Cartagena at Last!

We spent the days before Christmas eagerly awaiting our generator part from the UK. It arrived on 24th December and was fitted boxing day. With a working generator we planned to leave on 27th.

Christmas day we had a lovely time. For breakfast we had hot croissants and coffee with mid morning champagne later. We had dinner with Dutch friends from a boat called Papillon. We spent the whole afternoon and evening eating,drinking and sitting talking. We had a lovely joint of beef which we had been aging in the fridge for 5 weeks and I made my first apple crumble on the boat.

When we came to leave our anchor windlass would not work. This did not stop us, we were determined that we were leaving so we raised the anchor manually leaving us and the deck covered in mud! We knew we could lower the anchor but not raise it which gave us 1 attempt to anchor when we reached Cartagena.

The passage took us 3 days 4 hours which is good going for 455 miles. The first 2 days the wind was either good or a little light. The third day made up for this. The wind increased during the day and we were screaming along achieving our highest speed yet of 9.7 knots. Unfortunately, it continued to increase and by evening was a F8 with gusts up to 39 knots. We rolled up the genoa and reefed down the main but were still doing 8 knots on a tiny scrap. The waves increased and were quite scary to look at, also the noise as they broke near the stern of the boat was amazing. We had water bubbling up our cockpit drain holes and splashing over the sides though our new dodgers served us well. We had little sleep that night so when we arrived at 1pm we went to bed, woke up at 8pm, ate some food and went straight back to sleep until morning. Although our crossing was 'exciting' we fared better than some boats. Some had arrived with ripped sails and one with a broken rudder.

New Year eve was spent with friends walking around the old city which was very busy and all lit up. Then we watched fireworks with Chris, Dave, Wendy and Bobby on the front of the latter's catamaran.

Our time here has been very busy sightseeing and socialising. There are lots of cruisers here and many people we have met before in Curacao so it has been good to catch up with them. The old city is a maze of streets and shops, restaurants and cafes with a few museums thrown in for variety. It's very easy to spend a very enjoyable day wandering through it with long pleasant lunches and some light 'culture'! It's really a lovely place to visit and now Colombia is free from internal strife, we are sure it will become a popular tourist destination. It is also very cosmopolitan and it is a bit odd to be in an anchorage surrounded on many sides by high rise apartments! Very pretty at night but strange after the Caribbean islands.

When we got here our generator broke again but is now fixed and Mike mended the windlass which had a loose wire. Mike has also been to a very nice dentist who repaired a filling and didn't charge him anything!

With everything fixed (for the time being!), we are heading to the San Blas tomorrow. We are both looking forward to a quiet few weeks with lots of snorkeling. We will not have internet again until we reach Colon in Panama in a few weeks.