Friday 11th May

Cartagena

10 24.735 N
75 32.607 W

Having slept like logs we woke refreshed and ready to tackle the problems of the day. Gerry was up before me and went over to Lioness 111 for a cup of coffee and to enlist Terry’s help in hauling him up the mast to identify the problem with the jib. I finished off typing up blog notes and transferring photos from the camera to the computer. Then it was time for Gerry to go skywards. Terry hauled him up (with my grateful thanks) and we waited with baited breath for the verdict. It turned out that it wasn’t a worse case scenario much to our relief. All the bits were there and it just needed to be put back together in the right place. Apparently what had happened was that the track had dropped down disengaging the bearing at the top; this was possibly due to the pins at the bottom of the track loosening and not holding the track in the right place. The fix required taking down the jib which Terry and I did whilst Gerry clung to the top of the track. We had to suspend the fix for a while as the agent had arranged to meet Gerry at dock at 08.00hrs to sort out the clearing in. After letting him down from his perch Gerry took the paperwork and dinked ashore whilst I collected up all the laundry and began to bag it up ready to take ashore later. Gerry returned with the information that there was a canvas worker arriving at the dock in half an hour and if we wanted new cushion covers for the cockpit then we needed to go and see the man. We had already decided that we should get new cushion covers made so Gerry returned once again to the dock, to see the man and to deposit the laundry with the ladies who do it. When Gerry returned he said that the cushion man was going to return at 15.00 hrs with some fabrics for us to look at and decide how we wanted them done. Then it was time to finish the jib fix. Almost as soon as Gerry went out on deck to begin fixing the problem it began to spit with rain, we quickly closed down all the hatches and the interior of the boat became a sweat box. Gerry grabbed the deck brush and scrubbed at a few spots on the deck which ensured that the rain would immediately stop. It was then time to return to the jib fixing. Gerry lifted the track up and had to drill new holes in the furling drum to put the pins into (he couldn’t find the old holes) he then replaced the pins, further wedging them in place with some wooden plugs and finally applying a hose clamp over the whole lot to make sure that there would be no chance of the pins coming loose again (fingers crossed!) Once that was done it was time for us to put the sail back in the track which meant raising it, naturally the wind blew it all over the place as we raised it but luckily it wasn’t a strong wind and we soon had the sail back in place and furled away. We were very grateful that the fix was fairly easy and not the same sort of disaster we had experienced in Fort Pierce. Once the fixing was done I fiddled around and updated the blog site, it took a while and the connection kept dropping out, I couldn’t manage to get any photos on but will go back and do them when I have a decent connection once again you’ll have to check back for them. When 15.00hrs came around we dinked into the dock, where we met up with Fletch, Kerry and Catie – some Aussies off of a boat called Miss Cath. They too are heading homewards but Fletch is going to do the Pacific part by himself, Kerri and 5 year old Catie are flying home – wise girls! We sat having a couple of cold drinks and waited for the cushion man to appear, which by 16.00 hrs he hadn’t. Then all of a sudden a dink came roaring into the dock yelling at our table “you boat is drifting”. As there were 2 boats we weren’t quite sure which they meant but the lady indicated that it was Fletch’s boat. 5 lots of people jumped into different dinks and headed out to help, I was left behind to guard the drinks table and watch out for the cushion man. Gerry returned shortly after and said we needed to go to our boat as the wind had changed direction and we were too close to one of the boats around us. When we arrived at our boat we were about 6 feet off the bow of this other boat, we concluded that our 130 feet of chain that we had out (in 10 feet of water) was probably overkill. We repositioned our boat and then sat watching for any movement, which didn’t happen. Gerry went back into the dock to see if we had missed our cushion man and to collect our laundry. Our man still hadn’t appeared; it looked like we weren’t going to have new cushions after all. Once we had stowed our laundry away we dinked back to the dock again as we were going to eat at Club Nautico. We found our agent in the club and he had our paperwork ready to return to us – we were officially checked into the country, he also had news that the cushion man had contacted him to let us know he couldn’t make the appointment and he would be at the club at 10.00 hrs tomorrow – the new cushions are still a go! Fletch, Kerry and Catie were there for dinner too so we sat chatting to them for the rest of the evening until a security man began packing up the chairs around us – guess it was a hint to leave! Back to the dink and out to the boat for the night completed our day.