10/16/2009, Columbia
This is a Friday night Happy Hour at Club De Pesca, our boat slip was about 10ft. from the bar (how convenient is that?)
Well, we have been here for just about a month and will be leaving today. We have stayed much longer than we had planned, but so many of our cruising friends have said "you have to go to Cartagena, Colombia you will really love it". Sure enough, they were right. It is a beautiful city. The old city is within walking distance from the Marina we stayed at, so we got to see a lot. It is very historic. It is called the "Walled City"
When we first arrived we anchored in the bay at Club Nautico. Well to our disappointment it is under heavy re-construction and is all torn up and has ditches and re-bar everywhere. The office is still there and the long time manager, John, is still there. The dinghy dock was very dangerous to get in or out of your dinghy. We stayed anchored out for 3 days and were very, very lucky to get a slip in the Club de Pesca (Fishing Club). It is for club members only, but with a little luck and some persistence, they found a slip for us for 1 week. We then stretched that to 4 weeks. The people at the Marina were very helpful. No one here speaks English so we had to communicate in Spanish. My Spanish is terrible, but enough to get by and I've learned more since we've been here. We have had a lot of new work done on our boat. We had our bimini widened by two feet (redid stainless tubing structure) and extended it further over the dodger, new Sunbrella canvas. Had the boat waxed, from water line up including the deck and cockpit, the teak sanded and re stained. Got refrigeration fixed (new fan) and he reversed the direction so it pulls the heat out rather than the cool air in, it works a whole lot better now. Got fiber glass work done on some dings and gashes received along the way. Got our computers fixed and he did some serious hardware changes to drastically reduce the overheating on the mother board. We had our salon cushions completely re-upholstered in leather (Colombian leather). The leather is of high quality and he did a great job. We are very pleased. We had more work done but as you can see they have a lot of skill here and their prices are unbelievably cheap. Their labor rate is approximately $3.00 and hour, can you believe that. We would be paying $50 to $60 an hour for this type skilled labor. One example is we had our life lines (1/4 in. coated wire) 4 pieces each about 6 ft. long, on our port and starboard aft sides replaced with 1" stainless steel pipe, cut, installed, welded and polished (2 guys for 5 hours) for $200 (that includes the stainless steel pipe). We had this same job priced in San Diego before we left and it was quoted for $2000 (10 times higher). They did a great job, high quality.
We have met old friends and made new ones here, between the happy hours and the pot luck dinners. Pat has been on a few Friday lunches/tours with the ladies (most of the day) and has seen a lot more of Cartagena than I have. The Marina is set within old fortress walls (well 3 sides anyway) and is really beautiful. We will be heading to San Blas, Panama and then to transit the canal back to the Pacific side and up to San Diego. We should get there around June of next year. We have been out here cruising for 2 years this month. When we get back it will be almost 3 years out cruising.
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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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