Day 2 February 1st  09.00- February 2nd 09.00

Smooth and sleepy
10.00 Yiorgos sends  an email through IridiumGo! sat phone, requesting a weather report  for the next four days. The response is delayed a bit , but it comes: Today and for  the coming days the wind in our area will be 15-20 its east. However approaching Santa Marta it will reach 35 kts! At this moment, the anemometer indication now  is 24 its apparent wind, true wind maybe 30 kts. Not a very accurate very good prognosis. We truly hope the 35 its will not be 55 kts…
I lie in cabin A, trying to  fall asleep, but in vain. Maybe it’s the powerful motion, or the loud sound of the sea under the keel, the squeaks of the sheets…. I just can’t sleep

14.00 George makes a round on deck and discovers four (!!!)  dead flying fish. Poor things,  they are dried by the sun, after a fatal jump onto Filizi. My captain is hungry and he protests. I boil a package whole grain penne and make a sauce with Roquefort cheese fresh creme and yogurt, simple and easy as the swell is strong, I’m tided and I couldn’t cope with complicated cooking today.

After eating ginrtai miracle is: the wave breaks, the violent movement stops and finds sailing gently with 7 knots. Great!
16.00 Non of us wants to  rest even though we agreed to sleep during the day and stay awake during the nights. The sail is peaceful and  the vast sea magic. George is studying the book Ocean Passages and Landfals (Heikel- O’Grady) and finds the explanation for the large and staccato waves we encountered: underwater west t-to-east countercurrents meeting the  predominant east-west current of the Caribbean. The conflict of the opposite marine masses creates the waves that battered us. Big and briskly come very quickly one after the other (wave period of 5.5 seconds).

We read in Panama Cruising Guide book about the area we will visit after Cartagena, the beautiful archipelago of San Blas islands of Panama. The islands are inhabited by the ancient tribe of Gunas that manage to live away from the western civilisation. The Gunas they call their islands Guna Yalla and not San Blas and the tribe has very few commercial relations with the rest of the world. I long meeting  them,  we’ll probably be there in two weeks.

18.30 It’s already dark but  the moon in the west illuminates our path and we sail with the wind at 18 kn, together with the favorable current of a speed of 7 kn. Sailing in this sea of liquid silver is truly enchanting

Thursday,February 2
03.00 The wind steadily and we travel very quickly. Alternately slept outside in the cockpit and xypnome both by rain. Once the clouds grow long and the rain stops, the myriad stars of the sky illuminating the sea and Filizi, while the Southern Cross dominates our left. Who to to’lege us, once you lived in polluted by artificial city that one sky without moon was so bright.
The Plotter shows how much remains 570 NM.
04.30 can not keep my eyes open from sleepiness, even though we slept one hour and after two more hours. How much sleepy, that if I do to keep myself awake LOST go. I put music and dance, do fitness exercise -demeni always over the shrouds with strap safety since the movement of the boat is like ekkremes- but injustice.
Exhausted lowered it eat her something to fool my hunger and finds a bag of raisins. Munching a few billion and magic, my sleepiness disappears!
– Perhaps the secret to sugars raisins! I say loud startled by the unexpected discovery. Fortunately my good not awake, who can also hear my voice with both audio onboard

5:30 Oh how sleepy I am, how difficult are the first three days ! I get angry with my sleepy self! I think about Ellen Mac Arthur, Armel Le Clea’ch, the sailors of Vandee Globe and all the single handed sailors. Certainly they did not drop down from sleepiness like me. Is it a matter of determination? Thinking this way about helps and I start feeling somewhat better. It has been a long way from Greece to the Caribbean,  we did  that and now a new, even greater  adventure begins. Contemplating about the passage of the Panama Canal I  wake up completely! I take a look at the instruments, then look around at the endless sea and sky, spellbound by the Southern Cross Constellation,  humming songs of a favourite greek poet Nikos Kavadias.
06.20 Yiorgos  starts his shift while I sleep close  to him at the cockpit in a sleeping bag for one and a half hour. I wake up from pain on my  knee, strange, maybe I had a bad posture. In the east the day is breaking, but the sun did not appear yet.

– Good morning
– “Good morning baby! As you can see yesterday’s “miracle” with the quiet sea didn’t last long and the big waves are back , “he says and adds:
-” I got hungry while you were sleeping  and ate the remaining penne. As the old saying goes “Patients and pilgrims have no sin “he says and gives me kiss. His eyes look really tired.
-“Go to cabin1 an get some sleep, baby” I tell him and he does with no objection.
7:30 The sky is covered with clouds  today and the sun is nowhere to be seen. I walk carefully  round of the deck, checking the rigging as Jerry the rigger showed us before the start of the race ARC + 2014 in Canary islands,  feeling the long ends of the rigs and the turnbuckles, checking  the sheets for chafe etc. Fortunately, averything looks okay.
My boy is sleeping  below and I’m  sitting behind the helm, looking at the infinite, beautiful sea. A flying fish makes a record flight over the waves, probably escaping some hunter. I wonder if the fish feels like we do when we dive in the water,  the beauty and the suffocating danger of the Unknown.

The sounder continues 7.0 m … 6.5 m … We have company again.