09/16/2009, Colombia
The eagle has landed......on our dodger. We were about one day away from Cartagena when we heard the flutter of wings, we assumed it was a seagull. To our surprise it was an eagle.
We left Aruba at 3:00pm Sun 9/13 and arrived at Cartagena at 11:00am Wed. 9/16. The weather coming from Aruba to Cartagena wasn't as bad as we had been expecting. We had read and been told that the passage between Aruba and Cartagena is among the top five worst passages around the world. It has the worst weather condtions in the Caribbean. This has a lot to do with the somewhat permanent low that resides over the waters of Colombia. This results in very high seas, up to 30 and 40 ft high off shore and winds at over 40 knots and higher with squalls. Needless to say we were a little concerned. We were very particular in arriving at Aruba in late August early September and leaving to Cartagena in mid to end September. These are the better months of the year and the trade winds are a little lighter and seas a little calmer. The winds and current are mostly in our favor. But as you learn when you are cruising there is no precision in weather prediction nor necessarily reliability. You have to get several inputs to the weather from different sources and then decide based on your own risk assessment and your skills and experience, etc. We made sure we had no schedule or deadline to add pressure to our decision. There were other boats leaving about the same time as we were but they were going to stop at different anchorages along the Colombian coast. We decided to do it in a straight shot of 3 nights with times set to insure we passed the most critical points at the most appropriate times based on certain assumptions of wind/current, etc. We had waypoints set up at 3 or 4 potential anchorage in case things got rough. All in all everything worked out fine. We motor/sailed the whole way and stayed about 8 to 10 miles off shore. We had a squall just as we were nearing Cartagena and the wind was about 23 knots as we approached the narrow entrance to Boca Grande (about 30ft wide and 11ft deep) it is a hole blasted in a submerged stone wall stretching across a what otherwise appears as a large opening.
More to follow.
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09/01/2009, Aruba
Rich trying to work on the blog, yeah right
We left Santa Cruz Bay at 4:30am and arrived at Aruba at 3:15pm same day. This was another of those hard to see entrances and the charts and marking were not clear at all. We hailed the Poet Authority to help describe which markers were which. He said he would send out a pilot boat to bring us in rather than try to explain the markings. This was a great help we followed the pilot through a different entrance and tied up at the Customs dock. This is a very industrial dock except for the cruise ships near by. After checking in we walked to the marina to look at it and decided we would not go there. They had only one slip and it would be very difficult to get our boat in there.
As we were pulling away from the custom's dock the bow thrusters stopped working, but we decided to keep going anyway. About 5 minutes away from the dock heading to the anchorage Pat checked out our anchor windlass and it was not working. We called the Port Authority back and ask if we could return to their dock to check everything out. The rest is a long story, but by the next day with the help of some real nice people we got everything working. In fact one of the guys called his buddy who works at the Shell refinery to see if they had a 400 amp fuse. There were none on the island, but his buddy called back and said they had three that they use in the plant. This is a very large amp fuse and not common. His buddy drove half way from the plant and we met him and I paid him for the fuses, I bought all three. That was just one example of the help we got. Anyway we went to the anchorage the next day with everything working fine.
Aruba is certainly tailored to Cruise Ship and the fly-in resort seekers. Lots of beautiful beaches and resort hotels and lots of Casinos. Conversely it is not what we would call cruiser-friendly. We had heard that not too many cruisers stop here because of this. As we said the people are super friendly it is just the conditions are not conducive to the cruiser types.
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08/31/2009, Curacao
We left Spanish Waters at 8:45am and arrived at Santa Cruz Bay at 2:30pm same day. We went up the coast of Curacao to anchor because it was 25 miles closer to Aruba and we could do it in one day without an overnighter. We were the only boat in the anchorage. It was very quiet and near a kinda resort beach. The Curacao Coast Guard arrived and boarded us. They were very pleasant and after they checked the boat out we sat and had a nice conversation.
This anchorage was nice because it was an easy out the next morning and we could leave in the dark without concern. This would allow us to get to Aruba in daylight.
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