Curacao to Cartagena

We HAD to leave Curacao before we grew roots like S/V Tiger Lilly had done!  It is a lovely place and very convenient.  We were getting to know our way around pretty well.  Spanish Waters is a great location to spend some time in protected waters.

We left on January 14 bound for Aruba to stage our next voyage.  That leg of the trip was 82.9 miles and a very nice sail down wind.  We slept for a few hours and flew the quarantine flag rather than to clear in to Customs and Immigrations.  Perhaps there will be another day to go ashore in Aruba.  Boy there is a ton of shipping traffic around these ABC Islands!

At 1:15 pm, we hauled up the anchor to make way to Cartagena.  Once again, we were travelling with Celtic Rover and had arranged to speak to them every two hours by either VHF radio or SSB since after a few hours we get too far apart for the VHF to work.  The trip was one of 60 hours and 4 minutes, totaling 387 nautical miles.  Our average speed was 6.4 knots with a maximum speed of 14.2 – surfing down the side of some of those waves!  Hang on to your hat!!

KUDOS to Tom Service aboard Tiger Lilly!!  That man is a wealth of information!!!!!  He helped us set up our cutter rig for downwind sailing and it was GREAT!  We had a very pleasant sail (without some of the roll we had coming to Bonaire from Grenada) AND we got the autopilot to work efficiently!  A trip of this length requires the crew to be rested and these two things really did the trick!  Much of the time, we were “wing and wing” and/or on a broad reach.  We have a much shorter list of repairs on this stop because we didn’t beat up the boat and US!

We arrived in Cartagena at around midnight and decided that we would try to enter the waters at night even though we had decided that we did not want to try that.  Entering the breakwater channel in the dark was a little scary but no big problem.  The harbor is huge – a major shipping port, actually.  Most cruising sailboats anchor in a corner near a couple of marinas so that took about an hour to navigate through the shipping channels.  It was 1:15 am when we put down the anchor.  Once we felt that the anchor was secure, we retired to the bed – yay! 

Next morning, we were greeted by friends on Sea Schell, a boat we have gotten to know on this trip.  They left about a week before us from Curacao.  They assisted with giving us an overview of the area and introducing us to an agent to get our papers processed for Customs and Immigrations. 

We got to watch one of the NFL playoff games on a television at a local eatery.  Go Broncos!!  Woo Hoo!!!  When we got home, we logged on to the internet, using Bruce’s username and password on the marina wifi.  On logging in and going to Facebook, we learned that there were several people worried about us.  We had been diligent about setting off a SPOT messenger every six hours (twice as often as coming from Grenada to Bonaire) but most of them did not go through.  So the last message was sent about 12+ hours after we left Aruba and never again – not even after we anchored here in Cartagena.  The only thing we can figure is that we did not leave the confounded thing turned on long enough for the message to go through.  We are here safe and sound and NOW, Jessica has a wealth of information regarding what, who and how to contact if we should be late checking in next time.  Sorry for any gray hairs we caused. 

We have walked over the section of town close to our anchorage.  By the way, this is all three of our first time to step foot on another CONTINENT!  A grocery store is very close and there are some small chandleries within walking distance.  Eating out is VERY reasonable in price.  On Monday, we walked to a mall to get set up with SIM cards for the phone.  That is the first mall I have been inside in at least a year and perhaps 2-3!  Many stores are US brand stores plus there are many others.  Communications are challenging as many here do not speak English.

SO……we are diligently trying to get our Spanish up to speed.  We have a book that is excellent called “Spanish for Cruisers”.  We also have been trying to watch an hour a day of television to increase our vocabulary.  Darrell is doing great with learning the numbers and exchange rate for Colombian Pesos.  It is very unnerving to look at prices that are 1000 times more and double the USD.  For example, a beer costs the equivalent of $1.00 here.  The Colombian price would be $2000.00 pesos.  Beeronomy – many cruisers understand that.  Another example, we went to lunch yesterday with Celtic Rover and the cost was $40,000.00 pesos but that was only $20 USD equivalent for an excellent lunch!

We have done one morning in the old city, meandering around.  There is a walled city that is very old and many museums are there.  We have barely scratched the surface of all the exploration we hope to do here.  Right now, we plan on spending at least 4-6 weeks total here.  Hopefully, we can get a better internet connection sometime to be able to upload all the pictures we have been taking.

For now, Adios and hasta luego!  I guess if we get good enough, we could do a whole blog in Spanish – OK?  lol