making merry. Though not the big man Little John - they tell me for some reason Little John was himself life-long banned. It's a bit of a rum joint is the Sherwood Forester, the sheriff tried to close it shut but was caught late one night with his trousers down around his knees.

Fifteen hundred years later, little here in Sherwood has changed. This urban hamlet is still a hotbed of revolutionary outlaws though property prices are rising fast. There are now boutique coffee shops, two of the four pubs serve food and a number of 'wine bars' cater for the influx of thirtyish or something social workers, aspiring teachers and lower-ranking lawyers who are not yet partners in their respective law firms. Sherwood's standing has for a while threatened to move swiftly upwards in a social curve - we ourselves became monied sailors, our good friends across the road took off on their canal barge. Then, along came this bastard coronavirus which has changed everything.

We've been back in Sherwood for nearly twelve months now, that's a year in Robin Hood language. We've been here before of course, during the warm summers when England is at its glorious best, when there's English cricket, music festivals and when blue-eyed English girls wear their flaxen hair in braided pigtails. But the wintertimes in England are dire, the grey depression lows roll in one after another off the Atlantic, when the endless days of drizzly rain eventually begin to wear us intrepid English down. It's why we dive into Sherwood's welcoming sawdust-floored pubs with their smokey burning coal fires, Mowbray pork pies and old-fashioned non-chilled English beer... and why we always make sure Sänna is moored ready somewhere nice and warm. Not this time though, Sänna is tied up all alone in Panama, in Vista Mar where many other intrepid sailors have abandoned their ocean sailboats too.

This last year has been tough - and not just for us ourselves. All our children - my three daughters, their partners, my grandchildren and Marie's son have all contracted this unseen virus called covid, my brother and his wife too. All in all they've been ok - except my youngest daughter who's the fittest and leanest of us all. She suffered, she suffered bad from this vicious Chinese bat virus - which makes me feel good that we were here in Sherwood, that we were not stranded somewhere far off unable to return.

Soon everything will change, these amazing vaccines will send this oxygen-sucking coronavirus back into the damp rainforest and dark caves of China from where it came. Soon, we can laugh loudly in its face when we count our dead - though we know the world has now forever changed. Those ridiculous conspiracy theories spouted by those who could not cope will still plague us but me and Marie will reset, reassured by our Astra-Zeneca vaccine. Robin and Marion both opted for the Pfizer, which they stole from some rich who mistakenly believed they'd in their own way jumped the queue. The merry men, they're fine too, they'd caught the covid anyway and tell everyone they rob they're now immune. Sadly, the two big men, the Friar Tuck and Little John, they did not make it. High at risk from their pre-existing English disease, the care home they chose to see out their days holding hands was not as safe as they both hoped. They died alone, with Robin banging hard upon the window in tearful vain.

The sheriff and his cohort the king - not the lionhearted one but his scheming brother - they're going well too. They were first in the vaccine line because of their great age... both now claiming their loss of office was down to that old chestnut - out-and-out election fraud. They're still trying hard to stop the so-called steal. So all's reasonably well here in rain-sodden Sherwood, the Sherwood Forester has for a longtime been closed with the infamous back-house toilets still chained, though the Snobby Butcher a few doors down remains open - if you're in the know with a nod and a wink, there's a good cut of king's venison saved somewhere under the counter.

Please spare a thought for rusting and rotting Sänna - almost one year alone in covid-ridden Panama.
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Please visit our SV Sänna website for more details of our circumnavigation voyage from the UK. Also at www.facebook.com/SV.Sanna. Like our Facebook page if you'd like to receive more news about our sail adventure. You can contact us here.

Read more about the mishaps and mayhem of Nellie, The Ship's Cat

Photo: Tied up nine months now in Vista Mar

This rapidly developing human crisis goes on and on. Virologist always predicted this coronavirus would mutate, that a second wave not dissimilar to the one seen in the 1918 Spanish Flu pandemic would spread through the world population like a firestorm. In terms of Sänna we now have an impossible situation.

Due to the large surge in the Brazil and South African virus mutations, Panama is one of thirty countries now barred in terms of travel entry into the UK. None-UK nationals are banned and those with British passports or residency permits must quarantine in government nominated hotels for ten days at their own expense.

Many European countries and their overseas territories are expected to replicate these restrictions due to the virus mutations which, similar to the UK virus variant, is said by scientists here to be 30-60% more contagious and possibly up to 30% more lethal. Like the UK's own appalling level of covid infections and terrible death rates, Panama's coronavirus pandemic continues to surge despite strict military and police enforced curfews, with the Brazil variant widely predicted to become the dominant virus throughout South & Central America by April.

Given that Panama has itself banned UK travellers for the same protective reasons, it is now virtually impossible for us to return to Sänna in Vista Mar for the foreseeable future. We have been advised the UK and reciprocal bans are likely to be in place throughout most of this year, with restrictions not realistically being eased until early 2022 when worldwide vaccination efforts begin to take effect.

Of course, we are seriously worried, Sänna is not in the safest of locations and even now, it is over nine months since we left her tied up in Vista Mar.
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Please visit our SV Sänna website for more details of our circumnavigation voyage from the UK. Also at www.facebook.com/SV.Sanna. Like our Facebook page if you'd like to receive more news about our sail adventure. You can contact us here.

Read more about the mishaps and mayhem of Nellie, The Ship's Cat

Photo: Jungle wildlife in Costa Rica thrives...

'Little did we suspect the whole world would soon tumble off an enormous cliff. The virus fermenting inside Chinese bats near the city of Wuhan was just a background news item when we returned to Costa Rica back in January, there was nothing to indicate the awful crisis that was to hit hard just three months later.

'We never paid much attention to the mounting media frenzy - we were too concerned with making plans to get ourselves south through the Panama Canal. Just like the rest of the world, we were unprepared - given that we spend most of our time taking care of the risks we face on a day-to-day basis then crisis planning is something not unknown to us - but not this, this was science fiction stuff, this was the doomsday prophecy those cranks and conspiracy psychopaths bang on about without anyone taking notice. Nowadays, we know the virus is a deadly threat that's going to change everything - the world, we think, has changed forever...'

This post describes our transit from the north of Costa Rica to Panama beginning in early January 2020. At this time of writing in December 2020, we are still in covid-isolation with a rampant new virus mutation now ravaging the UK, the Panama borders are rightly locked closed to UK visitors. To read more of this post please follow the link below to our sv Sänna website...

Read more - Costa Rica to Panama 2020
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Please visit our SV Sänna website for more details of our circumnavigation voyage from the UK. Also at www.facebook.com/SV.Sanna. Like our Facebook page if you'd like to receive more news about our sail adventure. You can contact us here.

Read more about the mishaps and mayhem of Nellie, The Ship's Cat

October the 12th finally brought a COVID update from the president of Panama.

Land and air borders are now open, meaning that air travel into Panama is now possible though military and police enforced curfews are still in place. Security forces ensure that government imposed restrictions are strictly adhered to with the curfew hours of 11pm to 5am Monday to Saturday maintained. From 11pm on Saturday to 5am on Monday a full lockdown is in place, meaning that no one is allowed from their home for any purpose or travel. In Panama City, the volatile eastern provinces bordering Columbia, the Caribbean-side provinces of Colon, Chiriquí and Bocas del Toro are each under stricter curfews - from 11pm Friday until 5am Monday it is almost a total weekend lockdown. The president fears lack of social distancing and increasing civil unrest will spread the virus in these higher risk locations.

Of course, this differs greatly from the new virus restrictions in the United Kingdom. So how does this leave us with Sänna still tied up in Vista Mar?

Read more...
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Please visit our SV Sänna website for more details of our circumnavigation voyage from the UK. Also at www.facebook.com/SV.Sanna. Like our Facebook page if you'd like to receive more news about our sail adventure. You can contact us here.

Read more about the mishaps and mayhem of Nellie, The Ship's Cat

Photo: All tied up in Vista Mar...

Right now, just like everyone else on this virus-ridden planet, we don't know what is gonna happen. When we set out back in January from Marina Papagayo in the north of Costa Rica for the Panama Canal, everything was fine - the world then had not gone crazy. Even when we sailed across Costa Rica's southern border into Boca Chica there were few signs that in just a short while our whole adventure would tumble into this mind-blowing crisis. Only the Lord knows how this murderous Chinese bat virus is gonna change the insane world we now live in...

Anchored in Golfito, in the south of Costa Rica, we were fine. We'd heard the virus was bad in other countries, but these places were around the other side of the world. In the two countries we were in touch with, the UK and the US, there seemed to be no panic or even any form of preparation, so we didn't think there was much to worry about.

Then, over the next two weeks, everything went from bad to worse, then deteriorated even further - before the whole world then tumbled over a cliff...

Read more >
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Please visit our SV Sänna website for more details of our circumnavigation voyage from the UK. Also at www.facebook.com/SV.Sanna. Like our Facebook page if you'd like to receive more news about our sail adventure. You can contact us here.

Read more about the mishaps and mayhem of Nellie, The Ship's Cat

Photo: Wolff... fresh cooked German bread and BBQ'd lobster...

Anchoring in the shelter of Isla Gamez was easy enough on the north side, the sea was pristine clear. We needed to make fresh water to fill our tanks and here was the idealic location. Although Boca Chica is almost a perfect anchorage, the fast moving currents there made going into the murky water dangerous and using our watermaker was questionable in terms of making safe drinking water. We knew for a fact that two of the three waterside restaurants emptied their grey-waste into the bay then relied upon the strong tidal flow through the nearby rapids to flush the anchorage twice each day. The nearby fishing village of Boca Chica no doubt did the same, so we decided it would be safer to head out into more open sea.

We had been anchored off Boca Chica for over a week now, waiting for our Panamanian cruising permit which had still not materialised from the harbourmaster in Pedregal. We had completed both customs and immigration without any problems, but legally Sänna was not allowed to move an inch until we had all the marine paperwork completed. Talking to Carlos, the exceptionally friendly fixer who had fixed everything for us, the permit needed to come from Panama City many hours away by road. But being there in Boca Chica was no real hardship, most evenings we'd take our dinghy across to one of three eating places that provided their own landing docks, we could tie up without the infamous beach landings of Costa Rica - it was nice to eat good local food on the cheap and not dread the launch back through the breaking surf when we'd dined and wined.

The frustrating permit delay began to cause us some concern. The American ketch Singularity anchored nearby had arrived a couple of days before us, they still had not received their permit either but had been promised by Carlos that everything was ok, it was all down to a new computer system that didn't yet work properly - and there was also worrying talk about a new virus found in bats that was killing people in China. 'Don't worry,' said Carlos, 'things will get sorted.' Then, we heard on the VHF radio from our good friend Wolff onboard his trimaran Del Sur, he too was heading into Boca Chica. That would be nice, it would be extremely good to see Wolff again.

Our situation was fast becoming uncertain. Our immediate concern was fresh clean water, but in three weeks time I needed to be in Panama City to take a flight to England. We were still a long way north of Panama City and this delay could easily turn into a problem. Rather than sit around we decided to leave Boca Chica without our cruising permit, technically it had been approved but not yet issued. In the meantime we could head out to the secluded islands around ten miles or so to the south, stay a few days and then return when Carlos radioed to us the news that he now had our cruising permit. Of course, it never worked out like that.

The north side of Isla Gamez is paradise, we could see our anchor buried in the sandy bottom and we could land on the small island beach without the worry of breaking surf. We could swim whenever we chose, either from the beach or by simply leaping overboard. First we started up the watermaker to fill both our freshwater tanks, we were fully stocked with food enough for a month and Wolff radioed on the VHF that he would join us there off Gamez by mid-morning. This was the dreamlike existence that made this sometimes hard and dangerous lifestyle worthwhile. No threatening storms or sheltering from high winds, no lightening or hurricanes to worry about, just a daily peaceful existence in warm sunshine with almost idealic temperatures.

Wolff anchored around three boat lengths away. He called up to say that he'd baked fresh bread earlier in the morning, I invited him over saying that we still had ample supplies of excellent organic Guatemalan coffee and good English marmalade that would go nice with his bread - which we by now knew Wolff had perfected into a fine culinary art form. It would be a fine mid-morning breakfast the three of us. Half way through the bread and coffee, when we sat there all content and full, there was banging on the hull. Dave leaned outboard to find a single lone fishermen sitting in his small one-man panga. He had fresh caught lobsters in a bin container, he'd just hauled a dozen or so out of the sea and asked if we would like to take a couple off his hands. We took three, they were still alive, we could cook them fresh. He would only take five dollars from us - which for three good sized fresh lobsters convinced us these local fishermen were exceptionally nice people. Wolff suggested that we took them ashore in the evening with wine and beer, we could barbecue them on the beach using the ample supplies of driftwood. Fantastic! This was turning into an enjoyable adventure, we all three sat there talking, happy and content.

Everything then seemed to change like a fast gathering storm cloud. The Panamanian navy patrol boat came and dropped anchor right next to us. Too close, we thought, we nearly collided. 'Shit', said Wolff, 'we're anchored here in a protected marine park, where swimming, fishing and lobster hunting is banned... and you two don't have a cruising permit.'

'Sheeeet,' Carlos said on the radio, when I called him to ask if our cruising permit had arrived because the navy was here. There was still no sign of our permit, said Carlos. In fact, the navy never bothered us, Dave took our dinghy over to their patrol boat to offer them a chunk of Wolff's bread and marmalade with a couple of bottles of beer. They were fine, they didn't seem to be overly concerned though it was clear they would be staying there overnight alongside us. In the evening we still went ashore to barbecue the lobsters, the navy boys waved and we made fried potatoes with onions and beetroot - a German speciality apparently. We drank beer and wine while watching the sunset over the nearby Islas Paridas before making our way back late in the night well under the influence of alcohol.

In the morning we were woken by more banging on the hull. I stuck my head out to see the navy, who had brought over their own version of warm fresh bread.
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Please visit our SV Sänna website for more details of our circumnavigation voyage from the UK. Also at www.facebook.com/SV.Sanna. Like our Facebook page if you'd like to receive more news about our sail adventure. You can contact us here.

Photo: Innocent and cute looking thieves...

We sailed the nine miles or so from Bahiá Ballena to the Curu Wildlife Refuge relatively easily, the breeze being just enough to drive us along the rugged coastline through a nice flat sea. We were in no hurry to make the anchorage and by staying close inshore we could take in the spectacular rainforest landscape hemmed in by rugged granite cliffs that have long been ravaged by the relentless power of the Pacific Ocean. We rounded the headland to drop anchor about ten boat lengths or so from the beach, the bay was calm and well protected by the high island of Islas Tortugas less than a mile offshore - but we would once more be faced with a beach landing pounded by the surf to get ashore. The Curu wildlife refuge, though a vast area, is smaller than the tourist-ridden Manual Antonio Park further south, much quieter, more hidden and secluded. We'd anchored here because of the large colony of white-faced capuchins and incredibly noisy howler monkeys that lived wild in the pristine virgin rainforest of the Nicoya Peninsula. Of course, I had my own reasons for visiting the rainforest hereabouts...

Many years ago, in my construction contracting days in the north of England and Scotland, I owned two pet capuchin monkeys. White-faced capuchin monkeys in fact, Pablo and Fred. Nowadays, keeping a primate for a pet is against the law in my country and rightly so - it's no life in captivity for any primate, even in zoos they're not often kept in the right social conditions. I tried my best to give Pablo and Fred a life of relative freedom - Pablo travelled around various construction sites with me, he even possessed his own little tool-belt and hammer. He was happy enough scampering up and down the scaffolding causing a nuisance, but nighttime usually meant confinement in his small cage inside some dilapidated contractor's bed & breakfast somewhere, so Pablo was really my show off plaything - these days I know in my heart it was all wrong.

For a monkey Pablo caused a lot of trouble, his habitual trick of shaking a cooing admirer's hand while using the other hand to pull down their fly zipper to search inside for the green grapes he loved - a trick taught to him by mean-minded scaffolders working on a Glasgow hotel, lead to lots of embarrassing confrontations and sometimes intervention by the local police. Meanwhile, not so tame Fred, he escaped. He picked the lock to his garden enclosure one night and was gone. He lived through the hot summer months by climbing drainpipes during the night, entering houses through open windows to then rummage through bedroom jewellery boxes for the shiny objects he loved - often with the occupants asleep in bed. He made the local news big time during his long stint of freedom, becoming an overnight celebrity with a growing number of excited followers. So I myself was keen to see white-faced capuchins swinging free and happily content in the wild.

We anchored overnight so that we might get a good early start into the forest, there are numerous marked paths to choose from but first we would have to pay a fifteen bucks entrance fee at the ranger station - the money goes towards the upkeep of the national park and is well spent. After a good evening meal of pesto pasta with tomato bruschettas followed by a cool evening swim, we turned in for the night - but it was not an easy sleep. It was calm enough out in the bay, but howler monkeys rise extremely early before sun-up and don't much care about sleeping Englishmen. The loud whooping roar of a male howler carries a long distance from the treetops - and for every decibel of hormonal driven testosterone there is an answering crescendo of noise from every male in a wide vicinity. The noise has to be heard to be fully believed.

The ranger station opened at seven in the morning, landing the dinghy was this time quite straightforward and, other than a long drag up the beach beyond the surf line, we were ashore dry and kitted out for our long day trekking in the rainforest. We left most of our possessions that we would not immediately need in a beach bag hidden inside the dinghy, forgetting that capuchins are avid thieves beyond the reach of normal law and order - a fact that Fred's thieving instincts should have taught me only too well, it had taken me two years to pay off the fine from the hoard of Fred's stolen jewellery eventually recovered by the Nottingham police.

From the ranger station we had choices, the longer trails that followed the cliff edge around the bay would be too taxing given the limited footwear we had, so we decided to follow the river that emptied into the bay - though the ranger warned us that crocodiles habituated the waters and that we must watch our step. We refused the offer of a guide on the basis of the fifty bucks charge - Costa Rica is not known for its cheap cost of living, although we felt bad in some ways because these guides need to make their living. Nevertheless, I felt I was enough of a monkey expert to make our way through the park under our own steam. I was completely wrong of course, but fortune favours the brave.

We followed the trail by the river, it was easy enough with the coolness of the forest providing relief - the canopy shade shields out the sun and being the dry season, the relentless humidity of the monsoon wet was not yet a problem. These were the nice trekking conditions that we thoroughly enjoyed. We quickly came across white-tailed deer, armadillos, then fascinating trails of millions of leaf-cutter ants scurrying along with pieces of tree leaves they've cut free to return sometimes a mile or more back to their huge complex nests built to accommodate the demands of one single queen. Also in the forests are numerous snakes, including the ubiquitous Boa Constrictor as well as a good number of poisonous species too. In the distance, the howlers began their mid-morning crescendo roar.

We quickly found them, we just had to make our way to where they were. The howlers were high in the trees, a large colony of around a hundred or so. The noise was mind blowing whenever one of the males kicked off, we spent around an hour tracking them through the forest as they moved along through the trees. Later in the afternoon, conscious of the rising tide and our dinghy left on the beach, we made our way back to the ranger station where we could eat in the small tica restaurant serving local traditional food. Whilst there we were suddenly inundated by large numbers of capuchin monkeys rampaging through the camp stealing food from other visitors, they tried to sneak into the restaurant kitchens before deftly opening visitor's bags to rummage inside - that's when we suddenly remembered we'd left our bag inside the dinghy tied up on the beach. Too late, I pelted along the beach to scatter a large troop of capuchins that hastily escaped high into the trees - along with various items of our food and clothing, Marie's sunglasses and spare flip flops. Yup - thieving Fred would have been proud.

In the evening we returned to the beach with wine and beer, we sat watching the fabulous sunset joined by a group of young women who were camping in the ranger station lodges. From time to time we were also joined by more curious capuchins venturing onto the beach to see what they could find. It was such a nice location that we stayed anchored for a few more days, relaxing before once more making our way southwards to Costa Rica's border with Panama. Costa Rica is a nice country, it's relatively expensive with few facilities for sailboats which in many places do not seem to be welcomed, but the wildlife is there in incredible numbers if one takes the time to get ashore to explore the remote locations that being boat bound allows.

Of course, the relentless march of tourism is rapidly changing all of this. You really must go to Costa Rica, even before you go anywhere else.
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Please visit our SV Sänna website for more details of our circumnavigation voyage from the UK. Also at www.facebook.com/SV.Sanna. Like our Facebook page if you'd like to receive more news about our sail adventure. You can contact us here.

Photo: Five minutes from landing the dinghy through the wet surf...

We both sat outside the beachside bar, absolutely dripping wet and once more disconsolate. We were outside because we'd look ridiculous inside, especially in the state we were in. The waiter told us we were making the whole patio sodden wet, he seemed reluctant to serve us but I guess his trade wasn't that good. We ordered two marguerites anyway, I added a cold beer to get the bitter taste of salt out of my mouth. I told Marie that she looked particularly sexy in her wet tee-shirt, but she didn't say much, nor did she look amused - I told her this same ridiculous half-compliment every time we made another memorable dinghy landing through the surf - it was beginning to wear a bit thin.

We'd still not really mastered the technique. Having tried all the different ways suggested by other sailors we were now on our third set of dinghy wheels, having discarded the previous ones as useless, not fit for purpose and not able to keep us dry. Our current technique, soon to be discarded, was to charge at high speed through the surf having timed the relevant sequence of waves, I would then strategically lift the outboard at exactly the right moment whilst Marie leaped out - sometimes deep up to her chest - to grab the painter line to guide us up on to the beach. This latest one had been a particularly disaster, with Marie completely submerged under the dinghy with the next breaking wave then swamping the boat with me inside. Of course, we were both dressed up to the eyeballs for the night out I'd promised having been anchored off in Bahía Ballena for four days in thirty knot winds. Through the binoculars, I'd confidently informed Marie that the surf this time looked easy, we could get ashore dry and safe without being soaked to the skin.

There are maybe a half-dozen techniques for landing through the surf, even less so for launching back off the beach although, at this point, getting wet isn't so much of a problem because your next destination is the sanctuary of your boat - unless you have two large-sized takeaway pizzas with you like we had in Tamarindo. Launching your dinghy off the beach through the surf is no mean feat and not for the faint hearted. Our soggy pizzas had been recommended as particularly good too. But when you are landing ashore to shop for supplies or to checkin with the harbourmaster or, even worse, when you have promised your wife a good night out with fine wine and food, then it's rather more problematic. Marie's preferred technique right now, if she can find a big enough tree, is to take her fancy going-out clothes and makeup in a black waste bin liner, then change behind the tree or something like that once we've managed to get ashore - but sometimes that's not so easy on a crowded beach. These days I steer the dinghy for a good wet-clothes changing tree or maybe a place with not so many people around so that Marie might get dressed, she then relies on me to tell her that her makeup looks ok - which has gotten me into trouble once or twice when she's finally found a mirror in some bar. Sometimes, we just accept our 'ragged appearance' and brazen it out.

It's worse when I sit drying in a bar or restaurant then watch some suntanned dude ride his inflatable dinghy ashore like he's breaking in a wild stallion, standing with his one arm raised high with sunglasses perfectly in place. You know the sort I mean, the one whose fashionable dressed female companion steps elegantly straight onto the beach bone dry, to casually realign her lipstick whilst he effortlessly pulls their dinghy up the beach beyond the surf line. I myself sit there dripping wet, I would gladly smash his glasses off his head. Costa Rica is particularly bad because there are few safe anchorages, even fewer with any decent landing facilities and the marinas are so repulsively expensive. To check into the country involves a hairy surf landing before sitting in various public offices for customs and immigration whilst absolutely sodden to the core. Take Playa del Coco for example, we trampled from the harbourmaster to immigration having been previously submerged under the breaking waves of the Pacific Ocean only fifteen minutes previously.

Marie's main gripe is that all her friends think we have a so-called life of Riley, that they have no idea of what she has to go through for a simple margarita. But she still smiles, when I say to her that her hair looks nice, even though it's dripping wet in knots. But after a few margaritas, and one or two gin & tonics, then everything is straightaway fine and dandy - until it's that dreaded time to drag the dinghy down the beach to launch back out through the breaking surf. Usually it's dark by then, because we've had more to drink than we said we would, we've forgotten the flashlight torch and we can never be bothered to change into something less fashionable in the darkness of the beach. Our latest launching method means that I sit in the dinghy ready to lower the outboard whilst Marie strips down to her underwear, then she launches us out into the surf until she's in the water up to her chest and I haul her into the dinghy like a sodden wet whale with the outboard hopefully by this time running. If I time it wrong, or the outboard doesn't start, then we get washed ashore and have to start the whole process again.

Most safety conscious sailors tell us how dangerous it is to launch from the beach under the influence of alcohol, especially in the dark, but we've found it helps enormously if we giggle our way offshore trying to remember exactly where we've anchored Sänna. So raise a glass and think how much we suffer when you next drink your G&T's or cool beers.

Wheels up or wheels down? The bastards...
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Please visit our SV Sänna website for more details of our circumnavigation voyage from the UK. Also at www.facebook.com/SV.Sanna. Like our Facebook page if you'd like to receive more news about our sail adventure. You can contact us here.

Read more about the mishaps and mayhem of Nellie, The Ship's Cat

Photo: The idealic Bahiá Del Sol has many hidden secrets...

We crossed the sandbar into the Bahiá Del Sol, El Salvador in mid-October 2018. We intended to stay only a few days for rest, then refuel to continue our voyage southwards towards Panama. Of course, it never worked out like that, but when do plans ever work out like you plan?

We finally left El Salvador having patched up our lightening damage in October 2019, meaning that we had spent a whole year in the Bahiá Del Sol. We both felt mixed feelings, El Salvador had not been an easy stopover, dengue fever, cockroach infestation and lightening damage all contributed to our experience though good friends there made things far more memorable. Certainly Bill's mooring buoys enabled us to spend a good summer back in England - and without Bill & Jeans incredible hospitality the Bahiá Del Sol would not have been so easily tenable for such a long period. In the end we were both glad to cross the sandbar to Honduras, though sad to leave long-standing friends.

This post is our personal record of 2019 and continues the 'Where Are We Now' section of our website. Please follow the link below to read the full post...

Read More >
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Please visit our SV Sänna website for more details of our circumnavigation voyage from the UK. Also at www.facebook.com/SV.Sanna. Like our Facebook page if you'd like to receive more news about our sail adventure. You can contact us here.

Read more about the mishaps and mayhem of Nellie, The Ship's Cat

Photo: The rainstorm looked nothing much until it hit us...

Daylight faded rather too quickly, Marie pointed to what seemed to be a rainstorm off our port side, it looked strangely ominous but not that threatening. We had seen storms like this before, there was no lightening or dark heavy thunderclouds, there was nothing that bothered me unduly, not that deep pitch in your stomach when you know you're going to get hit unless you do something. I looked at the sails, by this time both our main and headsail were full out, their shapes filled out nicely. We had unreefed only a few moments before, now we made around five knots or so through the water in about ten to twelve knots of breeze across our stern quarter - we should easily be able to drop anchor in Playa De Coco sometime after dark. We were both relieved to be sailing well after finally shaking off the Papagayo's rounding Punta Elena - the heavy stuff was now surely behind us. Marie said maybe we should reef down if there was some bad rain heading our way. I looked again, maybe we would get wet but it really didn't look that bad. Much better to get into the shelter of Playa Coco - it would not be easy anchoring in the dark with all the moorings there.

A few minutes later Sänna broached hard as the breeze suddenly veered off to our port bow, the sails flapping wildly out of control. The wind blew crazily in a new direction, from ten knots of breeze on the wind vain, I watched it climb - in the half light I saw it increase to twenty, thirty, forty knots, then it climbed to over fifty knots and hung around the sixty figure all in a few moments. We had not encountered anything like this since the lightening storms back in Mexico. This was the thing - there was not the dreadful warning of lightening and thunder that suddenly drives bad winds against you. By this time we were in dire trouble - all in the space of less than thirty seconds. Then came the torrential downpour rain. The autopilot alarm burst into life, screaming warning beeps into the chaos as the rudder disconnected from the pilot, the pressure on the helm was too great to hold a course when the vice like windstorm gripped us. By now there was serious risk of losing our sails, they flapped wildly, they would tear themselves apart if we didn't get them under control quickly. The boom swung full across the boat, then the main sheet snapped taught, almost breaking. The noise from our near shredding sails was indescribable, you can't explain that to anyone. Sänna pulled full into the squall as the sails filled with nearly seventy knots of wind. She couldn't take this. We started to lean over to starboard, neither of us wore our life vests and Sänna was beginning to go over. I grabbed the helm to steer out of the wind - no response, the force of the wind was far too great. I screamed to Marie to let both sails go, but she was already ahead of me - the boom and sheets flayed loose as she let them go - good one Marie. Well done. She probably saved us. Sänna then leaned and leaned, the starboard deck was in the water, the sea poured through the open portlights - much more of this and we would easily capsize. I couldn't control the helm, we were at the mercy of this devil wind that was surely going to sink us. The bows crashed under the water - the storm wave cascaded through, flooding the cockpit, Marie turned and stared - she knew we were in bad trouble. I looked back hard, I could see in her wide eyes that she thought we would go under. I tried with all my strength to steer the bows through the wind to heave-to. No response. The gale had us firmly in its grip. I turned the helm to somehow get downwind, again nothing happened. Marie winched the sails hard in, she was thinking straight, she got the lines tight under control. Another huge gust - we once more leaned right over to our starboard side with yet more green sea inundating below.

It wasn't the sea - there were no breaking or rolling waves to capsize us. In my mind I knew we were going to be ok, whenever Sänna leaned hard over the wind blew off the top of the sails, we always came back up - it was the volume of water down below that might sink us. I pulled and pulled on the helm, Sänna began to come around - Marie instinctively eased the sails as we came off the wind, Marie was a gem, once more she was the big game changer. The rain by now was torrential but we didn't mind that, it washed the salt-cake from our eyes. Where had this rainstorm come from? It was the dry season, it hadn't rained for weeks.

Then it passed, as quickly as the wind came it died. It rained and rained but the wind dropped like a saturated sack. Sänna came fully upright - we quickly dropped the sails to start the engine, I was out on deck furling in the mainsail, I was absolutely sodden wet in nothing but a tee shirt. Every damn thing came under control. Then our navigation lights suddenly cut out - it was tar-black and we couldn't see a thing. We were around two hours out from Coco, later in the darkness of the moonless night we motored in around the headland without navigation lights. Marie stood rain-soaked on the bows to guide us in, she told me when to drop the anchor. Then we checked everything, Sänna was ok, where was the water below that would've sunk us? Everything was dry.

'I thought we'd had it,' Marie said. We devoured the pesto pasta like two hungry kids. The anchorage was calm with no moon, we could make out the indistinct shapes of other vessels but we'd anchored well out. 'Welcome to Costa Rica,' I said.
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Please visit our SV Sänna website for more details of our circumnavigation voyage from the UK. Also at www.facebook.com/SV.Sanna. Like our Facebook page if you'd like to receive more news about our sail adventure. You can contact us here.

Read more about the mishaps and mayhem of Nellie, The Ship's Cat

Photo: The statue of Christ of the Mercy watches over San Juan Del Sur...

From Puesta Del Sol we had choices, the main one being our flights to England - both Dave and myself wished to fly back to the UK for Christmas. We had pre-booked tickets from San Salvador, but on a practical level that meant returning north from Nicaragua to the Bahiá Del Sol. Neither of us wanted that - though we had made many good friends in Bahiá Del Sol, El Salvador had not been a massively overwhelming experience during the year we had spent there. We'd had problems, first with our cat Nellie hunting and bringing cockroaches onboard - which had been a devil to get rid of, then Dave had been quite ill with Dengue Fever. On top of that we'd been struck by lightening. Though it was easy enough to get to the airport from Bill & Jeans buoys, we'd since made the decision to leave El Salvador to head southwards through Nicaragua and Costa Rica to find somewhere to leave Sänna whilst we travelled back to England. We figured that we could somehow get flights back to San Salvador so that we could use our original return flight tickets to the UK. We soon found that indeed we could travel back north - but not easily, everywhere we looked involved long four or five hour drives to regional airports using buses, taxis or rental cars for connecting flights to El Salvador - and all the marinas we investigated in Costa Rica were incredibly over-the-top expensive and we now had our bitter insurance battle with our insurers Allianz over our lightening damage. None of it looked easy - so we made the reluctant but sensible decision to return northwards to the Bahiá Del Sol to once more tie up to one of Bill's mooring buoys.

We were sad to leave Nicaragua. On the evening before our departure from Puesta Del Sol we re-affirmed to each other that our decision to head north was right, it made total sense. We planned to rise early to catch the morning tide, Top Cider had already grounded on the sandbank when they left a few days before so we needed as much tide water as we could to reach open sea. I awoke to find Dave already up and about, he brewed my morning tea then sat himself down.

Let's head south, he said. I was surprised, then asked why. He told me he didn't like the thought of yet more time in the Bahiá Del Sol, he said that although everything made sense to go back north he wanted to head south. We'd work things out and something would turn up. I thought about this for only a second or two then agreed - all our planning and deliberation during the past week went out of the window. We already had our departure papers and Nicaraguan Zarpe international clearance for El Salvador - though we could easily change these to head south to Nicaragua's southern border with Costa Rica. We could get a new domestic Zarpe to then exit Nicaragua in San Juan Del Sur. Our passports could be stamped out there too. We untied Sänna, drifted out into the channel and told Singularity that we were heading south, not north.

The first big problem we had were the Papagayo winds. These infamous winds gust up to forty knots or more most days and would be against us. Blowing from the Caribbean side of Nicaragua and Costa Rica, these winds present a real challenge, a challenge discussed almost daily by American and Canadian sailboats back in the Bahiá Del Sol. The best plan to tackle the Papagayo's, we were told, was to wait for a weather gap then go for it over a few days and nights - but we would not have this luxury with our sudden decision to leave Puesta Del Sol. Dave made the point that we'd sailed strong headwinds with big seas numerous times before, Sänna was in her prime heading upwind, we could just deal with it. We estimated a two day overnight passage from Puesta Del Sol to San Juan Del Sur, most of it in the Papagayo headwinds - the distance was around a hundred and forty or so miles.

To begin with we had good downwind sailing with around fifteen to twenty knots across our stern - nice sailing. Then, just off the Estero La Garito river estuary, the winds backed then veered suddenly in almost every direction before settling to blow through fifty to sixty degrees off our port bow. In the short distance of about half a mile they blew up from five to well over forty knots. Wow! The main problem with these Papagayo winds is that they're not constant, they gust. They gust suddenly, from ten up to fifty knots in just a few minutes so it's difficult to set your sails. Constantly reefing and unreefing is fine if you have a good strong crew prepared to work relentlessly through the night - but when there's just the two of you with the skipper insisting on restful sleep then it becomes hard work trying to keep a constant boat speed through difficult seas. We'd made the prior decision to set our storm sails then just accept the slowing down during the intermittent lulls. Sänna always sails best with her storm sails set so we unfurled our inner staysail then reefed the main with one reef, furling away our main headsail tight. We would be on a constant starboard lean through rough seas so we tied everything down below, we would be in storm conditions throughout the night. I made up a single lean-to storm bunk, meaning that one of us could sleep while the other stood watch. Then we remembered how many times we'd done this before, sometimes for many long weeks when we'd crossed the big oceans to be here. We were actually quite excited.

It can only be said that we experienced glorious sailing all the way to San Juan Del Sur. We had both forgotten how much we love upwind sailing, much rather the constant lean-to of the boat to rock'n'rolling our way infuriatingly downwind. Sänna is designed with a fin keel and spade rudder - not every sailor's cup of tea, many sailors prefer the comforting safety of long bilge-keels with supported skeg rudders - but at the expense of sailing good-to-wind upwind. That's not for us, we'd made a conscious decision to find a boat to circumnavigate eastwards against the prevailing winds... so Sänna's keel design is an important factor in what we are trying to do. She's sturdily built to high German standards, we've never to date experienced undue problems. Right now we experienced the most invigorating sailing since we'd left Port Townsend for San Fransisco over two years before.

I took the first overnight watch while Dave slept soundly below. It was rough going but everything was under control, I did not experience any problems through my night watch. We had the occasional big wave break over our bows but Sänna generally cut through the waves with comfortable ease. Around two in the morning I woke Dave to take over the watch. I told him there was nothing to worry about so far and that we were making good speed. I then went down to sleep below. In the morning, I woke to glorious sunshine with Dave fast asleep in the cockpit. I gave him a strong piece of my mind, this is not good sailing practice at all, he would be summarily dismissed from most crews for falling asleep on watch. I looked around, we were still on course courtesy of the autopilot, we were about a mile or two offshore. Sänna was taking everything in her stride, pounding through the seas while leaned over to starboard with almost dry decks, the winds blew between twenty-five to forty-five knots with the seas reasonable okay because we had the distant shelter of land, meaning that the predominantly offshore winds didn't build up into rough storm seas. The winds backed and veered from time to time between fifty-five and forty degrees - good angles for sailing upwind. Sänna will normally sail well down to even thirty degrees off the bow.

I made a porridge breakfast with a decent cup of Yorkshire Gold tea. We would easily make San Juan Del Sur by mid-afternoon, it has a nice wide bay entrance with a good sheltered anchorage. Approaching the bay our radio suddenly crackled into life with Ankyrios calling up - they'd been watching our approach for a while on their AIS. We knew they were in San Juan Del Sur with an incapacitated engine - courtesy of the panga fishermen with their long lines. Ankyrios is a catamaran with two engines, they'd limped into harbour on their one remaining engine. We dropped anchor around three boat lengths from Ankyrios, while talking with them on the VHF there was banging on the hull - the Nicaraguan harbour officials were here already after only fifteen minutes of dropping anchor.

Nicaraguan officials are fine and friendly. There were four of them, the harbourmaster, customs officer, immigration and the health official. We explained that we were not entering Nicaragua, we'd sailed down from Puesta Del Sol having already checked into Nicaragua there. They inspected our papers, drank coffee then we talked about Nicaragua and England for around an hour or so. Nicaragua is an exceptionally friendly country - we were told to contact them again when we decided to leave for Costa Rica. Our biggest problem was that we both loved San Juan Del Sur immensely, it's a laid-back backpacker's paradise with everything we needed, we could get ashore easily by landing the dinghy at the cruise dock to walk five minutes into the town, there were great places to eat and drink and it was so cheap.

We stayed in San Juan Del Sur a few days, most days with the Papagayo's howling away even though we were well protected. We vowed that we would come back to San Juan Del Sur but, of course, we never will. We never do. We always say this - if we counted all the places we would one day go back to then Bob's your uncle. We both agreed that we'd made the best decision to head southwards rather than back to El Salvador.

The Papagayo's? The Papagayo's are nothing much to be feared even though we'd have to brave them once more when we left Nicaragua to cross the border into Costa Rica. Of course, at this moment in time, having said this, we had no inclination of what awaited us at the infamous headland of Punta Santa Elana - and the near disaster that hit us approaching the anchorage of Playa Del Coco in Costa Rica.
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Please visit our SV Sänna website for more details of our circumnavigation voyage from the UK. Also at www.facebook.com/SV.Sanna. Like our Facebook page if you'd like to receive more news about our sail adventure. You can contact us here.

Read more about the mishaps and mayhem of Nellie, The Ship's Cat

Photo: Laguna De Apoyo, the lake of volcanoes...

The driver leaned out of his window, he started thumping the roof of our car violently. How he managed this with one hand still steering his taxi at high speed through the myriad of traffic was beyond me, all I'd done was switch lanes. I raised my hand in a display of English benevolence which seemed to enrage him more - then, dread of dreads, the lights ahead changed to red which meant we'd stop side-by-side with the irate taxi. To both my consternation and utter relief, every vehicle ignored the red light like it wasn't there, we joined the throng of horn-honking traffic merging from the right. The taxi, with the driver still waving his fist, was swiftly outmanoeuvred by a decrepit old truck chugging smoke from its exhaust. We escaped - I wouldn't die a strangled death on the fume-ridden freeway. Then I drove like a crazed madman across all three lanes with Marie shouting excited directions from her smartphone which itself was about to die. The phone died, we lost the google map that was our only safe way out - we stopped at the next red lights. Marie wound down her window to buy an adapter from the one-legged vendor plying his trade in the lanes of stationary cars. We both laughed, two bucks for a charger wasn't bad. Straightaway it didn't charge.

Managua, Nicaragua. We'd been warned - don't try to drive through the centre of the capital city Managua. We both agreed it might be even worse than Cairo, but not quite, nothing can be as bad as Cairo. We were lost, we decided to stop to get ourselves some fried chicken, then had to pay a tattooed gang-looking guy to watch over our rental car. It's safe enough I told him - No, it's not, he replied. He wouldn't believe our wreck of a car was a hire car. I asked him if he could show us the road to Granada - sure, he said, for another dollar in his hand. I gave him a buck... he told us we were already on the road to Granada. I laughed my stupid laugh, the laugh I use to show when I'm someone's bestest mate. I gave him my last piece of chicken, he gave us his charger. A few hours later we arrived in the pitch-dark at the Laguna De Apoyo. Marie had played a blinder, booking a wild Airbnb on her smartphone whilst on the move with only one-bar signal - it was superb. We were in the high rainforest overlooking the vivid-blue volcanic lagoon, in the morning the sun rose magnificent over the blameless-blue lake, we showered under the outdoor open shower then decided to stay an extra couple of nights. We spent the day lounging around, we relaxed then swam in the warm sulphurous lake - it was a fantastic location. Maybe, in the next day or so, we would head for Granada, the supposed jewel of Central America. This time we'd take time out in luxurious style by staying in the old colonial Spanish hotel right on the corner of the main square. Granada really is the magnificent gem of Nicaragua. We loved Nicaragua. You really should go to Nicaragua.

Our main worry, that plagued our minds throughout, was would the old crank of a rental car get us back to Puesta Del Sol where we'd left Sänna tied up. We got back fine after a couple of weeks, Puesta Del Sol was deserted of other boats when we left but when we arrived back, Singularity and Top Cider had arrived from the Bahiá Del Sol. A few days later Top Cider left to go south but went the wrong side of the entrance buoy.
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Please visit our SV Sänna website for more details of our circumnavigation voyage from the UK. Also at www.facebook.com/SV.Sanna. Like our Facebook page if you'd like to receive more news about our sail adventure. You can contact us here.

Read more about the mishaps and mayhem of Nellie, The Ship's Cat

Photo: Surf breaking over the sandbar can easily broach a sailboat

Three vessels in line heading out through the surf, Bill and the sandbar pilot ahead in their panga, ourselves around twenty metres or so behind, then the Kelly family onboard their catamaran Ankyrios. This was to be our attempt to cross the infamous entrance bar to the Bahiá Del Sol. Of course, many boats had made it over the bar out to sea before us, some had gone well, others had not. Whether it's down to good seamanship, good pilotage or just plain good luck is difficult to say. Like every other vessel before us, we'd crossed the sandbar once already, when we'd made our entrance to El Salvador around a year before.

The worst accident we witnessed crossing the sandbar was the American ketch Octopus Garden. They'd timed it wrong, they broached in the horrible surf, tried to right things but then their standing rigging parted, nearly bringing down their mast. To make things worse, their rudder quadrant broke and they lost their steerage too. Dave was just one who went out with the fishermen to tow them back in. They were fine, but fixing things up in the Bahiá Del Sol would not have been be easy.

Both Sänna and Ankyrios made it out over the sandbar ok. The surf was bad, but nowhere near the worst we'd seen. Bill waved us goodbye from his panga, he and Jean had become good friends over the time we'd been in El Salvador. Our plan now was to make the hundred miles or so south-east overnight to Golfo Fonseca, we would anchor behind Isla Meanguera before heading up to Honduras only a few miles north, we could then anchor off the Isla Del Tigre. This was the Kelly's plan onboard Ankyrios too. But first there were the notorious long-lines of the panga fishermen, this supposed danger was always the subject of much talk amongst the Yankee and Canadian sailboats. What's your plan they'd ask. We didn't have a plan, it was easy enough. The numerous fishing pangas with their lights and long-lines waiting to ensnare sailboats were always two to three miles offshore, we stayed inshore as close as we could, we simply avoided the bright lights. Ankyrios did not, but then the stupid pilot book says to stay two to three miles offshore to avoid hidden dangers, which Ankyrios did. They got snared, they lost one of their sail-drive engines.

We headed into the scenic Fonseca gulf then anchored. We got boarded by the Salvadorian navy checking our papers, but we'd already checked out with customs and immigration in the Bahía Del Sol, our documents were in good order. These navy guys were friendly enough.

Golfo Fonseca borders three countries, El Salvador, Honduras and Nicaragua. From Isla Meanguera we made the few miles north to Isla Del Tigre in Honduras. We anchored off the picturesque fishing village of Amapala, went ashore with Ankyrios and did the easiest checkin and immigration we'd done for a long time.

Dead easy... and it was free.
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Please visit our SV Sänna website for more details of our circumnavigation voyage from the UK. Also at www.facebook.com/SV.Sanna. Like our Facebook page if you'd like to receive more news about our sail adventure. You can contact us here.

Read more about the mishaps and mayhem of Nellie, The Ship's Cat

Photo: Four deadly crocodile attacks in four years...

Denny told us his boys wouldn't dive to clean Sänna's hull. 'Cocodrilo' they said. At first we didn't understand Denny's poor English but it was obvious they were highly agitated about something. "Cocodrilo," repeated Denny, then he reached for his smart phone to show me his previous evening's video.

Crocodile! Now it was clear even to me with my terrible Spanish. The four of them sat in their panga laughing, trying to edge each other into the water but they were having none of it. Meanwhile, I was desperate to get Sänna's hull and prop cleaned before we left Bahiá Del Sol for Golfo Fonseca and Honduras, Denny explained that a big four-metre long crocodile had been seen swimming amongst all of the moored boats just off the village. I later learned that fishermen on the island had tried towing dead chickens through the water to catch the thing or to entice it away to some other place. We ourselves didn't even realise there were crocodiles in the Bahiá Del Sol - we had been happily paddling around in our inflatable dinghy for weeks.

The ferocious croc in Bahiá Del Sol was an American Saltwater Crocodile. Reading up on the website CrocBite, an amazing online data source that records every worldwide crocodile attack ever, probably since the advent of Adam & Eve, there have been a number of vicious croc attacks in El Salvador. Since 2007 there have been four attacks, the latest in 2016 when thirty year old Edgardo Antonio Velasque was mauled whilst fishing in El Zanjon El Chino. In all, the American Crocodile has been responsible for three hundred and eighteen human attacks throughout the croc-infested Americas - and this croc is not even amongst the most deadly. Worldwide, four thousand one hundred and eighty attacks are recorded on CrocBite to date, two thousand six hundred of those being fatal... and in all of those, two thousand four hundred and twenty three have been the ferocious Saltwater Crocodile, with the Nile Crocodile not far behind with one thousand three hundred and five. So the American Croc is a mere docile baby compared to those two man-devouring beasts.

Having spent a good deal of time in northern Australia with Sänna, we are well used to the dangers of the deadly Saltwater Crocodile that sees off so many Aussies there. We remember the time when a six-metre monster followed us through the tidal lock into the marina in Darwin and being warned in Gove not to take the same route ashore in the dinghy more than three times - a fourth time would be fatal. We never went into the water until we got well past Cairns... then it was sharks and the jellyfish that got you. But we never thought for one second that benign El Salvador would be croc savage.

Denny and his boys did go into the water to clean the hull. I dangled the fifty bucks as bait and the temptation was just too great. They thought about things for a while then decided the money made the risk acceptable. My mistake then was jokingly pointing to a disturbance in the water, at which time all three of them leaped vertically out of the water like ballistic missiles heading for Russia.

Denny, still dry as a bone in his panga, thought this hilarious...
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Please visit our SV Sänna website for more details of our circumnavigation voyage from the UK. Also at www.facebook.com/SV.Sanna. Like our Facebook page if you'd like to receive more news about our sail adventure. You can contact us here.

Read more about the mishaps and mayhem of Nellie, The Ship's Cat

Photo: Although spectacular, lightening is a deadly peril for sailors

The late round-the-world sailor Sir Francis Chichester once said that most long-distance sailors fear lightening more than they fear anything. He said...

'Battling atrociously big seas and gale-force winds comes with the ticket,' said Chichester. 'With storms an experienced mariner can ready their vessel and take precautions, experience will then generally see them through. With lightening at sea or even in harbour, a sailor can do nothing. A lightening storm is a truly frightening experience, because you can't do anything to prevent it.'

We ourselves have come across many sailboats, a large number of them multi-hulled catamarans, that have been struck by lightening. A lightening storm at sea is a frightening experience, it has always been our own greatest fear.

Bahiá Del Sol, in El Salvador, suffers its fair share of ferocious tropical storms during its wet-summer season, further north in Mexico and Guatemala they generally manifest themselves as Pacific hurricanes. Even so, a tropical downpour in this rain-forest and mangrove wilderness is something you won't forget.

At the back end of August both the Dutch catamaran Madeleine and Sänna were struck by lightening whilst moored in the Bahiá Del Sol. Madeleine was severely damaged, ourselves less so but damaged nevertheless.

They say lightening never strikes twice, it's the second time that Madeleine has been struck...

Read more of this post... >
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Please visit our SV Sänna website for more details of our circumnavigation voyage from the UK. Also at www.facebook.com/SV.Sanna. Like our Facebook page if you'd like to receive more news about our sail adventure. You can contact us here.

Read more about the mishaps and mayhem of Nellie, The Ship's Cat