Pos: here
Loc: Buenaventura
Acc: Navy room
Dist: 60 km
Start: 6:50 End: 16:30

No paddling tomorrow

The night floating around on the Navy boat in open water was quite bumpy, as the boat was rolling from one side to the other even worse than on my very first night on a Navy boat at Cabo manglares. But this time I was lying lower, and I knew which sleeping position kept me a bit stable without sliding off the bench in my litte bow compartment and possibly falling intot the puddle on the floor.

I got reasonable sleep, but as I was switching on my GPS once or twice the night to see our drift, I was thinking I could as well have paddled through the night and reached the destination at early morning with that nice current! But night paddling was not on the Navy’s plan for me here.

We got drifted with the boat 25 km almost into the right direction! Just 24 degrees more east. In the morning, I was up early, and was hoping they strted driving back already almost in darkness, as the other crew had done. But this crew rather wanted to launch me on this spot, probably thinking they’d do me a favor. No, this was not the rule game! They are already bent anyway with me staying the night on the boat, but at least I should paddle *all* the distance and start over again where I stopped last night. So I asked them to please drive back, which took us half an hour – and me probably four hours to paddle!

Today the sea was not as calm as yesterday, and the current was also a tad bit less. Still nice, and when th erain cam, I thought again I’d rather paddle in warm rain than in burning HOT sunshine! Still nothing exciting on the paddle itself, and I was happy to eventually see land in the distance.

Still I decided 60 km should be enough for this day, 15 km left to Juanchaco, but as we were planning to drive into the deep bay of
Buenaventura tonight, I stopped at 4.30 pm to have a bit time to get settled.

Once I saw the northern shore of the huge bay ending eventually up in a river, I thought this looks nice! Cliffs allover, and even a few hotels. At least I could see it from the boat, if I’d not be paddling this detour.

At some point, another coast guard boat came, and they put me back in the water for some footage of me paddling in front of my coast guard boat for the TV date tomorrow. But as soon as I was back on deck, the two boats made a home run which at some point scared the shit out of me…give young men three strong engines each under the butt, and they start to race and to do crazy things… At some point, they were running at highest speed side by side with almost no space any more between the boats, and one guy was
jumping over from our boat to the other to take more pictures from the other side…hey, we are not on a stunt men show here! I was padlling safe solo around Cape Horn, and then would get crashed by the show off of two coast guard boats…a nightmare…

It proved again true, I am never more scared about me and my kayak than in other people’s cars – or boats! Maybe I just need to get used to South American driving style…

But the nightmare for the young guys must have been to drive with lowest speed way behind me, guarding where there was nothing to guard at that point, and watching a damn paddler doing her boring slow job 🙂

We arrived at the coast guard station in Buenaventura, which is located on an island of itself. I got greeted by Juan, the Commander of the coast guard station, and got presented a Captain’s rank coast guard hat and a mug. Thanks! Later, Capitán Delgado came along, who was organizing my whole Pacific Colombian Navy/ Coastguard watch. We all set over with the boat to the mainland, where I got taken for dinner into a nice almost traditional by Juan. Thanks again!