Sergio Davi, the 65-year-old Italian adventurer, just arrived in Cartagena, Colombia, the ninth stop on his 10,000 nm voyage from Palermo, Sicily, to Los Angeles on his 36-foot RIB.
Davi tied up at the Club Nautico Marina in Cartagena (see picture at top), after a 26-hour, 443-nm trip from Curacao, the Dutch island in the Caribbean. He has been skirting the coast of South America ever since he arrived in French Guyana on Feb. 10. That was after the longest leg of his entire expedition – 1,770 nm from Cape Verde – and took six hours and eight days.
It also required life-threatening fuel management on the RIB; Davi had added 1,848 gallons in gas cans on deck before he left Cape Verde. The RIB has two built-in tanks holding 264 gallons.
Davi’s Nuova Jolly Prince RIB is powered by twin Suzuki DF300F dual-prop outboards. On the transatlantic leg, he started at just 8 knots to conserve fuel, and then moved up to 22 knots or so after the half-way point and he had burned off enough fuel to lighten the boat.
The RIB, named Aretusa Explorer, has a full complement of Simrad electronics, including autopilot, radar and AIS. Davi has lots of canned goods on board, and says he eats well at his stops.
Davi left Palermo on Dec. 15, and hoped to reach Los Angeles in 100 days. That schedule was set back when he tested positive for Covid-19 in Grand Canary and he had to spend several days in self isolation.
A professional yacht captain, Davi has crossed the Atlantic several times. In 2019, he cruised in a similar Nuova Jolly RIB from Palermo to New York. Read more:
https://www.ciuriciurimare.com/avventure/ocean-to-ocean-rib-adventure-2021-22/
