A reader has taken me to task for the “gloaty tone” of the last post which launched my ADHD MLM book.

I did wonder whether I should add it to the blog or just leave it as a personal Facebook post – after all, it hasn’t got much to do with sailing. But then, one of the most common traits of ADHD is the total disregard for other people’s feelings.

So, apologies for that.

Also, the reader was confused about my various sources of income – and since another symptom is “a compulsion to share inappropriate personal details” I can tell you that by far the largest slice comes from Network Marketing which is why I take the opportunity to mention it whenever the occasion arises.

 Also, of course, I get something from the books, and the food supplement which is not Network Marketing but Affiliate Marketing (you can look up the difference) –  and we mustn’t forget my dear little UK Old Age Pension…

So, as you might imagine, it does make sense to plug whatever is appropriate – as long as I don’t do it too often. The thing that I find really offensive is those people (YouTubers mostly) who refuse to talk to anyone or to answer emails from people who don’t pay into their Patreon account every month.

I hope I shall never be reduced to that.

Meanwhile, as you may have read in my Faster, Louder, Riskier, Sexier book, I do have to make up the £342,500 I lost by being too bored to read a contract. Anyway, I regard having to work as good for the soul.

For instance, here I am on my way back to the San Blas islands and so far I have met an American who has been there for five years and a German who claims he has not left the islands – not even for a day – in the last eight! I know there are said to be 365 of them, but they are all packed into an area 30 miles by 10. That doesn’t sound much like cruising under sail to me.

So instead, I am planning a trip of 15,000 miles. There will be nine stops and I reckon I can get three “Voyage” books out of it.

I won’t say any more about that now – I might change my mind about the itinerary. Afterwards, I could spend a year in the San Blas to recover.

This is the new book – the ninth book – and by far the most expensive.

The Kindle version sells for £20. It’s £25 in paperback.

But then it’s worth a lot more than that. To be precise, it’s worth £546,893. That is how much the information it contains has been worth to me.

In 15 days time, it will be more.

How much more, I cannot predict. That’s what makes the 20^th of the month so exciting for Network Marketers like me – when the residual income from the little part-time thing I started back in April 2005 drops into the bank account just as it has every month since May 2005.

On that very first payday, the figure was only £90 – but of course, that was still more than three or four times the price of the book today. Now, for the same amount of work, it would be a hundred times as much…

So, I have felt the need to explain in the blurb: “Either this works or you get your money back…which is just as well, because it is a very expensive book. There’s a reason: I could have put the same information into an online course and charged $999 for it. But I think the people who publish online courses probably make more from them than they do from Network Marketing. I am a Network Marketer, not an internet entrepreneur. Also, I want people to value the information – that’s why there’s the money-back guarantee. Anyway, you can always download a sample and find out what it’s all about before you spend any money at all…”

Another thing: I need to know it’s going to be worth publishing – because I am aware that it could get me into a lot of trouble.

Every Network Marketing company in the world – every MLM business – tells its new recruits to start by talking to their family and friends. Who else would you start with?

But the trouble with that is that the new recruit is so excited about having their own business, so dazed with the prospect of untold riches, that they don’t just talk to their families and friends, they pester them – say all the wrong things. I know, because that’s what I did – and that’s why it didn’t work. It’s why it doesn’t work for most people – why MLM companies have such dreadful reputations as “dodgy schemes” or “pyramid scams”.

But somebody must be making money – how else can the industry be bringing in $1.6 trillion a year?

And there has never been a time when people have needed an extra income more than they do today. Inflation is rampant around the world: Wages have been stagnant for decades – and, of course, at the bottom of the pile are the people with ADHD – the people who don’t fit into the world of work as it has been designed by the other 80% of the population.

That’s right: 20% of people have ADHD – that’s 1.5 billion people who struggle to keep a job (who don’t even get paid enough when they’ve got one).

So, whether you have this peculiar mental kink or you just don’t think you have enough money coming in, here is your answer. Don’t take my word for it. Don’t buy the book. Instead, just download a sample for nothing and then decide.

Think about it: How different would your life be if, on the 20^th of next month, you were to see one hundred times the cover price drop into your bank account – and then, month after month, that figure continue to rise – until in 20 years time, you are able to click on the company app and see a grand total of £546,893?

Or, in your case, considerably more…

https://amzn.eu/d/8VjZP2W

This is The Graveyard in Linton Bay, one of the most popular anchorages on the Atlantic coast of Panama. You can see four wrecks (not counting the one in the middle sitting upright on its bilge keels with just the mast sticking out vertically like a lamp post).

All of them dragged their anchors in a stiff northeasterly at one time or another and bounced across the rocks and coral to end up in front of the Casa X restaurant. Nobody bothered to do anything about them and now they provide the clientele with a salutary view over their $10 Platos Completos.

Samsara might have joined them yesterday.

Fortunately, it appears that although I can be very forgetful about taking shoes when I go ashore or running the watermaker with the inlet closed or (as has just happened) boiling the kettle dry and only realising because of the funny burning smell) I do seem to be more reliable about the important routines.

For instance, it may seem pedantic and annoying for my neighbours but every time I set the anchor, I have a habit of backing up until the chain is taut and then gradually increasing the revs until the little Nanni 21hp is screaming in reverse with water boiling all around the cockpit.

When this happens, the boat is supposed to stay where she is, transits of buoys and trees and boats and houses all steady on their bearings. Only then do I let it idle for a bit to recover and then shut down (to everyone’s relief).

It’s a trick I learned from Shane Acton when he returned to the UK after setting the record for the smallest boat to sail round the world. He had an outboard but couldn’t really afford the petrol to run it, so the only time it got used was to set the anchor.

“Only thing it’s good for,” said Shane.

I’m not sure I’d put it quite like that, but using the engine to dig the anchor into the bottom has got to be just as important as getting out of a marina in an onshore Force 6.

Or, in this case, I arrived nicely on schedule from Porvenir in the San Blas and found a vacant spot equidistant from the Casa X and the Marina’s Black Pearl Restaurant. I let go in 13 metres, allowed the boat to drift back while I organised the snubber, put the chain on the cleat to spare the windlass, stowed the autopilot, switched off the electronics… and finally clicked the gear lever into reverse.

We backed down gently until we were level with Lulu the Swedish cutter I last saw in Curacao – although I hadn’t thought I’d end up so close to the American Westsail behind me. This was the first clue that something wasn’t right. We weren’t stopping.

Putting the engine back into neutral, I nipped up to the foredeck and planted my foot firmly on the “Up” switch (which is actually the “Down” switch but I wired them up back to front and couldn’t see the point of changing them all over again just for the sake of correctness.)

With the usual grinding and screeching from Mr Lofran’s machinery, 45 metres of chain crawled back aboard – and at the end of it, the anchor emerged backwards. That is to say: upside down – with the chain wrapped tightly around the crown and then back over itself so that I could have dragged it backwards all the way to Colon and it wouldn’t have shown the slightest inclination to dig in.

I got very muddy hanging over the bow, sorting it out – all the while feeling very glad I have a small boat with an anchor I can lift on deck with one hand (while holding on to the other side of the pulpit for dear life with the other).

Magnus from Lulu turned up in his dinghy just as all this was coming to an end – kind of him to offer to help but, as I say: small boats have their advantages.

So, by the time I had gone through the whole palaver all over again and Samsara showed no sign of shifting no matter how much the gearbox protested, the evening had advanced well towards the hour of the beer.

And guess what: At two o’clock in the morning, I was awakened by the wind charger screaming with delight at being able to produce 400W from a 30kt gust – right out of the northeast.

Here we are on the second day of the passage from Santa Marta in Colombia to the San Blas Islands of Panama and finally, I’ve settled down to write about it.

Writing a “passage piece” in the same way I would sit down two or three times a day as I do with the “Voyage” books is an idea that was prompted by the number of readers who keep asking when the next one is coming out.

Well, the answer is “when the next long voyage happens” – which won’t be until I set off from The Bahamas to The Azores and the Canaries in the summer.

But that doesn’t mean that three days running before the 25kt tradewind into the bottom left corner of the Caribbean is any the less noteworthy.

I did think about it when I decided not to set off at midday on Saturday after all – despite what I told the Colombian immigration officer. The trouble with leaving at midday is that Baranquilla is 40 miles away, which means you arrive off the river mouth just after dark – and the waters off the Rio Magdalena are notorious for being littered with all sorts of debris from the rain forest – like tree trunks which would probably come off best after meeting Samsara’s bow at five knots.

So, I decided to leave at midnight instead.

Actually, I nearly didn’t leave at all. Coming up to the fuel berth, I stepped on deck to slip a mooring line over the cleat and somehow got my foot on the wrong side of it, which meant that pretty soon I was lying on the side deck pinioned by my ankle up against the guardrail wondering in a dispassionate sort of way whether I was going to lose the foot. With a stiff breeze blowing the boat off at right angles and a couple of the boatyard marineros running to help, we managed to save the limb (if not my dignity). It was only later that I wondered why I didn’t release the warp at the winch.

Maybe I was too preoccupied with all the blood – not from the foot: The foot showed a couple of ugly welts but no sign of major trauma. But a large flap of skin was now hanging off the index finger of my left hand and there was more blood about the place than Santa Marta has seen since the days of the conquistadors. I anointed it with a mixture of my mineral solution and a liberal helping of tee tree oil, wrapped it in gauze and encased the lot in surgical tape.

When I have done this before, I have used white or blue tape. This stuff was more like Sellotape – so it was a bit alarming to see the blood soaking into the bandage and turning brown… and then black.

Gangrene turns bandages black doesn’t it? I should know. I’ve seen Gone With The Wind. But gangrene doesn’t set in for weeks, surely – and anyway, you can tell by the awful smell…

It was just as well the watermaker started playing up to distract me.

I have written about the watermaker in the post from Santa Marta, now it looked as though my bad decisions were coming home to roost. It seemed to me that making water was taking longer and longer – which was hardly surprising since the pressure gauge was definitely on the low side. One reason for this is that no sooner had Hemides and Leonardo fixed it from the last time I mistreated it, but now I ran it for an hour with the inlet seacock closed – at one point, the motor was too hot to touch. At the time, I didn’t think I had done it any real harm, now I wasn’t so sure. Anyway, there was nothing I could do about it. I don’t carry spare bearings, and wouldn’t know how to instal them if I did.

But I could tighten up hose clips. I could inspect filters.

The 5micron filter was completely black – OK, so I shouldn’t have been running a watermaker in a marina but that only holds good if the water on the pontoons doesn’t come out brown. I changed the filter and measured the output – still only 18litres an hour, when it should be 25. I would just have to run it for longer – at least I have plenty of electricity. After two days, I still haven’t seen the new Lithium batteries below 93% – that’s with electric cooking and all the instruments – the hours of watermaking…

But enough of that. We’ve been making great progress. With the wind from the ENE at 15-25kts, I left the mainsail stowed and just had the headsail poled out with two reefs. Of course, we do roll – particularly when the sea built up off Barranquilla and I had several waves break into the cockpit – one of them pouring in all over the galley (it’s always better the galley than the nav station). I couldn’t have any hatches open, but I never touched the helm and didn’t have much to do with the Aries, apart from leaning over the stern somewhat precariously to give it some oil – maybe it would be better not to stow the boarding ladder against the pushpit for long trips.

I say I didn’t touch the Aries – meaning I didn’t adjust the course. I am forgetting about MV Tema.

Motor Vessel Tema, registered in St John and bound for Baranquilla was a small, nicely painted cargo ship on a course to cross my path about ten miles away. I didn’t pay much attention to him. Motor vessels are always crossing my path. Making anything from 10 – 15kts, they treat little Samsara’s plot on the AIS as a stationary object and just go round us (making sure they stay the statutory one nautical mile out of our way).

MV Tema didn’t. I tweaked at the port rein of the Aries to make sure we got round his stern. And then again…

It wasn’t until the range was showing less than a mile that I thought to check how fast he was going: 1.6kts. More to the point, where normally it would say: “Making way under engine” (or the only alternative I have ever seen: “Anchored”) Tema was broadcasting: “Not Under Command”. The 1.6kts must have come from some sort of north-going current, although where that came from, I have no idea.

Anyway, now it was up to me to keep out of his way.

I was just returning from another Aries-tweaking session, when he called on VHF: “You are only eight cables distant . With a big swell running…”

I assured him I would pass behind him.

I did – but at a distance of only two cables, which – given the size of the Caribbean Sea – is just plain impolite. I did think of calling again to apologise. But what would I say: I was too lazy to read the whole of the screen?

It is a problem this laziness. I have noticed it at the beginning of other long trips, before I get into the rhythm of the voyage – or, to put it another way, before I make a point of sitting down with the laptop two or three times a day to write stuff like this.

On the first afternoon, I always like to get some sleep. But it is all too easy to get some more the next morning and, come to that, any old time. Of course I did have an excuse, what with all that time I had spent with my head in the bilges playing with the watermaker…

But now, on the third evening, I lay on my bunk looking up at the reflection of the sun and the water on the glass of the open hatch and thinking I really should get out in the cockpit with a beer and Alan Bristow’s Helicopter Pioneer autobiography. But it wasn’t yet six o’clock… although, of course, if I was heading west at better than a hundred miles a day, cocktail hour would be getting earlier and earlier…

I am hoping I have come up with an answer to the watermaker. I cut today’s session short because it was taking so long and the tank was almost full – but mostly because there was water streaming through the limber hole from the pump compartment.

Without doubt there is a leak somewhere – and if there is a leak then the watermaker unit will not be getting seawater at the pressure it is expecting and therefore can’t produce fresh water at the same rate. All I have to do is find the leak.

I did consider another hour of tinkering, but we’ll be anchored off a tropical island this time tomorrow (or possibly the next day. I want to arrive in daylight). Anyway, we won’t run out of water before then. Besides, getting to the pump and all the hoses and filters involves unscrewing the cabin sole which is now secured against capsize, following the unpleasantness north of the Canaries (see The Voyage #2). Then I have to remove a dozen six-packs of Club Colombia because in a “remote tropical paradise” you don’t know where your next beer is coming from. Besides, the new bandage on my finger is still looking very smart and I don’t want to get it wet.

While on the subject, I think I should be congratulated for typing this with a duff finger. I started out with the original bandage which was like something out of a Giles cartoon and really limited me to nine fingers. I know there is a tradition in journalism that many of the greats could type at the speed of light using only two fingers, but I started out with ambitions to be a proper Writer and felt the first requirement was to teach myself to touch type (and was never more proud than when I passed the National Council for the Training of Journalists 40-words-a-minute exam by a country mile).

Doing it with nine fingers has not been the same, but now I’ve snipped the end off the new and less ostentatious bandage – well, it’s more of a plaster really – things are pretty much back to normal. An injury needs some exercise, surely – help the blood flow and all that…

Now I’m in a pickle. Because I left Santa Marta at midnight instead if midday, I’m going to arrive at seven in the evening – just as it’s getting dark. Arrivals in the San Blas should be timed when the sun in high (and preferably behind you) so you can see avoid the coral and find a patch of sand to hold your anchor.

I’m planning to make my landfall at Aridup in the Ratones Cays. Eric Bauhaus says these are “a beautiful little island group. Water clarity is excellent.” He should know. He has devoted his life to The Bible of these parts, The Panama Cruising Guide

More to the point, neither Bauhaus’s chart nor the Navionics app shows a difficult entrance, such as might require perfect light.

I couldn’t cope with this before dinner, so I took down all sail – basically to stop and think. Then I set too with the calculator and worked out that either I could slow right down (and would probably still arrive too early the next day). Or, I could make a race of it: Averaging 5.2 knots would mean a two o’clock arrival.

I got up and gybed the headsail. When I came down again, the plotter said we were doing 7.45kts.

Also, I have a pinpoint position from someone called Chris on the Navily app showing where he dropped his anchor in sand in December 2024 (despite what another contributor had to say about needing to take a line ashore to a palm tree.)

I’ve just checked our average speed – 4.9kts – and with 79 miles to go, that is 14 hours which would get me in at 12.45 – plenty of time. In fact, according to Windy, before a couple of days of light weather, which would be perfect.

Now all I have to do is keep up the average.

All through the night, I woke up at hourly intervals, determined to wait until daylight to set the main – and at the same time watching the ETA advance from 1430 to 1500 and then 1550. At one point it showed 1643.

Finally, at dawn, I rounded up into a surprisingly strong wind and hoisted the mainsail. The ETA started going the other way. The waypoint appeared on the screen instead of being some theoretical feature of time and space which would become apparent when it was ready.

“1415”. I could live with that.

The other decision was where to enter the island chain. I still marvel at how we do this today. It must an age thing: Fifty years ago, approaching a reef-strewn lee shore completely devoid of lights or, indeed navigational marks of any kind, after a 350 mile passage without any terrestrial positioning would have been completely unthinkable.

And yet, here I am, about to make for the middle of a half-mile channel between two coral reefs…

Well, I was. I’ve done it before. When I arrived at Carricou after the Atlantic crossing, the passage through to the west side of the island was only half a mile wide. But I’ve just looked at the San Blas chart on my old phone (only because it was closer and avoided getting up). I wanted to check that the gap really was half a mile wide before I wrote it down, and this screen – for some reason – showed a different chart. Oh, the land and the reefs were still in the same places, but while the new phone shows two areas of “obstruction” as circles of little crosses, the old phone has them in blue just like all the other very shallow water.

“Obstructions” can by anything – a wreck on the seabed that might snag a trawler’s nets, redundant mooring chains in a harbour ready to foul an anchor…

Or coral.

Well, you don’t know, do you. I checked Bauhaus. He had them marked as 5metre soundings.

The alternative was a detour that would add slightly less than two miles.

Chicken…

By eleven o’clock, we were down to ten knots of following wind and only showing three over the ground. The ETA had clicked over past four o’clock – and the wind would get lighter the closer we came. I was loth to use the engine because I only carry 50 litres of diesel and don’t believe there’s anywhere you can get it in the San Blas (no ATMs either – not that there’s much to buy).

In the end, there was nothing for it: I hauled the Super Zero out of the forepeak. Rigging it under way can be a bit complicated – especially if the boat is rolling and the deck is really too hot for bare feet but not so hot that you absolutely have to stop what you’re doing and go and find some shoes.

It took me 25 minutes to rig it in spinnaker mode – that is wing-on-wing with the headsail which together gives me 90% of the area of my old symmetrical spinnaker (but with a lot less trouble, so it gets put up sooner, taken down later and used more frequently.)

I was pleased to see our speed jumped from 3kts to 4.5kts the ETA was back a 1400.

Time to settle under the bimini with the Kindle and a beer.

The mini-bimini is turning out to be a big success. Samsara’s original owner installed two built-up hatch covers in the afterdeck. I’m not sure why – although when I bought her I found they allowed just enough room for two big 14kg Calor gas bottles. Everybody else seemed to like the way you could sit up high on them and see everything – and of course the new bimini is right over the top of them. You do have to climb over the tiller lines for the Aries and move the boarding ladder – and position a couple of cushions just so (without dropping them over the side). But in the end, it’s worth the trouble. I spent hours up there in the heat of the day.

As predicted, the wind fell lighter and lighter the closer we got to the land, until I had just 2.6kts over the deck and the sails all over the place. There was nothing for it. I furled the headsails and turned on the engine – there was only eight miles to go to the waypoint.

And even though the new wider gap did add two miles, I was glad I had been chickened out of the narrow channel. Passing to the east, it appeared to be filled entirely with white water.

And so, at about 3.30 in the afternoon, Samsara crept between the two reefs to the south of Aridup. There was no one else about – no sign of life on the Island.

Until the a dugout canoe appeared from nowhere, anchored next to the reef and two of the three occupants disappeared over the side. Half an hour later, they were alongside offering me a pair of lobsters.

This was the difficult part. My Spanish was actually better than theirs – and so it was with a lot of gesturing that I had to explain that I don’t eat lobster. But I did give them the big frying pan I’ve been trying to get rid of for ages. Then they asked for soda and all I have is a limited supply of iced tea – but beer would do, apparently. I have plenty of beer (although I won’t if I keep on giving it to every fisherman who comes past).

So, the next canoe got a hat I don’t wear any more … and the third a cheery wave before I ducked down below apparently busy with something else.

Finally, a big Wharram catamaran with a junk rig on each hull and flying an enormous Stars and Stripes came ghosting in and anchored next door. After an excursion ashore, James and Yael came aboard to deplete the beer supply further.

It really is surprising how much social life you can find on an uninhabited island.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                            a

The big awning

Years ago, we had a friend from Colombia. He was married to Tamsin’s best friend at the time. His name was Ruben and he was the most charming man you could hope to meet. I remember introducing him to my mother one Christmas – mother must have been in her late 80s by that time. Ruben had her giggling and blushing like a schoolgirl.

There was only one thing you had to know about Ruben: He was totally unreliable. He would say he would be home for dinner and arrive at three in the morning, banging on the door and wondering why everyone was asleep. A promise from Ruben was something you would believe with all your heart because surely someone so earnest and loveable could only have your best interests at heart…

But reality never seemed to align with aspiration.

His wife said it was because he had been spoiled as a boy – by his ten older sisters.

Now I know better. Ruben was Colombian, that’s all. In Colombia, the concept of mañana is taken to a level the Spanish can only dream about.

They didn’t tell me about this.

Instead, before I set off from Aruba, they told me that I could get anything done in Colombia: There was an excellent marina in Santa Marta with every facility – and it would be a fraction of the price of getting stuff done in the ABC Islands. I emailed the boatyard – absolutely, they could do stainless steel work. They had people to make awnings. This was a full-service yard.

Marina Santa Marta is indeed impressive. It’s not expensive, they take care of the byzantine check-in procedure with immigration and customs which normally requires an agent and anything up to four days. I’ve never seen such security: Not only do you need a facial-recognition scan to get into the marina complex but there are fingerprint sensors for access to the pontoons. There’s even a machine to check you into the loo…

And certainly, the yard manager would be round to give me a quote for the work.

He did come. It was just that he didn’t appear very familiar with the idea of a bimini or solid guardrails for mounting the extra solar panels. I showed him the arrangement on other boats. I insisted he take measurements (lent him a tape measure). He went away promising to come back with a quote in a couple of days.

I never heard from him again.

Besides, by that time, I had been introduced to Manuel.

Manuel is a great guy – and he’s got himself a terrific little business in Global Marine Services. He speaks perfect English and he knows everyone. Need a welder to build you a bimini, he’ll get Rubén to come take a look. Someone to make the fabric roof? Raphael is your man.

Actually, I wanted a big awning as well, covering the whole boat from the mast to the stern, with flaps for the late afternoon sun. Raphael came and looked (he had his own tape measure). Raphael and I got on like a house on fire, what with my Spanish lessons and Google Translate.

Dario, not so much. Dario was the rigger, except he had his own boat to maintain – and since he did charters, he couldn’t very well leave the boat sinking if he was due to take a birthday party out this evening, so would it be OK if he came tomorrow to move the winch from one side of the mast to the other?

Of course, courtesy of my online Spanish classes, I translated “mañana” as “tomorrow” and thought no more of it. A week later the winch was still on the wrong side and I was learning about the Indefinite Future Tense (in which mañana means “to procrastinate”.

In the end, Manuel came on a Sunday and did the job himself – and it turned out to be a much more difficult than it looked. Fittings that have been in situ for 51 years can be like that.

But Manuel wouldn’t charge me a penny (“My gift to you!”). Also, it gave us an opportunity to sit in the cockpit with a couple of cans of Club Colombia as the sun went down and the music on the party boats turned up, and discuss the fundamental problem.

“It’s the culture,” Manuel explained. “I’m Colombian and it drives me crazy, but there’s nothing you can do about it. Like you say in English: Herding cats!”

And let’s face it, I was the stranger in the country. If I didn’t like it, I should have stayed at home – and besides, everyone was so thoroughly friendly and eager to please…

Like the day I decided to get the watermaker motor repaired all by myself – without recourse to Manuel’s army of tradesmen. I looked up “electric motor repairs” and found a place that claimed to be open 24 hours. I didn’t risk testing that, but turned up at nine o’clock in the morning.

Three and a half hours later, Leonardo and Hermides had repaired the motor, freed the seized spare pump head – and only charged me £27 including the cost of the bearings.

Leonardo, Hemides and the watermaker motor

If everyone had been so efficient, I could have been in and out in a couple of weeks and on to Cartagena and the month of intensive Spanish classes I had promised myself. Instead, I was stuck in Santa Marta for more than six weeks as Raphael cut and re-cut the awning and Monday turned into Thursday and then next week, and his supplier let him down, which was odd because he’d said he had it all finished it, but just wanted everything to be perfect for me.

I think the real classic was when he told me he hadn’t been able to come on Tuesday because it was his sister’s birthday.

Well, you’ve always got to allow for the unexpected…

Still, it really is an impressive awning – and the little bimini looks as though it’s going to be good, too. And the sun is still shining and I seem to have developed a little Mambo shimmy after six o’clock…

With Raphael – smiles all round

Everyone is talking about ADHD – it’s in danger of becoming boring. Don’t worry, the ADHD people will get bored first (being easily bored is one of the most common traits). A friend sent me this piece from The Guardian because I “came out” as an ADHD freak in May last year.

Well, I didn’t so much “come out” as burst into the street proclaiming that my condition was in the 1% of the most severe (which must make me extra special).

More than that, I launched a book which had been seven years in the writing – ever since I was told I had this mental kink which affects 5% of the world’s population (or to put it another way, 1.5 billion people).

I make no excuses for plugging the book because I am intensely proud of it. It was the hardest thing I have ever written and people have been kind enough to say it is the best.

And then, on Christmas Day, an Amazon customer called Mark took the time out of his festivities to write this review:

Mark

5.0 out of 5 stars Understanding life’s journey with ADHD

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 25 December 2024

Verified Purchase

Can’t believe how well this book explains ADHD and the journey through a life well lived …. It’s autobiographical pre-knowing about why certain life adventures and behaviours occurred and later it is all making sense of the diagnosis later in life. Explains the ordinary life many people have but special people have a totally different life as they are wired in a way that means we all need to read this book …. Sad on a personal level but other aspects are rewarding … this book resonates with one.

Fair winds to those like John.

You can find it here:

https://amzn.eu/d/84V6JUb

In this episode we look at Trusting Your Anchor, getting a Rival 32 to do 15 knots and Death on the Foredeck, among other topics.

Please note that if you have subscribed to the podcast in the past, I have moved to the Acast platform, so if you wouldn’t mind subscribing again, you will continue to receive an email every time a new episode is uploaded

… and an apology, I should have made this clear: The Old Man Sailing podcast is a series of episodes of between 40 and 50 minutes reading through the Old Man Sailing blog from the beginning, along with selections from the books. It does not replace the blog – rather it is intended for people who want to listen rather than read. Episode 15 takes us up to 2020.
On new posts, you get the choice of reading or listening.

This is Arnold II.

RIP Arnold II.

I’m getting the hang of this now – although I can’t really take the credit. That must go to Niko Bolas who sent me two electronic mouse traps.

Absurdly, I was a bit miffed when they arrived because the parcel I really wanted (the one with the dinghy patches and windlass foot switches) has been delayed for another week.

But getting back from a couple of nights away in Cartagena and finding the carrot I left in the trap was still there (albeit somewhat desiccated from 39°C and all the hatches closed), I assumed that meant No More Rats.

Then, that first evening, sitting over a cup of coffee, a glass of Aruban rum and the Kindle after dinner, I was sure I heard a familiar scratching from behind the bookcase.

The sound that was unmistakable. It has haunted my evenings for the past month – and I never did work out how Arnold knew it was after dinner and I was sitting comfortably and this was the perfect moment to shake me out of my complacency with a little gnawing.

But since Arnold is no more, this must be his friend (or widow? Maybe a dozen fatherless children…)

Suddenly, the package with the electronic traps seemed very welcome indeed.

I couldn’t try them immediately because it turns out that having everything on the boat rechargeable does terrible things to the AA battery supply: Every single one of them was flat and most of them, thoroughly rusty.

Feeling cheated, I set the old-fashioned traps (and of course, in the morning, found them licked clean of peanut butter and no dead rat.)

Never mind, the next day, just as Niko had promised, the electronic variety worked first time. This really is an innovation. If you have unwanted guests, I really do recommend it.

I never knew these things existed: Essentially, an electronic trap is an oblong box, open at one end and with holes in the other so you can poke the bait inside and the smell of it can get out.

Once the bait is in place (and not before), in go the batteries and switch on.

I wasn’t quite sure what I was expecting but I woke as usual before dawn – once again disappointed that this was not to the sound of the big and terrifying rat trap snapping shut. But something was different…

Somewhere there was a green light flashing. Anyone who has had a bit of practice at sleeping on boats is always amazed at how many LED lights there are in cabins nowadays, but this was a flashing green one and Samsara doesn’t usually sport one of those. Somewhere in the subconscious, there floated a phrase from the instructions: “Flashing green: Rodent caught”.

And sure enough, so he was – stone cold dead (and with a slightly surprised look on his face.)

Arnold II turned out to be smaller than Arnold I (and most definitely male, I was pleased to see.)

In lieu of burial at sea – which did not seem very nice in the marina – I recycled him with the dozen or so starving cats living in the little wooden hut which is the marina rubbish dump.

I have no qualms about this, having long ago abandoned any attempt at a humane end for the surplus crew. Apart from anything else, I discover that not only did they chew through the plastic top of the peanut butter jar as well as a bottle of iced tea. Also, for some reason, they made a hole in a perfectly good and completely empty Tupperware. Honestly, what was the point in that? I thought they were supposed to be demonstrating their intelligence. On top of everything else,  look what they did to the panelling above my bunk. This was their front door to the nest behind the bookcase. I’m sure they could have used one of the many holes left behind by superseded electronics and defunct wiring. Did they really need to eat the boat?

Well, next time, it’s going to be a different story (and a shorter one).

The front door

RIP Arnold

Actually, Arnold was a rat – rats have hairless tails. It was the fact that his was brown not pink that confused me. A noble adversary…

It’s over. After two weeks, five mouse traps, one packet of rat poison, ten helpful suggestions and about a quarter of a jar of peanut butter, Arnold is dead.

And I feel awful about it.

As a vegetarian sailing a boat with a Buddhist name, we should have done better. But this is Colombia and, as I mentioned last time, the concept of a humane mousetrap simply does not translate into Latino Spanish.

Consequently, night after night, I would fall asleep listening to him behind the panelling, gnawing – and rose the next morning to find all the traps licked so clean they might have been through a dishwasher.

Admittedly, Arnold did nearly come to a sticky end (literally) after I took a taxi to HomeCenter – a superstore the size of one of South America’s smaller countries to buy a pair of sticky traps. The idea behind these is that the mouse puts his foot in the goo and can’t get it out. They hadn’t tried it on Arnold, though. He did put his foot in the goo – but then dragged the trap all over the fo’c’sle covering everything else in goo, before finally shaking it off in a Sainsbury’s bag-for-life (which now has a much shorter life). Anyway, he bolted.

Next, I mashed up a sort of Rouillard of rat poison and peanut butter, reasoning that he would be so busy licking it off and feeling smug that he would never realise he was eating the condemned mouse’s last meal.

I don’t know how he did it, but the entire dessert disappeared and Arnold did not. I can only think he spat out the blue bits and ate the brown. Anyway, as a savoury, he chewed the top off my clarinet reed. It was a Vandoren and I take it as a personal affront. Arnold was toying with me.

He made me feel like the put-upon Commandant in The Great Escape when Steve McQueen grins at him on the way to the cooler and says: “You’ll still be here when I get out?”

It’s my own fault. I underestimated him from the start. Because he joined in Aruba, I presumed he had jumped off one of the enormous cruise ships and would be easy prey. He had probably lived his life on smoked salmon and truffles.

Well, now the gloves were off. For one thing, I was being goaded by Niko Bolas, a regular on the blog who announced he was sending me two electronic devices. I looked them up. They made my hair stand on end. Any mouse putting a foot inside would get zapped with the full force of six AA batteries. But the Amazon delivery won’t get here until December 12^th.

It was time to man up. I spent a day in the Public Market – Santa Marta’s version of Camden with stalls selling everything including, tucked away behind the grilled sausages and the pineapples, mouse-sized mousetraps: Maybe Arnold wasn’t ready for the rat-sized one yet (although, the rate he was getting through peanut butter, it wouldn’t be long.).

I filed down the bars that spring the traps to make the mechanism more sensitive – a sort of hair-trigger, if you like. Now I felt like Edward Fox in The Day of The Jackal – a cold, calculating professional.

And, sure enough, on the second morning, there he was, hanging off the side of the navigator’s seat, his neck squished under the big trap’s mega-spring, his naughty little nose in a pool of blood. Of course, he’d polished off the other traps first.