2-25-2015 Aruba



Some like it—some don't. Aruba is not for everyone as it is very touristy. We were in Renaissance Marina which was part of the Renaissance Hotel complex with high rise hotel, Gucci/Prada/Louis Vuitton shops and to Sherry's delight—two Starbucks. Yes, it was touristy, but we liked it. We would walk over to the mall, 500 yards from the boat, have our morning Starbucks in the A/C and start another day of adventure. There was a marked difference from Bonaire where they are working hard to preserve their island's ecology. As guests at the marina we were given room key cards to access the free ferry boat to the “Island”. The private island of the Renaissance Resort is a white sand, clear water lagoon get-away which was actually pretty cool. There was also a great supermarket called Ling and Sons which was a good two mile walk away—we walked it twice. There were great restaurants and shopping right behind our dock. The only down side was the wind—it blew 25-30 knots every day. It literally was blowing spots off dogs—I saw that happen! When we asked the local sailors when the wind might die down they said not until April—not what we wanted to hear.
The next passage would be to Santa Marta, Columbia—a two night passage. This passage has been said to be the roughest in the Caribbean and one of the five worst passages in the world. The main reason is that the trade winds come howling in from the Atlantic Ocean, hit the Colombian/Venezuelan peninsula and get funneled and rotated by the land mass. The result is high winds and seas (gale force and 15-20 ft seas) right down to Santa Marta.
We watched the weather every day until we saw one day where the wind was only 25-30 knots. We made plans to leave the day before to take advantage of the slight lull. We had to leave around 1400 in order to arrive at Santa Marta in the daylight—that is hard for me to do. I want to get going in the morning and hate sitting around for the afternoon. We left the marina at 1200 and motored over to the nasty customs dock again to clear out. Once we were checked out we headed out to sea, heading almost due west for Punta Gallenas—the tip of the peninsula. We had winds around 20-25 knots and seas 6-8 feet—not too bad as they were off our stern quarter. The seas and winds picked up as we rounded the point but soon died down to 5 knots and 3-4 ft seas on the other side of the peninsula—that was weird. We had to slow down to arrive in daylight so we sheeted in the genoa and slowed down. As we approached Santa Marta we rounded Cabo de la Aguja and the wind increased to over 35 knots with gusts over 40—and big seas ( we could not see them in the dark, but they were big). I had to hand steer for the harbor and I got soaked with the wind waves breaking on our port beam. We moved behind a small island and the wind died down to about 20 knots and the seas died, too. It was just getting light enough to see as we called the marina and were answered by a 'Spanish only' marinero. Luckily, we speak a little Spanglish and we communicated that we had a reservation in the marina and would really like to come into the shelter of the breakwater. The nice young man came out in a roundabout and guided us to a dock. As the sun came up we relaxed—we had made it!