Tuesday 15th May

Cartagena

10 24.735 N
75 32.607 W

Today was to be our last day in Cartagena. Gerry took off early in the morning to go and collect our purchases from the old city that would be ready this morning. I rounded up the last of the laundry and bagged it up ready to hit the Laundromat when he returned. Almost as soon as Gerry reappeared he jumped back in the dink and headed into the dock where he handed in the laundry, collected our passports from the agent and then went to pay our bill at the club. Whilst Gerry was away doing the “important stuff” I began cooking up some ready to eat meals plus some salads to have ready for the trip, it’s much easier on me to have some things ready to eat than to try and cook if we are rolling around or pitching badly. By the time all these things were sorted out it was early afternoon and we still hadn’t had any lunch, Gerry thought I needed a break from the kitchen so he suggested that we go in the supermarket and get something to eat in the café there, I wasn’t going to say no and we took off in the dink for the dock. The supermarket is just a short distance to walk and we were soon picking out some rolls and a drink. Incase I haven’t mentioned it before the supermarket is excellent; it has almost everything that you need including an ATM inside the store. We took out some cash and proceeded to fill a shopping basket with a few essential supplies, there would have been a whole lot more except Gerry pointed out that it was now 10 minutes before 15.00hrs and we were meant to be meeting the guy who had made our new cushion covers at 15.00hrs at the club so I had to curtail my shopping spree. We quickly paid and made our way back to the club where we found the guy waiting for us – he was on time for a change! The cushion covers were done and we were quite pleased with them even though they weren’t the colour we had originally wanted. We paid the residual on the agreed price and Gerry took off out to our boat with the cushions and the shopping, returning a short while later with the computer – he wanted to check out the weather for the millionth time! I stayed at the club and chatted to a few of our neighbours until he returned. Once Gerry had checked out the weather (it was still good to go in the morning), we returned to our boat to finish bagging up the pre cooked meals and to pack away our freshly laundered clothing. We decided to join the rest of the crews for a last dinner in the club before saying good bye to them and heading out to our boat for the night. We weren’t leaving too early in the morning so we just hoisted the dink onto the davits for the night; the tying down of everything would be done the next morning.

Monday 14th May

Cartagena

10 24.735 N
75 32.607 W

It was a calm night thank goodness and we woke to a sunny day. Once we had run the generator to top up the batteries, added a container of water to the water tank, collected up all the laundry (I wanted the covers from the sofas in the salon washing as they were sticky with salt and humidity), gathered our computers up to take ashore we dinked in to the dock. Gerry got rid of our trash and too the laundry to the ladies who do it whilst I set up the computers, we had been getting very low speed connections which wasn’t right and we were trying to figure out why and what we could do about it. Once we had the internet connection established Gerry spoke to the club manager about the speed, we found that we could get good speed on one computer but not the other. This was the first time we have had such a problem and the computer that we normally use was the one with the low speed – not good but at least I could use the other one to do my blog stuff and emails. The problem appears to be with the club and not our computer as several other people are having the same problem, not that it helps us but at least we know! I added some photos to the blog site for the past week – sorry they are a bit grey but that’s how the sky has been! Once I had done my computer stuff Gerry took the computers back out to the boat and collected our passports to give to the agent so that we could get clearance to leave (he needs them for 48hrs prior to us leaving here). Once we had off loaded our passports it was time to strike out for the old city. We walked along the harbour road and over the bridge into the old city, it was a fair distance and the sun was extremely hot; by the time we reached the city walls we were drenched in perspiration. We passed through the gates in the outer wall and began to meander through the streets. It is quite picturesque with ancient buildings which open up into courtyards. A lot of the buildings have been turned into shops, bars and cafes. We made our way to the Cathedral which is near the Parque de Boliver, and went inside for a look. We were accosted by a tour guide who for $10 offered to give us a personal tour of the cathedral, the Palacio de al Inquiscion, the gold museum and the surrounding places of historical interest. We agreed and set off with him. All through the tour he told us of the history of the place and pointed out various items of interest, he was worth the money. Unfortunately the gold museum was closed for the day (apparently only on Mondays!) so we didn’t get to see that but I figure we already know a fair bit about gold from Gerry’s work so maybe it wasn’t such a loss. At the very end of the tour he deposited us in an Emerald Factory store where we browsed and learnt about Colombian Emeralds. After that we were left to our own devises and first stop was to find somewhere to have a cold drink and something to eat. We found it quite expensive to eat in the old city but we were beyond caring at that point – any food and drink would have worked! Once refreshed we wandered around by ourselves for a while, making our way to the museum of Modern art (the sculptures outside captivated me but the “fine art” inside left me wondering what anyone sees in it). We then wandered to the Maritime museum but unfortunately the “Monday closing” seemed to be operating here as well even though it didn’t say so on the hours of opening sign, disappointed we made our way back to the city entrance where the horse drawn buggies were beginning to gather in preparation for the evening tourist trade. We were quite foot weary by now and decided to head home, the walk back seemed to go on forever but we made it, collecting our laundry as we passed through the marina on the way to our boat. Whilst we were gone a new boat had come and anchored between us and our nearest neighbour, the neighbour had already spoken to the new arrival about how close he was to both of our boats and the probability of a disaster if we have another squall like yesterday’s but the new arrival was apparently very “off hand” and uncaring about anyone else. Our biggest concern is that he appears to have dropped his anchor over the top of ours and if the wind changes direction and we swing we will probably hit him, let’s hope it stays in the same direction until we leave here on Wednesday. Back on board it was time to cool off and relax before having a shower and going into the club for dinner.

Sunday 13th May

Cartagena

10 24.735 N
75 32.607 W

Happy mother’s day, we are thinking of the mums in our life with our love.

What a start to the day! We were just awake and laying in bed thinking about getting up when the sky clouded over. Gerry asked me if it was raining – it wasn’t but we both got out of bed. Just as well we did because as soon as we were standing the wind began to pick up in intensity. We threw on clothes and Gerry went forward to take down our wind scoop which is over the forward hatch. In a matter of seconds the wind picked up even further and Gerry yelled back to me to turn the engine on, a huge squall was coming through. With the engine turned on I stood guard at the wheel keeping the boat steady on the anchor until Gerry had all the hatches closed down. The wind continued to increase in intensity and the sea kicked up enormous waves. Gerry came back into the cockpit and took over control of the boat, we had the engine going to keep us steady into wind so that we wouldn’t drag anchor. Luckily for us Terry had warned us that the squalls hitting here were fierce and sudden and the chances of dragging anchor were extreme. As we guarded the safety of our boat we watched our nearest neighbour, Jubal – a Canadian registered 36’ steel mono hull begin to drag his anchor. There was nothing we could do to help him, this was a case of every man looking out for the safety of his own boat and as we looked around almost every boat had crew on deck, checking their anchor and keeping themselves from moving . Jubal’s owner, a single hander, was out on deck trying to get his boat under control but unfortunately failed miserably, he dragged past us and down onto the rocks of the nearby shore line where he stuck fast. Then to our horror another boat, Swedish flagged, broke loose and was drifting straight for us. The owner must have been ashore as he suddenly appeared in his dink, fighting his way across the waves to get to his boat; he must have been worried to death as the dink was being blown all over the place and at one point looked like it was going to flip over. The boat, Da Capo, drifted into the boat that was now our nearest neighbour at the same time that the owner managed to scramble aboard, unfortunately the damage was already done, his pulpit and safety lines were pulled out but he quickly got his engine started and had the boat under control enough to motor around until he was able to re anchor when the squall passed. We heard later that he had hit another boat, Calypso, on the way through too – some heavy insurance claims will be coming in from that little squall! We watched as the wind speed hit 42 knots – exciting but not something we want to repeat, and then began to drop as the squall passed. We were lucky, we hadn’t moved at all but several boats were re adjusting their positions, having dragged a little or not being happy with how they were situated in the event of a further squall. The coast guard were out immediately the wind began to abate and went to the aid of Jubal, they managed to pull him off of the rocks and towed him into the nearby marina to check for damage, we aren’t sure why but he appeared to have no engine or was unable to get it running. Anyway the coast guard did a great job and should be commended for it. With the squall passed I made coffee and pancakes and we listened to the cruiser’s net – most boats, it appeared, fared OK. Everyone began checking in with their neighbours to make sure that all was well and compare experiences, this was a “first” for us as far as squalls went, but it reminded us of the hurricanes we went through in Florida a couple of years back – it was that fierce!. One other thing to note here was the boats that were “med moored” in the marina at Club Nautico seemed to have a hard time, they are moored very closely together and when the squall hit they would be lucky if they didn’t hit each other, we were glad that we were at anchor and not in the marina at the time. The other marina, Club de Pesca seemed to fare a little better as the boats there are in pens, not med moored. This was a mother’s day to remember! The swap meet was cancelled for the day – no one was game to leave their boat for the better part of the day as the clouds seemed to be hanging around and the chance of another squall was too high. Our plans for the rest of the day were also cancelled, we were going to walk into the old city and wander around the sights there; instead we spent most of the day on the boat reading and playing computer games. Late in the afternoon we ventured into the club, it appeared everyone had the same idea as there were a lot of people there typing on their computers – probably letting everyone know about the mornings’ squall. There was supposed to be a pot luck dinner at the club that evening and we checked out if it was still happening, apparently it was so we dinked back out to the boat and prepared some food to share and dug out a couple of steaks to grill then at the allotted hour we went back into the club for the shared meal. We sat with some people who were about to fly home, leaving their boat here for the season, they had been cruising for 8 years and leave their boat somewhere different each year during hurricane season. It was very interesting to hear about their travels, I guess they have got it right in that they only do it for half of the year and then go home for the other half. We had a fairly early night as we wanted to do the tourist bit the next day and see the sights we had missed today.

Saturday 12th May

Cartagena

10 24.735 N
75 32.607 W

Our day started with listening to the cruisers net on channel 67, it was apparently the very last cruisers net as the lady who runs it was leaving to go sailing the islands herself. Gerry dug out our very last fairlead (thanks Bob) and attached it to the toe rail, replacing the one that broke in Aruba. A quick trip into the marina to fill up our water container and top up the tank – the harbour isn’t one that we want to make water in. We had arranged to meet the cushion man at 10.00hrs so just before the allotted time we dinked in with out cockpit cushions to meet up. He had brought along a couple of fabric samples but had limited colours, we ended up agreeing to red white and blue stripped fabric (it will at least match the spinnaker!). We agreed on a price and time for delivery, paid a deposit for the fabric and said goodbye to our cushions for the next few days. We then had to wait at the club for a call from Terry as we were going to go en mass to the Castillo de Felipe – the huge Spanish fort which dominates part of Cartagena. It was a 2 drink wait until we got the call and then we were joined at the club by Maureen and Paul – South Africans off of a boat called Calypso and Terry and Marietta. The six of us set out at a brisk pace for the fort, passing a few architecturally interesting buildings on the way. Marietta speaks fluent Spanish so she kindly pointed out things of interest along the way. We arrived at the fort and paid our entrance fee, it was then a steep climb to the top of the fort. We all agreed to go to the top and work our way downwards, it was a stinking hot day and as it was almost midday when we were climbing up we were all drowned in perspiration by the time we reached the top. We all needed “air showers” to cool us down and reduce the BO effect! The view was well worth the hike, the fort overlooks the city and there is a great 360 degree view. We all took a while to regain our breath and cool down a bit before beginning the exploratory walk back down. Whilst there were guides who could give you the history of the place we relied on Marietta to translate the tour guide pamphlet and the information placards around the fort. We went into a few of the tunnels around the fort, following them to the exits until we found a tunnel that went deeper and deeper finally we began wadding through sea water. We continued to wade until the water reached our mid thigh level and then we decided to turn around and make our way back out in the same direction that we had come in by – none of us wanted to end up swimming. Gerry and I had both worn sneakers so we squelched in them for the rest of the day, everyone else had worn flip flops or reef walkers. The one strange thing we found was that the souvenir shop for the place was at the top of the building, I would have though it would have done better business at the exit but who am I to judge? Once we had covered the entire fort we all needed a cold drink and a seat so we made our way across the road to a local café and chilled out. Marietta intended to go into the new part of town following the fort visit; Maureen and Paul went with her whilst Terry (who was feeling a bit under the weather with a stomach bug), Gerry and I headed back to the dock. Terry went back to his boat and Gerry and I went to the supermarket just across the road from the dock. We were delighted with the supermarket; it compares well to all the good supermarkets in the USA and is better than a lot of them, it is definitely a good place to provision. Beer was on sale for the day so guess what we bought! The one thing we haven’t been able to find here is cans of Coke, everywhere sells bottles (glass or plastic) neither of which we want on the boat, we may have to wait until Panama to stock up on the soft drink. After our trip to the supermarket we made our way back to the boat, removed out still wet sneakers and in my case socks, dried off our wet, wrinkled, prune looking feet and had a late afternoon snooze. Gerry bar b qued dinner at the end of an exhausting hot and humid day.

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.

Thursday 10th May

Cartagena

10 24.735 N
75 32.607 W

Well at least the sun rose today! It was still quite muggy and overcast as we made our way along the Columbian coastline towards Cartagena but the closer we got the clearer the sky became. We took great interest in the sky scrapers lining the shore – it was so different from the tropical islands that we had been seeing so far and we were close to the finish line for this passage. As we neared the entrance to the port of Cartagena we fished out the limited information we had about the place to see what approach to take. The first thing of concern was that our chart plotter said the entrance at the buoys had a depth of just 4 feet, we approached very cautiously as the information sheet we had said that the depth was 11 feet, sure enough it was 11 feet and was even marked on the buoy as such. The information said to then “follow the green channel markers to the monument to Madonna and child”, what can I say, the entrance was enormous opening into a huge bay – there was no sign of a monument from the entrance. We didn’t know if it was to the right or left and there were all sorts of channel markers in both directions so we took a slow tour of the bay until we spotted the monument (it’s on the left!) then we made our way according to the instructions over to the Club Nautico marina and anchorage. We passed a US coastguard boat and several Columbian navy boats which were tied up to the docks There were even a couple of submarines and 2 “stealth boats” tied up, I snuck a photo of one of them – not so stealthy it shows in the photo! – it is quite ugly looking. We tried to raise the port authority on the radio as per the instructions but they never responded to our repeated calls so we gave up, scouted out the anchorage and picked a spot to drop the hook into 10 foot of murky water with a thick mud bottom. The anchor set pretty quickly and then we were greeted by the sound of another Aussie on the boat in front of us. Introducing ourselves to our neighbours we quickly found out the essentials of “how and where” things are done here. We also discovered that we were working an hour ahead of everyone else – we had entered a different time zone and the atomic clocks hadn’t changed over – we had an extra hour up our sleeves! Checking in involves using an agent and they keep your passport for a couple of days, plus you have to give 48hrs notice of when you are going to leave, we aren’t keen on leaving our boat paperwork and passports with any one for that long and are a little concerned that we may not get the paperwork back in time for us to leave here on Monday as we had planned – oh well! Our neighbours, Sue and Roger on Nico and Terry and Marietta on Lioness 111, were planning a tour of the place in the next couple of days and we were invited to join them, we tentatively accepted as it was one of the things we wanted to do here, we are waiting to hear the itinery, day and the price before committing completely. Once we had got ourselves organized, put away the stuff in the cockpit and dropped the dink in the water we had a shower and made our way into the dock of Club Nautico where we were greeted by 3 guys off of a boat that we had assisted in Bonaire, we got talking to them, had a few drinks and that was the end of any plans to go further a field for the day. We spent the rest of the afternoon drinking and chatting with the guys who are making their way back to Australia. We ended up meeting the clearing in agent; we will go through the formalities tomorrow. After eating dinner at the club we went back to the boat for the night. I caught up with some of the blog notes whilst Gerry read for a while. Both of us were fast asleep by 21.30hrs despite the very loud music of a mariachi band drifting across the bay.