Overnight sailing from Tintipan Island to Sapzurro was so pleasant. We were thrilled that there was enough wind to sail even though we had to motor for a couple of hours at the beginning. Sapzurro is located at the tip of Colombia right on the border of South America near Panama (Central America). There are no cars in this village. Visitors access here by foot or by boat. According to the ‘Moon Travel Guide’ book, this town suffered greatly from drug-related violence during the 1990s and early 2000s. We felt safe and enjoyed cool forest fresh air at night even though it was warm some nights.

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At Tintipan anchorage, I found out about the world’s most crowded island. Let’s say that my walking step size is one meter. The best way to describe the size of this island is that the length is 200 steps and the width is 60 steps. Multiplying the length (200 meters) and the width (60 meters), the total area of this island is 12,000 square meters. There are over 1,200 people living on this island. Basically, one person’s living space is about the size of three steps by three steps. It is not far from Cartagena, less than 50 nautical miles.

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The moonlit and the sound of a remote drum woke me up. After sleeping deeply and sweetly, I felt refreshed and recharged when I opened my eyes. I decided that I should get up and look out in order to see what was going on with our three boats. We had left Santa Marta Marina with two other sailboats from France and sailed/motored to Puerto Velero yesterday. While sailing together, we periodically spoke to each other on the radio. I thought that it was very nice to listen to the French converse on the VHF. John sometimes teases French people by saying that the best French food ever invented,

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As soon as the sun rose on August 29, 2015, we left Cabo de la Vela. It is about 150 nautical miles to sail to Santa Marta!

Local fishermen were already at sea. Leaving the anchorage, I was at the front of the boat to avoid catching the plastic bottles the local fishermen use for their fish trap floats. Those traps may be their only source for feeding their families and paying for their children’s education. We have not had much luck catching fish in the Caribbean for last 8 months so we almost gave up. Thinking back,

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Day 1 (August 25, 2015): Rather in rush, we left Curacao at about 10 AM. The wind ranged from 15 to 20 knots throughout the day. Days earlier, there was a hurricane ‘Danny’ (later changed to tropical storm) in Atlantic which affected the trades weakening them and giving us a great weather window for Colombia. We took it! We heard this sailing route is one of the five most difficult sailing routes! During my watch schedule, I saw hundreds of dolphins playing around our boat following the waves. They stayed with us for more than an hour.
Night 1 (August 25,

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