Ada's boat blog

Location: Cartagena (pronounced cartahena), Colombia (Apologies for the length of this post. It should really be two or three, but the wifi situation being what it is, it is now one.) Guna Yala, the San Blas islands. Patches of sand studded with palm trees, surrounded by a sea as calm as the Saint Lawrence. Islands dotting the horizon to the east and west, protected by long spans of reefs in the north, overlooked by the hazy mountains of the mainland in the south. Anchorages of turquoise waters and white sand, patches of multicoloured reefs, pelicans skimming over the water, frigate birds gliding under the clouds. The roar of distant waves. The faint smell of salt. The absolute beauty of the place. We arrived in San Blas after an 18-hour motor-sail. Jem and Anna had an absolute blast, and I was absolutely seasick. Pro-tip: don't eat ramen for lunch before departing for an overnight trip. The amount of vomit that one packet can produce is astounding. I hope that this won't be a ...

Hello again! The wind has dropped. The water is a beautiful mirror, and the air is an infernal hell. My morning yoga went from being blown out of poses to collapsing because of the heat. The mainsail is up. It involved four people, pouring rain, and two broken battens. Battens are long poles that slot horizontally into the sail and give it a more aerodynamic shape. They are unfortunately made of uncovered fiberglass, so for the next few days experienced the lovely sensation of having fiberglass splinters in most of my exposed skin, including between my fingers. We have a third crewmember! Her name is Anna, she is English, she is my age, and getting her here was a heck of an ordeal. She had been volunteering at a surf camp in Costa Rica for the past month. Originally, we had planned on sailing to Puerto Limón , Costa Rica, and picking her up from there. Then the sea border closed, so she bought a bus ticket to cross the land border, with a stopover in San Jose to get a covid test. Howev...

Hello! The bad news is that half the sails still aren't up, we haven't moved in weeks, and the only lettuce onboard is of the iceberg variety. The good news is that I've unearthed a cucumber salad recipe, and it slaps hard. Ingredients: 1 cucumber, quartered width-wise then finely sliced 1 clove of finely-chopped garlic some soy sauce slightly more rice wine vinegar than soy sauce (if no rice wine vinegar, apple cider vinegar will do, and apparently is also good for your skin) less sesame oil than you think you need an uncertain amount of sugar a liberal amount of black pepper a quantity of chili flakes that you makes you feel safe, yet slightly daring Instructions: Mix everything together and wait a crapload of time. If it tastes bland, you haven't waited long enough. That's it. I've also made some decent fried noodles. If requested, I can give equally vague instructions for those. The wind dropped for a few days. During that time, it got unbearably hot, but we...