We left Cartagena on Wednesday after getting our paperwork sorted out and the boat filled up with fuel. It was a slow trip over - the wind was against us and I think we had an adverse current, but the biggest problem was our dirty bottom. Cartagena is famous for its dirty water that produced phenomenal growth and we got to see it first hand. The bottom of our boat was pristine when we arrived and after three weeks it was covered in barnacles. The propeller shaft, strut and propeller was especially covered to a point it was unrecognizable - it was amazing that they actually turned. Yesterday was bottom cleaning day and thanks to the help from Calib and James from Salange, we got it done in a reasonable amount of time. We still have more to do, but we got all of the hard growth off. The fish enjoyed our bottom cleaning as schools of them showed up to eat the stuff we were scrapping off. At one time, I saw 6 or 7 angel fish, some catfish and other assorted fish, eating away.

The Bay of Cholon is quite pretty and a huge change from being anchored in a big city. There is an expat from USA (Robert) that has built a house here and also has a large trawler anchored in the bay that is very friendly to the cruisers. On Wednesday evening he invited all of the cruisers over to the trawler where some of the cruisers played guitar, harmonica and sang for us - it was great. Thursday was USA thanksgiving and we all went up to Robert's house for a thanksgiving feast and to socialize and again we had a wonderful time.

There are about 15 boats anchored here - some of them have spent the whole hurricane season here. We have met a number of the boats at other places, so it is a great cruising community for us. We will stay here for a few more days and then probably head to the San Bernadino islands before making the passage back to Panama. Salange is also heading in the same direction, so we will probably be seeing alot of them. Their boat is registered in Edmonton, but they now live on Vancouver Island. They have their 12 and 14 year old sons traveling with them and they are all super nice people.

Yesterday was boat project day - We had a back rest made for the helm chair in Cartagena, so I put that together and installed it. We are very please with how it turned out and should make the passages much easier on our backs. I also got the watermaker working yesterday. We had left it pickled since we knew we could not use it in Cartagena, but it was time to get it going, and everything seems to be working fine.

The picture is taken from the top of the hill where Robert's house is situated and is of the Bay of Cholon. We do NOT have internet access here, so if anybody needs to get in touch with us, please use the uuplus email address.