Ok, since I've been derelict here, let me catch up on the last three months.
Made it back to Bad Kitty in Aruba and back in the water. Spent 3 weeks or so at anchor waiting for good weather to cross to Santa Marta, Colombia. My son Eric flew to Aruba to help me move to Santa Marta on May 22. What a crossing - parts were without wind and had to motorsail but not all. The last night of the passage was a bumpy ride with 10' seas coming from every direction. But arrived at Santa Marta Marina in a total passage time of about 40 hours, averaging slightly over 7 kts.

We did a 2 tank dive in Taganga and saw the sights of Santa Marta. Eric couldn't get over how cheap most everything is here and was most impressed buy the restaurants. Lunch for 8000 cop (about $3 US) with drink - and pretty good food. Not Texas mind you , but pretty good.

Eric and I took the "Door to Door" bus to Cartagena, about a 4 hour ride and checked in to a hotel in the old historic district. We enjoyed being tourists for 3 days at which time Eric had to fly out back to Houston for work on Monday, (yuk).

I took the same bus back to the boat in Santa Marta and have been here since. Starting to get a little antsy to move on to Cartagena as I have been here long enough. Fortunately, I have made a Colombian amiga, Isabel, and she is good company and is helping me with Spanish and I am helping her with her English.

I fly back to Aruba in a couple of days. Sad to be leaving the hospitality of my hosts here in Holland but ready for my next adventure and getting back to Bad Kitty and warmer temps.
We visited The Hague over the weekend and saw yet another piece of Holland. Still quite historic but much more international than the other cities I've visited.
I know the calendar says its Spring but I believe Saturday in The Hague was as cold as I've been here since arriving the end of January. It was about 38 degrees and the wind made it feel much colder.
I long for the warm breezes of the Caribbean.

Well, hope you haven't been following my blogs too closely - I guess not in a while huh?

OK, let me condense this for now.
Bad Kitty is on the hard in Aruba and I'm in Holland visiting with a new potential First Mate - Margret who lives here in Holland. We met in Aruba during Xmas when she was there for 3 weeks or so. We hit it off quite well and started talking about talking about a life of adventure together. I'm going on 3 years on Bad Kitty now so for me its not such a leap but for Margret - well being a bit younger and still working, it is going to be a stretch for her. But how can she turn down such an opportunity to sail with Capt Steve on the Bad Kitty.
Well anyway, I'm here in Holland another 2 1/2 weeks before I head back to
Aruba for a few days and then on to Houston, TX for 3 weeks. Then back to Aruba where Margret and 3 other crew will meet me and ready to cross to Santa Marta, Columbia, hopefully the first week of May. This will be my 2nd longest passage since crossing from St Vincent to Bonaire, about 450nm. This will be about 350 nm so with a crew of 4 besides myself, it should be a piece of cake.

The road since my last post in Boquerón has been an adventure but without incident. Met lots of nice folks along the way and look forward to more of the same. Lots of things to see and do yet and still no schedule to adhere to. Guess I'll keep doing this as long and its fun and my health holds.

For no good reason, we are still in Boqueron harbor. But, we do plan to get out out of here Tuesday or Wednesday. Sunday is a big day here and lots of people come to town and strangley, Sunday's are the big party days here in town. Tomorrow we will finish up our major porvisioning as we are told that Puerto Rico is the last place headed SE to get what you need and at stateside prices.
The weather has been near perfect for the nearly two weeks we have been here with no rain and very few clouds to contend with. Our 550w solar has fairly well kept our batteries up and maybe have run the generator a total of 5 hours or so the whole time we've been here and that was mainly to make hot water for showers and run the a/c watermaker.
We typically get mid-morning winds of up to 15kts or so that die off late evenings. The holding here is excellent in heavy mud, which is a bit hard to get set but I believe we could get 40kt + wind still not move and inch. Even with the winds here, the bay stays fairly flat and affords dry dinghy rides.

We have been in Boqueron Bay for about a week now and really like this place. It is very protected, good holding and close to town and all the action.

Today I finally got the Victron charger/inverter cables to be able to modify the charge rate of the 80 amp charger. From the factory it is programmed to charge at only 75% of rated capacity. So we were having to run the genset longer than we should charging at typically 50-60amps . Tomorrow morning when the batteries will be down to the 60% or so level, it should go into bulk charge and be somewhere close to 80amps. I'm sure the Blue Sky panel will show something a little less than 80 but hopefully over 70.

The upcoming weather is forecast to be good Friday and Saturday for traversing the South coast of Puerto Rico which is a beat into head seas and headwind so with lighter forecast winds - we may decide to leave Boqueron Friday morning - but then, maybe not. We can do that - we dont have to be to work on Monday morning!!!

We left Ocean world yesterday morning at about 0930 enroute to Samana, about 140nm. We actually got to sail quite a bit for a change and the trip very well. About one hour from Samana Bay anchorage, as we turned SW, there they were, several whales - what a sight. They are unbelievable large and seemed to be showing off for us. We watched for 15 or 20 minutes but unfortuanately no good photos.