Surviving Dengue at Sea: Sailing Curacao to Antigua – Caribbean

“It is only when a mosquito lands on your testicles that you learn there is a way to solve a problem by not using violence…” Chinese Proverb

In early 2024, both the UK and US consular services issued health warnings for travellers heading to the Netherlands Antilles islands in the southern Caribbean, more so for the largest of these Dutch islands, Curacao. There were over five-hundred documented cases of dengue fever reported over a six-week period before local authorities successfully contained the outbreak.

We ourselves have faced adversity many times during our long circumnavigating voyage – but never did we appreciate how plague and disease can strike down a vessel far more than any wretched sea or wind.

So we learned a new lesson in how to survive at sea – how to survive the deadly mosquito-borne virus that is dengue fever…

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Panama to Colombia

“Paradise. We all want to go to paradise, right? Paradise means different paradises to different people – we all have our own personal view of paradise because paradise most often resides inside our head. Panama’s San Blas islands might be described as paradise – the sort of tropical island paradise we see in pages of glossy print so it’s fixed in our minds that a tropical island is where we want to be. To ourselves, Green Island was just a convenient place to shelter from howling thirty-knot winds, until we could launch ourselves from behind paradise into the towering sea that everyone warned us would kick our backsides. When we left, we got hammered – crawling into Cartagena with shredded sails and a broken shackle, our exhaustion a testament to what real paradise is.”

When we left Shelter Bay in mid-January we were glad to be gone. Gone from Panama, nearly two years in the country we first planned to get through in less than two months. We had covid to thank for this, we did not suspect what lay ahead when we crossed the border from Costa Rica having never heard of this virus that was festering inside a bat cave in China.

Now we wanted to move on, we wanted to get out of Panama, we wanted to get away from all the bad memories of covid. We thought we might head south, through the San Blas, to South America…

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Panama 2021, The Panama Canal

‘The Atlantic Ocean and the Caribbean Sea didn’t look much different to the Pacific, both oceans are a relentless mass of heaving water that has no emotional attachment or care for an insignifIcant sailing yacht, especially one trying to make its way fighting with the wind. In a strange way, now that we’d transited through the canal, we expected something different from the ocean – perhaps a more benevolent attitude or even a friendly gesture by allowing us an easy passage to Bocas Del Torro. No, what we got was a hard overnight slog, driven back by a fierce three-knot current flowing against nearly twenty-five knots of breeze – the kind of wind against current that mariners fear with good reason, one that creates a maelstrom sea deliberately thrown upon us to kick our backsides big time. ‘Welcome to the Atlantic,’ I thought to myself with grim foreboding…’
Dave – 2021

This blog describes both our transit of the Panama Canal and the trauma of returning to Sänna in Vista Mar after eighteen months of the covid pandemic. Our trials and tribulations were emotional and sometimes heartbreaking… though we somehow triumphed against the strangeness of the odds thrown against us…

Update from Panama

Hauled, safe and saved…

“The general covid situation in both the Caribbean and Central & South America is highly unpredictable. Vaccine supplies continue to be erratic and will remain so with the major manufacturing nations combating new covid waves and variants of the virus in their own countries. The situation in Brazil and other South American countries greatly affect the Caribbean and Central America, therefore it would be prudent to expect at least twelve to eighteen months before normality returns to the region. This advice is being extended to all UK companies with business activities in Central America, in particular to trade relating to Mexico and Panama. Both countries are currently social planning at government level against the expected threat of second and third waves of the virus.”
UK Foreign & Commonwealth Office – Central America Desk. April 2021

Clearly the dire situation now wreaking havoc in India is a warning to anyone who thought we had the virus beat. Here in England, many of us who follow the sport of cricket watched horrified during January and February when the India v England Test and Limited Overs series was underway, packed grounds of non-social-distancing spectators without masks cheered and hooted every Indian run and each England wicket. Those of us under stringent lockdown during the rainiest of English winters watched with envy, seeing a nation that had beaten the virus put to torch the best English cricket side we could muster.

Now everything has changed, or has it? Here in England we too are convinced we have the virus beat, our vaccination programme is the envy of the world, our renowned and much respected pharmaceutical industries have discovered and created vaccines that are driving the virus back into the Chinese bat caves from where it came.

But the economic and social upheavals are surely, without doubt, going to be with us for some considerable time. Meanwhile, back in Panama…

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Nellie Cat Relaunch

Why don’t you tell me your secrets…

Well, I’m back! You might remember me, the ship’s cat, I tried to escape from Mexico back to England. Me an’ my Mexican friends, we’ve spotted a gap in the market, we’ve become feline agony angels sorting cat’s emotional issues an’ owners who have no one to turn to. Like I already told you, it wasn’t easy bein’ a ship’s cat, the food was shite an’ I don’t like catching’ ship’s vermin. I want to get back to England, to find my mom an’ bein’ a cat’s angel is the best way to do it.

My Nellie Cat website has been relaunched, we got new character makeovers an’ lots more feline problems that we’ve sorted. An’ the excitin’ news is we got commercial cat-food sponsors comin’ who’ll shake things up on my ship, they said they’d make me captain. An’ we got some reviews too, here’s examples of the great reviews we got…

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ ‘I don’t like cats, now I do’ – General George Armstrong Custer

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ ‘Those poor ship’s cats, those poor poor ship’s cats’ – Greta Thunburg

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ ‘Oh, that Nellie Cat, she’s my hero’ – Nibbles from Norwich

Yup! Not many cats get reviews like this. There’s lots more terrible cat stories to read tho you might end up blurtin’ – but remember, we cats make you laugh an’ then we make you cry…

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In Nelson’s Norfolk…

Twelve long months have passed since we abandoned Sänna in Panama, when our fourteen-day quarantine back in Norfolk turned into a two-month lockdown retreat hiding from the virus. For me, it was two glorious months – sunshine and empty beaches, long daytime treks through wild dunes and hair-raising confrontations with pitchfork-wielding locals intent on keeping themselves and their families alive.

Never did anyone back then think the virus could get this bad. That first wave of covid was an auspicious beginning, a preemptive far-eastern strike against western humanity that was a nasty taster of what the whole world could expect next. Now, here in England at least, the virus is being knocked back, there’s a wonderful light shining at the end of the dark tunnel, an Astra-Zeneca Oxford – Pfizer Biotech salvation not unlike the fightback victories of our maritime heroes Drake and Nelson.

Norfolk is the birthplace of our greatest hero Admiral Horatio Nelson, where he is still revered and worshiped to this day. Now that incredible vaccine technologies mean our long cold-winter lockdown is being lifted, we have returned to Norfolk knowing there is as yet no way we can get to Sänna still moored in distant Panama.

Meanwhile, here in glorious pitchfork-defended Norfolk, not much has changed…

More Covid News From Panama

October the 12th finally brought a COVID update from the president of Panama.

Land and air borders are now open, meaning that air travel into Panama is now possible though military and police enforced curfews are still in place. Security forces ensure that government imposed restrictions are strictly adhered to with the curfew hours of 11pm to 5am Monday to Saturday maintained. From 11pm on Saturday to 5am on Monday a full lockdown is in place, meaning that no one is allowed from their home for any purpose or travel. In Panama City, the volatile eastern provinces bordering Columbia, the Caribbean-side provinces of Colon, Chiriquí and Bocas del Toro are each under stricter curfews – from 11pm Friday until 5am Monday it is almost a total weekend lockdown. The president fears lack of social distancing and increasing civil unrest will spread the virus in these higher risk locations.

Of course, this differs greatly from the new virus restrictions in the United Kingdom. So how does this leave us with Sänna still tied up in Vista Mar?

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Latest News From Panama

In what has been one of the longest and strictest of the world’s COVID lockdowns, Panama remains closed to all foreign visitors across all borders.

The government confirms more than 82,000 coronavirus cases and over 1,700 deaths, figures that remain stubbornly high despite stringent police and military enforced curfews. President Laurentino Cortizo continues to implement strict internal emergency regulations to fight the China virus pandemic, his main aim being to protect the Panama Canal Zone that continues to be Panama’s primary economic asset.

Things are not too good in Panama…

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Abandoned in Panama

‘Right now, just like everyone else on this virus-ridden planet, we don’t know what is gonna happen. When we set out back in January from Marina Papagayo in the north of Costa Rica for the Panama Canal, everything was fine – the world then had not gone mad. Even when we sailed across Costa Rica’s southern border into Boca Chica there were few signs that in just a short while our whole adventure would tumble into this mind-blowing crisis. Only the Lord knows how this murderous Chinese bat virus is gonna change the insane world we now live in…’

Anchored in Golfito, in the south of Costa Rica, we were fine. We’d heard the virus was bad in other countries, but these places were around the other side of the world. In the two countries we were in touch with, the UK and the US, there seemed to be no panic or even any form of preparation, so we didn’t think there was much to worry about.

Then, over the next two weeks, everything went from bad to worse, then deteriorated even further – before the whole world then tumbled over a cliff…

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El Salvador to Costa Rica 2019

‘Every now and then we run out of steam. At the beginning of 2019 we both needed a break, we had not spent a summer in England for over ten years, meaning that English summertime gradually began to appeal. It was the marvellous sport of cricket, the English style music festivals, beer not chilled, trekking the hills of Derbyshire, real cheddar cheese, good pork-pie and quality time with my grandkids. You know, all those things you think about when the adrenaline for long-distance sailing finally begins to wear thin.’

Dave – December 2019

A Year in El Salvador
We had crossed the sandbar into the Bahiá Del Sol, El Salvador in October 2018. We intended to stay only a few days for rest, then refuel to continue our voyage southwards towards Panama. Of course, it never worked out like that, but when do plans ever work out like you plan?

We have now updated the ‘Where Are We Now’ section of our Sänna website. Read more about Sänna’s passage south from El Salvador to Costa Rica during 2019, that took us through Guatemala, Honduras and wonderful Nicaragua… and our summertime return to glorious England.