Stahl Ratte - The name is German for "Steel Rat" and she was about a 40m long steel hulled (riveted) schooner (two masts with the rear mast being the larger one) built in Norway around the turn of the previous century. She usually travels using both engine and sail and has a top speed of only 8 knots (16Kmh) The engine was a big 50 year old diesel that ran at about 300rpm. This is so slow that you can clearly hear each piston fire (about ten per second).
The crew were a bunch of about seven Germans all of whom seemed very nice. The ship is run as a society and some of the crew are permanent (the captain has been there for 25 years) and others are just there on holiday like the 17 travelers they were ferrying to Columbia (to earn some money to help maintain the ship).
The Crossing
After we had lashed the bikes to the gunnels and made fast the luggage, we hove anchor and set course for the nearby San Blass islands – Yarr!
The islands are a bunch of idyllic little Caribbean islands covered in palm trees and surrounded by coral. There are tiny ones with a single palm tree up to larger ones with small villages and an airstrip. We anchored near a larger one for the night and settled in aboard. The next morning we did the customs requirements for leaving Panama and then headed further away to another island. There was quite a strong wind but the waves were smallish since we were inside a reef (apparently the second largest in the world after Australia’s barrier reef). We stayed there for about two days and enjoyed diving off the ship into the warm water and snorkeling around the nearest small island (about 20 palm trees).
Then it was time to head for Columbia. The captain gave us a mild warning that the waves outside the reef would be larger and that because the wind was strong and from dead ahead that it could be a slow passage.
Alas his words were something of an understatement. We spent the next three days in a living hell of constant motion sickness, bad water and near starvation. Two thirds of the people on board were constantly sea-sick (myself included) and while semi-functional were not able to keep any food down at all. I threw up at least six times and blew blood vessels in my eyes with the effort! I’ve spent months on ships traveling to and from the Antarctic in big seas but this was way worse (mostly because the ship is much smaller and gets tossed about much more). It was quite entertaining at night laying in a deck chair on the upper deck looking up and watching the masts “stir the starts” in between bouts of hanging my head over the railing and "feeding the fish"!
After six days the waters became calm again and we had arrived at the North coast of Columbia. We were pulling into the port town of Cartegena; one of South Americas most attractive and touristy cities.
