Hi, um
Well, I grew up in California. My name is Andy. My name is Ann. You're gonna have to edit a lot of this
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we saw his sailboat for the first time in Curacao and it came to our attention the strikers from Jamaica and Haiti
and we asked ourselves if he would have come from so far away in that small sailboat
we were surprised in one morning walking in Cartagena seaside when we saw again the small and charming doble end boat
now, painted red. But it was only in our third encounter
in Panama that we met this boat captain. And his story you will hear now
My name is Andy I grew up in California and
I spent some time in the Army
Went back to California briefly before moving to Texas where I started
thinking about
getting away from the normal everyday grind and
Wanted to see the world
and
I had very limited means so
With what? I had I came up with a plan
with another friend that have a little adventure to
Get a little 20-foot sailing boat
and
Quickly learn how to sail and take off for a
Caribbean adventure
now
my friend and I had never sailed before so getting a 20-foot boat was totally realistic in our minds, but
To all the other sailors out there
20-foot boat is just crazy. So
Everybody that we've met along the way is just shocked every time we pull in anywhere and they're like, dude
Where did you come from? I wanted to get out out and
Do something unique and different and challenging?
And at first it was going to be kayaking and biking through Central and South America
But the logistics of that turned out to be unrealistic and getting through some countries or even getting the equipment to some countries
so
The plan changed to getting a little sailboat
because then we could just sail to wherever we wanted to or so we thought and
and then go inland from there and
Check out we will want to see move on to the next country
We made the plan to get a sailboat and learn how to sail and do the whole sailing thing. The plan was to go
From Texas
around the Gulf
across to Cuba which we did we did that part and
Then the plan was to go from Cuba down to Belize and hug the coast and come down this direction
Then to go through the Panama Canal
Get on the Pacific side
go down to the
Galapagos and then go back and down to Peru and then get the boat trailer over the Andes
I know, right?
Get the boat trailer to over the Andes and launched into the feeding rivers that make up
the start of the Amazon River the Marin on and Yuki, Olli and
Take it all the way down through the Amazon to the other end obviously now, I know that was stupid
Even just going through the Panama Canal in a 20-foot boat
Not so realistic and really expensive going to the Galapagos
Totally unpractical people don't even go there on their boats because it's so ridiculously expensive
So the plan quickly changed met some people
Decided to go from Cuba to Grand Canary and then to Jamaica
Yeah, because when you're sailing you quickly learn that
You can only make plans so far ahead and
your plans are always gonna change and adapt and
Become something different. So right now I think I'm gonna work my way back up north and end up back in, Texas
who knows I might do something totally completely different, but at that time our
plan has changed to go from
Cuba to
Cayman Islands to Jamaica and then we ended up going keep going east to
Haiti Dominican Republic Puerto Rico where my buddy
Decided to go back to the states he had enough adventuring and
He wanted to go home, so I
Solo sailed from Puerto Rico
down to bon-aire because at that point it was already June and
Had been going east against the
Tradewinds
Far enough. It was very difficult without an autopilot
So I saw the sail from Puerto Rico to bon-aire without an autopilot
But at that point with the wind on your beam or coming straight at you
You could set the sails and use bungee cords and ropes and you could get the boat to go pretty much straight
Without having to sit there and hold it all the time
Went to bon-aire met up with some friends that I've met in Haiti and Dominican
previously and
Then Bonaire to Curacao
So from Curacao, I had to plan how I'm gonna get from Curacao
to Cartagena Colombia
and it turns out as I learned once I got there that it's the fifth worst crossing in the world and
I thought oh, it's a lot of hype I've done I've done worse
I've gone this far I could do it but to be on the safe side, I
Better give somebody a sail with me just in case
Especially since the wind will be on my back when the winds at your back. You can't really sail without an autopilot
so I took
Somebody on board Roman from Czech Republic. He's been backpacking around for
like eight years
Total pro he's been backpacking with other boats
across
The oceans he sailed way more than me. So he knew what it is doing and he was a huge help
He helped me go from Curacao to Cartagena
where we almost died along the way and
Then he took off and he's still in Colombia doing his adventures going through there and
There's a reason it's the fifth worst crossing in the world. Some people go through and it's no problem
They don't hit any bad weather don't in any
rough waves
But I've found along the way that I always have bad bad luck
So if anything bad is gonna happen it's gonna happen to me
It was pretty smooth going for a while
We had the wind at our back. We are moving
at a nice
nice clip and
Past the rubra past the tip of Columbia. We are getting around that Peninsula
We thought we were in the clear. We are about 50 nautical miles out from the coast. We couldn't see the coast at all and
out of the blue
the wind kicked up and the waves kicked up in the middle of the day and
Without even an opportunity to get the mainsail down we were in
Big gusts of wind with
30-foot waves and
At that point it was too rough to take down the mainsail
With the preventer on to keep us from pulling the sail back or dropping it or anything
So we had to ride down 30-foot waves with the mainsail up
Plummeting into the way the water at the bottom of the waves going half way up the boat popping back up
Just to hit another one coming at us and the scariest moment and all that was when it was first
Starting to kick up the waves were starting to get rough. I yelled down to Rome and I'm like Roman you better wake up
It's starting to get rough here. You might need to
Start getting stuff ready getting a little scary. So he starts packing the ditch bag and
Grabbing the lifejacket or putting everything on getting ready in case we need to bail out and
there was a moment when he's down there packing the bags and I'm steering with the tiller and
I look back and
I think I'm looking at the horizon
and
I'm like, what is that? And I realize I'm looking at a wall of water coming
I look up and I see the top of the wave and I'm just like oh crap
it's higher than the mast and
I yell down at him and add that sinking feeling in my stomach like this is it we're gonna die
I yelled and aroma like Roman
Hold on when I see him look up and he sees the wall of water coming at us and his eyes get big
It's just like go
And we hit that and we rides at the very top of it and we just launched down it and I'm looking
At the navigation and I see it at the time. I'm not really big sailor. I'm new at this and
so I have everything set to miles-per-hour and I see it says we're going 20 miles per hour down this wave and
that's when we plummet into the the bottom and
They just kept coming one wave after another after another
He got the backpack he gets in the back and we're just sitting there riding the waves and one after another
It was probably thirty minutes but it felt like two hours of just terror and
being ready to
Ditch out and hit the SOS button and hope that we could get rescued 15 miles out from shore. Well outside
Columbian waters
But
Sure enough, it ended up dying down enough that we were able to get the mainsail back in. We got it down
We got everything tied down. We got a sea anchor out and that sea anchor started pulling us over the waves
Instead of letting us surf down the waves so we got bunkered down
After some waves came over and dumped tons of water in the boat and the bilge pump was constantly just pumping water out
We got in and we rode it out for about six hours until it was calm enough
that we felt safe getting out side the outside of the boat again, and and
Started getting the sails back up and the wind died down
We sat there for another six hours waiting for the wind to pick up in that whole time
We moved about two nautical miles in about 12 hours
so that really
delayed that the trip a bit and we almost died and is really really scary, but we made it and
We learned a lot and were the better for
the sea can be like a cruel mistress
but I think even Neptune liked this nice texan guy
if Andy left without knowing anything we have no doubts that today he's a great sailor
he learned the ropes with all the difficulties along the way, it's true
but that wouldn't be excuses that you separate him from his goal
And I continued from Carta Haena went through the islands down to the border of Colombia and Panama
with
Some more friends. We kind of made a little fleet along the way
at one point we had four boats and we're cruising along together and there's a lot of fun and
We went all the way up through all the san blas islands. Even the ones that most people don't go to not the touristy ones
And there's a reason for that because they suck further down you get further up in san blas and it's really nice islands
And that's where all the tourists are
and
Got past the sand blast to where we are now
Linton and I moved on to
Shelter bay colon area
sagres river
And came back here after helping some friends get through the Panama Canal
and
That's where I am now
but you know, it's a
For me a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. I might never go through the canal again. Even if I get another big boat maybe
I'll get it on the Pacific side because I want to see the South Pacific and that'll be easier since leaving. It's been approximately
5,000 nautical miles
It's helman 20 it's a Canadian brand doesn't exist anymore in 1979 to knock a
Knock off from a European
boat
Called in Nordica made for the North Sea. So it's a full keel
designed to be stable in rough water
But most of them are bigger than 20 feet. So they'd be more stable. It's about 6 feet wide 20 feet long
The mast is about 35 feet off the water. So when I see a wave coming above the mast
You get a little worried
the boat only cost
$3500
I might have overpaid. I don't know. I'm not a sailor. I didn't know anything about sailing
It took a lot of fixing up. It wasn't in the greatest condition
So it it took several months of fixing up before taking off on the trip
I've had to pick up a lot along the way and learn a lot along the way but
Relatively cheap compared to most people going out sailing in the Caribbean and a boat. So it's doable
You could do it on a really small budget. It doesn't go so fast as I've learned
the bigger the boat
Typically the faster you can go
So I struggled to keep up with people most of the time I think
my typical cruising speeds like
four and a half sometimes five knots
On a good day
but I've gone from like
Puerto Rico to bon-aire and I was going seven knots most the time so you never know
Sometimes you could get going real good. It's not the most comfortable it rolls a lot
You get wet a lot
Anything over three foot waves and they're splashing over the bow and you're getting the spray all over you
so even if you don't get drenched you get spray and it dries and more spray and it dries and when you reach your destination
You can just literally scrape the salt off of that
And then you have to jump in the ocean just to wash the salt off of you
I
carry
flexible jugs of water
Coleman jug - you know Walmart
Fill them up and they fit in tight spaces
I've got eight of them. They're five gallons each
so forty gallons and
I
Carry three
Five-gallon jerry cans of fuel and
That's enough to go pretty long ways with the little outboard motor that I have on there because it doesn't have an inboard motor
It's just the outboard and it's only four horsepower. So it's more
when you have no other option, and there's you know, no wind and it's calm enough to use the motor and
move along
Go into the wind a little bit, but it's also my Dini motor so it's got to last
You get used to it after a while with two people in there. It's not so comfortable
the the two people that I've been they're in there with me sailing would know it's not the most comfortable thing and
I'm
certainly gonna stay solo as long as I can which
I'm probably gonna take it the rest of the way back home solo because I could just hop along the shore
Because there's a lot more room. I don't have to worry about disturbing somebody or
You know giving them privacy or getting away from somebody because they're irritating the crap out of me
Or them snoring in the middle, and I just want to punch them or did I let him roll over?
It's it's better for me, and I have an autopilot now that I picked up in Cartagena. Thanks to spend Thank You, son
And it helps so so much. It's the best thing ever on that boat. I
Could motor or sail and it keeps me going perfectly straight
Working like a charm the people I know
For the most part are not sailors back home my friends and family
they all
See me leave on a 20-foot boat and it's perfectly fine to them but
now, you know as I am learning along the way they're learning along the way watching videos reading the post and they're
realizing that
you know 20-foot boat out here is
pretty wild
And certainly everywhere I go
Every sailor looks and they're like, where did you come from?
How did you get here on that? Tiny little boat and
You know, I meet people like you guys and get my friends list
And so certainly all those people are like wow, you're still going. Okay great. Awesome
You made it very you made it further than I thought you were gonna make it most people
Back home. I don't know if it's the same where you're from
But they think that they could never do something like this. They have all kinds of excuses
You know, I got this and that I got to take care of
Family kids there's so many people out there. Those are just excuses not like living in
The normal
American lifestyle just struggling to pay the bills and
You know get the newest iPhone and go out to bars all the time it's a different way of life and it's
It's much more stress
as scary as the the moments are it's so many moments that are
Worth it that they outweigh all the moments that you want to go back home
It's worth doing no matter what you have to do to do it. It's worth done. I mean as much as
I've learned a lot about
sailing
from doing it on a small boat and
The challenge has been unique and one-of-a-kind. I
Think I would tell past self
To get a bigger boat
But then again, I never would have learned this much
maybe
when it have gone as far
Who knows
It's hard to say sorry to say
It's it's been a worthwhile trip though, I want to trail it at this point for anything
when we record this interview it had been only a week we've met Andy
today, a moth later we are still sailing together. As he sad it could happen
he is planning something completely different
Wolfpack is for sale and I don't know were the winds will take him
but we'll always remember him as a guy who took his fate on his hands, had an idea , went after and accomplished it
and now will carry in his backpack the pride of his sailboat adventure
we wish you a 2019 full of energy
perseverance and commitment. And, that your excuses are not bigger than your dreams.
It's from a killer rabbit it really is it's a rabbit I
Got it from the kunas
And I thought it was a boar tusks. Like no, it's a rabbit. I'm kind of freaking rabbits. Do you have here?
Apparently the killer rabbits with giant keys
Apparently these rabbits
They're dragons, I I asked another guy and he said, you know, that's from a rabbit
Wow, like apparently the rabbits here enormous
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