The marina at Santa Marta was great – air conditioned internet room, fab showers (they even had hot water!) & laundry. We had lunch out at a small hotel/restaurant on Friday & drinks with Mike & Kate onboard RIGHT TURN Friday night. We will probably run into them again in the San Blas islands.
Saturday we headed off to Cartagena after giving PANNIKIN’s decks a quick wash & filling our front water tank. We motored for about 1 ½ hours before some wind decided to pick up & we started the first leg of our trip under about 15 knots of wind. After night fall we had 1.5 knots of current against us as we sailed south of Barranquilla making the waves stand up & steep. On watch Ange copped a wave over the back of the boat soaking her & pouring through the companionway soaking the floor down below – Steve was woken with a cry of surprise & a warning yell! It was a bit of a messy night... not much wind & an uncomfortable sea.
We arrived at Cartagena around 7am & went the ‘long way round’ (Bocachica entry) into Cartagena harbour. We decided not to take the short cut (Bocagrande entry) as we were tired & also the sun wasn’t overhead & we didn’t fancy running into the underwater break wall. This was built as a submarine barrier by the Spanish during the Colony period to prevent ships entering the bay that way & making them enter through Bocachica. That way foreign ships were caught in the cannon crossfire between the two fortresses at the entrance of Bocachica. We anchored off the Club Nautico marina in dirty, dirty water on the island of Manga. There are plenty of boats here & some look as though they have been here for a while. We had a good sleep & early afternoon we phoned our agent, Gladys, to let her know of our arrival. After the biggest storm & rain downpour we’ve seen in ages we met her to get our clearance paperwork started. Seeing though it was Sunday & nothing much happens we spent the rest of the afternoon on board cleaning up & generally having a gander at all the boats coming & going.
Monday we had a big sleep in & then went for a wander. We found ourselves in the walled historic city (Centro Historico) which is absolutely stunning. We spent a good couple of hours here & will return before we head off. We’ve decided to do the open top bus tour as well to get our bearings & see what else the city has to offer. Cartagena is huge & mostly very modern. The area of Bocagrande is covered with high rise buildings (think Gold Coast or Miami) & lit up at night it is quite stunning. The anchorage can be a bit joggly at times with lots of boats coming & going all the time, but it is not uncomfortable. We feel much safer here than at Santa Marta & have no worries leaving the boat unattended when we go ashore. We don’t even need to lock up our dinghy at the dinghy dock!
Tuesday we had a quiet day – sort of! Steve was unwell with a tummy bug so decided to stay onboard. We discovered that our front head (toilet) was blocked so started to take it apart to see what the problem was. The waste hose was completely blocked with calcification & needed to be removed to give it a good clean out. This proved to be harder & dirtier than first though, so it was left until today when Steve was feeling better.
After we got the toilet problem sorted this morning, followed by a huge, messy cleanup we went for a walk to Caribe Plaza to check out the supermarket there. We are trying to find a good supermarket to do our stocking up for the San Blas islands. “Jumbo” is a huge supermarket with plenty of choice, but Ange will look at another tomorrow for deciding which we will use. Caribe Plaza is a big shopping centre that also had a huge Home Centre store (think Bunnings by BIG!). We shouted ourselves some new cockpit cushions & few other bits & pieces. Because of the great rainfall here we also bought a few things to rig up a ‘water catcher’ as we can’t use our water maker in the disgusting water. Just need some rain now. This afternoon we’ve caught up on emails & generally done not a lot!