A short history of SV Companion -
In April of 2005, Kim and I signed an agreement to purchase a Leopard Catamaran and place it in the Moorings Charter Program for 5 years.

Buying the last 40' Catamaran built in 2005 by Robinson and Caine of South Africa, the boat was to be chartered in Placencia, Belize. It arrived in Belize in late November, and was used by Moorings Chartering until June of 2010. During that time, we were able to sail our boat many times, and have a few charters in other parts of the world; LaPaz Mexico, Abaco Bahama, British Virgin Islands, Nice France, Gocek Turkey (Turquoise Coast).

Max , our nephew and his dad, Mike will be joining, Kim and I for part of the voyage. We are also looking forward to meeting family and friends along the way.

Our blog is intended to share our journey, memories and information to sailors.

Enjoy, Dale & Kim

PS: 10 years after the start of our voyage, we are living in LaConner with SV Companion and the adventure continues.











Thursday, November 10, 2011

Marina Santa Marta

Nov. 10, 2011

Today Companion sits in the beautiful marina in Santa Marta Columbia. This IGY Marina is only a year and a half old and sits in the middle of the Santa Marta Bay (it is said to be the best marins in Columbia). Santa Marta is busy with activities as the main plaza is getting decorated for Christmas which must be big from all the decorations going up. Rose, Tanya, Garret and Kurtis are off to the National Park to see some monkeys and find some coral to snorkel by.

The trip from Curacao was mainly fine. We left at 7 am on Saturday and arrived at 5:30 on Tuesday.  About 145 nautical miles. We left and set a course at 286 degrees and for 2 days that was our course. We flew the spinnaker for about 5 hours the first day, and 10 hours the second. In the morning we often had to turn on an engine because the winds died. Kurtis caught a 7 lb tuna with the new pole and lures from Keith (Kim's Father). We had delicous tuna steaks with mash potatoes. Rose is doing a great job cooking.

We had planned on leaving on Friday, but I wasn't happy with the electricity retention of the batteries, so Friday early I took them out and took them to Marine Stores to be tested and as I suspected one of the batteries was bad. So what to do? Replace, but no exact replacement battery on island - Well how about 3 new deep cycle cheaper batteries - not at any of the 3 stores - But Island Marine had a 198 amp AGM Deka Battery which was the closest to my two 210 amp AGM High Life Batteries. So the old saying - "Batteries should all be the same age, make, and size" but I didn't have that as an option so we will charge the batteries for a day and see where we are. We were and so far have been much better!! On the first day at about 3 PM as the wind picked up, we lost steering, so out comes the emergency tiller (1st time for that) and it works well as Kurtis dives under the sink to investigate the problem. The cable had fortunately not broken only had fallen off the pulley. So after greasy dirt hands and some pulling on cables we realign the cable on the pulleys and shorten the length to prevent that from occurring again. Final failure was the refriguration system, and after further investigation determined that the electronic unit on the compressor was fried, so call Kim to order a new unit from Sea Frost. It has been great having 2 engineers on board, as both Garret and Kurtis are a wealth of knowledge and experience.

Tomorrow, we leave to Cartegana, to pick up Kim and brother Ed. Monday is Carnival day due to some election or something. Then Kim can return to her excellent blogs of ours days on Companion.
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