Kenneth and I walked towards the bar in the marina to find the football game after we had put Solitude safely onto the dock. A white haired, mid fifties guy asked in Danish, "you must be Jesper?!" with a smile.
Thomas, who I had been e-mailing with, was standing quite unexpected, in front of me. All three of us walked to the bar and ordered beers and watched the football game and had some more beers.
The next couple of days we loaded the boat with 6 shopping carts of provisions for three months, made the last little repairs and improvements on the boat, e-mail and Skype'ed.
The nights in the marina was horrible. No wind to cool down the temperature and mosquitos every five minutes around your ear, we could not wait to get to open sea.
The day had arrived. We checked out of the marina office, took off the dock lines and sailed over to the fuel dock to fill 500 liters into the 800 liter tank of diesel onboard Solitude for the second leg from Shelter Bay Marina, Panama to Turks and Caicos Islands.
With three bright smiles on the boat we motored out of the marina, into the bay of Colon, crossed the entrance to the Panama Canal and out into the Caribbean Sea. Once we had passed the shipping lane we raised the sails and cut the engine. In front of us lay 750 nautical miles to Turks and Caicos Islands north of Hispaniola which is divided into Dominican Republic to the east and the poorer Haiti to the west on the island.
Winds were light and easterly turning to northeast every now and then. Our course was north towards Jamaica. More ship at anchor were sailed aft and after 6 hours we could see nothing but the blue Caribbean Sea and then the wind died. Completely. Where are the fucking trade-winds when you need them....?!?!
The following day, after a night with the mainsail up and the engine running, the sea was flat as Holland and nothing was to be seen 360° around us. And another two days passed with nothing happening. When I write nothing happening, there was absolutely nothing happening!
The sun comes up, you put on sun-blocker, you eat breakfast and drink coffee, lunch is eaten, the sun gets high and it gets super warm due to no wind, you eat diner and the sun goes down leaving a black flat sea to you. The stars comes and many of them which is very beautiful. The night passes with deep thoughts, a bit of iPod listening, sleep until someone wakes you and it is your watch. The engine making noise and the ship cutting through the black sea.
When sailors are writing about sailing, very few includes the actually part where you see no land and just sail and there is a very good reason for that. NOTHING IS HAPPENING! NOTHING!
Our journey from Shelter Bay Marina by Colon in Panama towards Turks and Caicos Islands were only interrupted by some dolphins playing at the bow and it was really beautiful to see them jump out of the flat water towards the boat. Then there was a ship on the horizon after two days but that excitement only lasted for about twenty minutes. A few days later the same thing happened. Ship and dolphins and then nothing for twenty four hours.
It was warm so I put on a safety harness and a line to the boat and jumped into the sea to get towed behind Solitude. Refreshing is a light word to use but it was difficult to pull my self back to the boat even though we only did around 4 knots with sails up. And then nothing happened again... it sounds really boring to sail and you are right, it is very boring when there is no wind. With wind it is also boring but not as much and that is why no one really writes about the actually sailing part.
On day six we finally saw land. Haiti and then the wind came and a lot of it turning into too much wind. The waves were around two meters, nothing special but when you have to go against them, it is not funny. We tried to seek a bit shelter from the waves by sailing into the bay of Gonave and it went well for some time, then the wind died again and the engine was turned on again.
When the light broke the night, the wind picked up again and was raging around 40 knots. We sailed very fast and lots of water washed over the deck but it became too much. Towards land the waves became smaller but the winds were raging down the hills with over 40 knots and we almost blew out the mainsail.
After lots of water on deck we rounded the tip of Haiti and were now in the Windward Passage in between Cuba and Haiti, infamous for its strong winds and big waves coming from the north east. And the people that told me about this passage were all right, waves around 3 meters and windspeed around 50 knots and we had to go against all this shit.
Thomas and Kenneth were below deck while I was steering through the waves with the engine running at 1800 RPMs. I switched the autopilot on to go look at sea charts, I had seen a little bay that we could seek shelter in. We had to do something to get out of this hell. As I came below deck I had no interest to go back out into the wild wind. It was really nice below, very rolly but nice. The charts told me that we could sail over to Inagua Island in the Bahamas, another 8 hours of sailing or turn around and go into this bay I had seen, only another 30 minutes in this wind.
The crew looked relieved when I announced we were turning around and heading for the bay called St. Nicolas Mole in northwestern Haiti.
As we enter the big bay an old fortress revealed it self on the hills and as we got deeper into the bay another one was visible. We saw a few very primitive huts on the rocked shore and a few locals walking around. In the bottom of the bay was a small village and we tried to anchor in front of it. Some of the locals pointed towards the very end of the bay, like we had to anchor there instead. We motored deeper into the bay, sort of ignoring the pointing guys on shore, where a small rowboat with around 7 young men in it waved at us. Thomas, who speaks French asked if we could anchor in the very end of the bay but the answer was a bit all over the place with everyone in the rowboat trying to explain where to anchor.
A line were thrown and we towed them and the little rowboat in the strong wind towards the end of the bay. At some point one of the guys asked if he could come aboard Solitude.... I said yes. He was smiling all over his complete black face and was a bit proud too smiling to the other guys in the rowboat. He went up to Kenneth, who was ready for anchoring and pointed here and there. Finally, in 6 meters of water, far from the village, surrounded by mangroves, I told Kenneth to put down the anchor. Dead tired the engine was turned off and what a feeling not to be moving, rolling, rocking around but to be completely steady on Solitude after 7 days at sea. Another of the locals had come onboard with my permission but both climbed back into their rowboat, thanked us, looked with big eyes on my 15 horsepower outboard engine hanging off the railing and asked some questions in French. Thomas tried to answer them but it was not easy to understand their Creole French. After a while they took off towards the village and we ate diner with the wind hauling outside.
Haiti is the poorest country in the Caribbean and we didn't know what to expect from the locals. With that in mind we slept with a lock and chain on the outboard engine, a crowbar, a machete, knives and a saw ready for use in case anybody should come uninvited onboard.
I have seldom slept so good and nothing happened during the night. We ate breakfast, drank coffee and enjoyed the boat was not moving. The wind was still very strong. As you come to a country in a sailboat, one must check in at a customs office and a immigration office but we just wanted to wait for the wind to come down and not go ashore and go through all this paper work. At around 10 am a motorcycle was parked on shore by two men. One was in a suit looking very official. They were both pointing at Solitude and walking up and down the shore. As long as they didn't have a boat they couldn't touch us. We laughed, what could they do?! The men on shore were standing there for about an hour and we were still laughing. No boat no cookies!
On Solitude I cleaned a bit up and looked out of the window again. The man in the very official looking suit was now in a small rowboat with two locals in underwear coming out way. Our laughter was gone. I went into the cockpit as the rowboat with the odd locals got closer. With a big smile and a very friendly "hello", I waved to the guy in the official suit. He replied, "Hello" and I called for Thomas and his ability to speak French. After a few polite greetings, that I understood, it turned out the man was from the local school and wanted a donating to by paper and pencils. A relief came over Solitude, at least he was not from immigration or customs. He showed us a brochure with photos and text from the village and the big fortress. Thomas talked with him for about 30 minutes. We gave him ten dollars and some coins and he thanked us for the donation and disappeared in the rowboat with two men in underwear.
The next day Kenneth and I wanted to go ashore and have a look, feel land again. Thomas stayed onboard Solitude with the VHF radio on and me with a handheld in case something unexpected should happen. We didn't want to leave the dinghy on shore so we swam, with a Tupperware box with the handheld radio inside, to the shore. It was nice to feel land again under our feet. We checked with Thomas on the VHF, it still worked after the trip in the water. Kenneth and I walked up a small hill and onto a overgrown landing strip. The wind was really strong and so was the sun. We walked to the end of the landing strip to a overlook of the north coast of Haiti. The waves were smashing onto the shore with violent force sending water 10 meters into the air. I picked up an old flip flop and threw it into the air. The wind took it 50 meters inland, it looked funny. Another one flew in the same direction after I threw it into the air. With the north coast in our backs we walked back to the landing strip when a pickup truck approached us. It was squeaking and moaning with a overload of sand on the back sending dust into the air. Two black locals sat in the car. With big smiles on our faces and a friendly hello, the two guys greeted us in a friendly matter. In our missing French and their lack of any other language we could understand, we told them we were from the sailboat in the bay. They asked us, "American?", we laughed and said "no, no, no, no, Denmark!" and with a expression like they knew what Denmark was, they said "Yes yes". In a cloud of dust they disappeared towards the village.
Further down the landing strip we saw a small hut and suddenly a few black locals came out with confused body language as they saw us. Slowly we walked towards them, again with big smiles. They said a lot of things in Creole French that we did not understand but we manage to hold some sort of conversation for about 10 minutes. And in these 10 minutes a woman, another man and two children were looking with eyes wide open at the two white dudes that came out of nowhere. They told us they were hungry and a halfhearted attempt to get money from us resulted in us turning the pockets of our shorts inside out to show we had no money. The locals looked fairly healthy, clean clothes and good white teeth. I don't think they were starving or unable to survive since they were very friendly and never really tried to get anything from us. We left them with waving gestures as long as we could see them.
Back at the shore we called Thomas again on the VHF but there were no changes onboard Solitude. We walked to some hills where a few caves were carve into the rock. On top of the hill we could see all of the bay we were anchored in, the north shore of Haiti with the old pirate island, Tortuga in the background and the village called Le Mole, on the other side of the bay. A fantastic view few from outside Haiti has seen. We sat in one of the small caves for an hour, out of the wind and enjoying the view. It didn't seem to rain much in this area. All of the vegetation was very dry and lots and lots of cacti everywhere. On the way back to the shore we bumped into a local woman carrying a huge bag on her head. It was difficult to say but she was at least in her late 40's. Answering her question we did not understand, we just said yes yes. She put up a begging face with sad eyes and a mouth pointing down and turning her hand over her stomach. Same sound came from her vocabulary telling us it might mean hungry. We moved on after pointing our palm of our hands into the air gesturing we had nothing to give her.
On the shore we put our fins back on and started the swim towards Solitude. The wind was still hauling and we were exhausted when we stood on Solitude with yet another travel experience in our minds you could not buy out of any travel catalog.
The following day I was woken at 6 am by someone calling just outside Solitude. Carefully I looked out my window so they couldn't see me. It was just some local fishermen again. Yesterday the same happened and by ignoring them they stopped after a while but these ones kept yelling hello. I got annoyed and stood up, it could be someone from immigration or customs. Smiles and hellos, they were just fishermen. For two hours they were asking for money, food pencils, more food. Every time they were begging they put up this sad face. It was sort of like dogs when they want human food at the table. These two were starting to get really irritating and it ended with me undoing the knot from the rope to their rowboat and saying goodbye. They didn't protest much when I did it. Later I discovered they had taken some small lines that were hanging on the railing of Solitude.
Kenneth went to shore again and Thomas and I stayed on Solitude, relaxing, cleaning and a bit of fixing up various things. The wind had come down a bit and last night it was almost gone. If the wind would come down in the night, we would pull up the anchor and sail into the night and through the Windward Passage towards Turks and Caicos Islands. We had had enough of waiting around and wanted to move on. Later in the day Kenneth came back from his little journey to the village. He got a ride with a small over crowded rowboat full of locals in completely worn down underwear. A water bottle and a cup was passed around with everyone drinking one cup. Kenneth didn't have to give anything for the ride and they disappeared shortly after.
The night came, my alarm woke me up at 2 am. The wind had come down to around 5 knots, next to nothing. I woke up the others and we started to prepare Solitude for the trip north. As we motored out through the silent dark bay the wind stayed the same. We pulled up the main sail, it was easier in flat water. It was dark and difficult to navigate but without hitting ground or anything else we manage to get out of the bay, into the Windward Passage in between Cuba and Haiti. The wind picked up but not to the same point as three days ago and the genoa sail was rolled out. We turned off the engine and in the moon lit night we sailed St. Nicolas Mole Bay aft towards Turks and Caicos Islands. To port side we could see the light from Matthew Town on Great Inagua Island in the Bahamas.
Morning light came and we could still see the north coast of Haiti and Tortuga, the old pirate island where Henry Morgan had come with his loot from Portobello in Panama in 1668. Time flew and so did we. Haiti disappeared on the southern horizon and we got closer and closer to Turks and Caicos Islands.
I had no good sea charts of these islands, only a huge scale one which included southern Bahamas, Hispaniola and Cuba. Turks and Caicos Islands sits on a huge plateau that measure 30 miles by 50 nautical miles. The sea around the islands is around 4000 meters deep and comes up to 3 meters and it would be nice to have a chart over the area. I had asked other sailors in the marina in Panama if they knew these waters and what to look out for. The answers I could use for nothing. Once again the world wide web provided the best answers. It should be deep enough all the way to Sapodilla Bay south of Providenciales in the islands. In the marine store in the marina, in the boot of a taxi and in another marine store I could find no charts of the area so we just had to trust the internet and go for it. On the big scale chart I could see a gap in the reefs that could take us from deep blue water to the shallow part and quickly we sailed to the spot.
We could see the turquoise water on the horizon and it got more and more beautiful as we got closer. Holding our breath and the heart skipping a few beats we got close to the gap in the reef. From 2500 meters on this spot to 4 meters where we could see the bottom makes everyone a bit excited. It got to 3 meters and as long as the eye could see was the water deep turquoise, what a sight! Winds around 10 knots, flat water and us sailing, for once, in the right direction, life was really good at this moment. In Sapodilla Bay we put down the anchor in 2 meters turquoise water. Leg 2 of the journey towards Spain was over.
