Paddington Bear land (or continent, at least)

We’ve sailed to Colombia, near neighbour of deepest, darkest Peru. That sounds a lot more exciting than we’ve sailed to Saint Lucia. The past 24 hours have been a rollercoaster ride. The seas pile up in this corner of the Caribbean Sea and so we’ve been surfing down big, steep waves, which is great for our speed if not our nerves. Unfortunately, Eddy, a close friend of Equatorial Current, did take offence at our faux pas over the name and has been doing his best to push us back the way we came.

You’ll be pleased to hear that we were too busy yesterday to spend much time fretting about colour-coordinated sailing attire; instead we spent the day changing sails. We even managed to get the mainsail up for the first time since we broke it leaving Cape Verde nearly two months ago. A bit like a player who’s just come back from injury, we didn’t want to leave him on the field too long, and so he came out to play for an hour or so, took the applause of the fans, and then rolled himself safely away again. There appears to be no permanent damage from the mast’s encounter with Elvis and his over-enthusiastic hammer.

Since then we have been sailing with just the genoa; much safer in these big, rolly waves with the wind nearly behind us. The most surreal time (or terrifying, according to Vanessa) is an hour or so after the sun has set. It’s pitch-dark but not quite dark enough for stars to be seen, and still hours before the moon deigns to make an appearance. All you can see is the ghostly outline of the boat, lit up by the few lights we have on the boat, and then blackness. The boat is tipping all over the place and you can hear the rush of water and see the occasional rush of white water as waves break alongside, but that’s it. It would be like going on a fairground ride with a blindfold on. Now there’s an idea!