November 22 – December 20, 2025; 20158 nm and 2467 days after departure from La Rochelle

Oh yessss!!!! We are soooo excited!! Luis and Jana are coming on Boxing Day (at least I think the 26th of Dec. is called Boxing Day?)! They will first get together in Essen and celebrate X-mas eve with my parents. On the 25th they fly out to Panama City and then come to the San Blas the next morning. A car will pick them up at the hotel from the city and in Cartí (the “gateway” and only possibility to get to the islands of the San Blas islands if coming from mainland) they will jump in a lancha and will be brought to Altimate. Such a great service! So you can imagine, I’m constantly in a good mood and can’t wait to have them here.

But back to where we were. Over a week in Cholón rebooting our energy was enough to look forward to get back to Cartagena. Oh, and I think just because I loved going to doctors so much in Cartagena my dear devoted left ear decided to become sick. Wasn’t that nice of my ear? After finally enjoying jumping into the water again, my ear felt clocked and I could hardly hear. So again, I was allowed to make a doctor appointment, yippeee!!! I was able to spend more money to help the doctors pockets get filled up. I mean that was nice, right? Christmas was coming and the docs needed support! I felt so generous! I was a good person thanks to my ear!
The doc told me that my outer ear was severely infected. I had to buy antibiotic ear drops and wasn’t allowed to swim for at least two weeks. Thank you oh my sweet ear!! Anyway, after seeing the ENT specialist, picking up my new glasses and buying some more provisions we were off direction San Blas again. We had a few stops. One night in Tintipan, two nights in Sapzurro, check in Obaldia and two nights in Suledup until we reached Achutupu. Three years ago we had stopped here too with Ruffian and Basta and we had done some workout on the little island with no name right next to Achutupu. Waga was the Kuna Lady who owned (or at least looked after) the island and also joined our workout session. Now, can you imagine???!!! When we went over to say hello and trying to explain that we had been there before, she remembered me!!!! I couldn’t believe it. She remembered us doing a workout together!! (Btw Waga took the selfie I used for the feature pic). It really did surprise me!!!
Another fun part was that only a couple of hours after we had anchored at Achutupu another Ovni arrived. A Swiss flagged one named San Giulio with Antje and Beat aboard. How cool was that?! And it got even better! The next day another Ovni with the name Silver Moon, US flagged with Sasha and Blair arrived too! What a coincidence! As you might know by now usually we do not see that many Ovnis. And here we were – three at the same time at a remote island! Sometime the world seemed small. As we had already planned to have dinner that day at Waga’s place we asked her to prepare for 4 more people. The other two Ovnis liked our idea and were more than happy to join us for dinner and especially for chatting. Who would have doubted? Of course we had a nice evening! Simple yet good food and most important, reassuring conversations about how awesome Ovni´s were!!! Do Ovni owners need more?

The following morning we dared to head to Snug Habour again. Just hoping that this time the wind would keep blowing to keep the bugs away. Not the best idea! Perfectly in time for sunset the wind died down giving the bugs an easy approach to torture us again. Well hell! Fortunately San Giulio had invited us for a sunset chat and drink so we were a little distracted from the mean midges. Nevertheless the next morning we fled again and headed to Green Island. Oh and finally after years of just about missing each other, we got lucky! We anchored right next to Ciganka, our favourite Italian friends Anita and Federico. We have met them first time in La Palma in 2020 and again by chance in 2022 in Dominica. Since then we tried to catch up but we always missed each other. But now we made it! Ciganka and Altimate anchored at the same island once again after so many years. We had always kept contact and Ciganka had promised several times that if we meet again they would spoil us with “pizza a la Fred” or homemade ravioli. Mouthwatering promises!! Now you can imaging we were double excited!! Meeting them was already wonderful, but the prospect of being pampered with Italian food was the precursor to heaven. And we didn’t have to wait long before we got spoilt. A pity I didn’t take any fotos! But we were in such a chatting mood after such a long time that I just forgot. Fred had made super scrumptious “Supplí ” as a starter and then he had made two delicious kinds of pizza “margherita” and pizza “ortolana bianca”. Supplí were made of rice, mixed with tomato sauce and filled with mozzarella, then coated in breadcrumps and fried. Supplí typical in Roma cuisine, looked egg shaped, were super crispy at their exterior and had this perfect gooey cheese centre. So so good! “Margherita” everybody knows and was of course perfecto but “pizza ortolana blanca” was new to us. Very delicious! It even could become my new favourite pizza! Simply topped with thin slices of grilled zucchini and eggplant (and of course mozzarella) it delighted my palate with a mild but very fine taste. Eccellente!!! (Thank you dear food gurus Anita and Fred. I hope my explanations of Supplí were correct! See you soon.)

Meanwhile we were back in the pool and getting ready for the kids to come. Only 5 days to go until they will arrive. I almost can’t wait anymore!! Fortunately we got “volleybeer” running again. A sportive and fun distraction from waiting. And of course catching up with friends including potlucks and dinners at Ibins or Bbq islands helps to let the time pass by nicely. The sweet countdown is on and we are more than excited to have the kiddos finally onboard Altimate. On the 25th of the month we will move to the lemons where the kids will join us!! Until then:

Merry Christmas to you all and a splendid and healthy New Year from the Altimate crew