Cartagena

We spent almost one month anchored in the Cartagena Bay and it's difficult to know where to begin... We'll go in chronological order.

We approached Cartagena after a 50nm sail from Puerto Velero. We've read and heard a lot about Cartagena over the last several months. We'd heard that it's a magical city, the most beautiful city in the America's filled with culture, history and charm. We've also heard that the Cartagena bay was terrible, crowded, polluted, bad holding, theft, expensive to clear in, and constant terrible thunder storms.

About 5 miles out of the Bocagrande Channel we saw a thunderstorm roll in over the city. I watched it hoping it would improve or roll out before we got there. Neither happened. I watched the lightning intensify and saw a strike every 2-3 seconds constantly hitting the buildings that we were approaching. The storm was rolling out to sea and there was no where for us to go. We took down our sails and were motoring towards the cut when the storm hit us. The wind picked up to 30knots but the fetch off the city wan't very long so the sea state was pretty calm. Lightning started striking all around us. I set the autohelm and at idle, set a course away from any obsticles and went bellow. Ashley and I have never seen a thunderstorm like this let alone one at sea. All we could do was wait bellow and watch. We estimate there were at least 5 strikes with a 1/4 mile of us and some much closer, but we wern't struck. It was a scary experience but fortunately not a dangerous one. I've heard its statastically very unlikely for sailboats to be struck by lightning but it does happen, and I'd guess much more frequently in this area. We saw thunderstorms every day and often throughout the night. We were freaked out when we arrived in the anchorage and a boat neighbour told us these storms roll in every afternoon with gusts up to 60knots. After being in Cartagena for almost one month, mostly in September, we'd only seen two bad thunderstorms roll through the anchorage. The rest would desipate over land or over sea, or miss the city by a few miles. The strongest winds we saw in Cartagena Bay were about 20 knots.

We also felt very safe in Cartagena but always locked the dinghy and companionway. And, we avoided any bad areas, which do exist outside Manga, Bocagrande and Getsemani.

So, Ashley flew out leaving Bella and I a few days to get the boat ready for my Dad to arrive.

My Dad arrived and we were very happy to see each other! We planned to sail together for a week down to the Rosario Islands, only about 18nm away. This was some of the best times I've spent with my Dad in resent memory. I feel like cruising provides the perfect amount of challenge to keep you occupied and unified with a common goal, but also allows for enough downtime to have good conversation and leisure time. That's been the case with Ashley and I, and was also the case with my Dad.

We were ready to leave the Cartagena Bay in the morning after breakfast and excited to get underway. I've been manually bringing up our anchor over the last couple months since we've had a problem with our windlass. That's never been a problem for us except for this morning. Try as I might, we could not budge the anchor. In the Bay known for terrible holding, our anchor was fowled on something. We considered the options. It was too deep to dive the anchor and too murky to see anything. We tried driving at it very forcefully in all kinds of different directions. After about an hour, the winds picked up and we decided to wait another day, come up with a plan and leave tomorrow. The following morning it was dead calm and I thought this would be our opportunity. We lead a line from the chain to a winch and started grinding. There was still a lot of weight on the anchor as we brought it closer to the boat. When the anchor surfaced we saw a huge anchor chain wrapped around it. I had to get into the dinghy to free it and we were on our way. Don't ever assume that everything will be easy.

We made our way to Cholon Bay off Isla Baru through a very narrow channel. My Dad navigated us through on the bow and did a fine job of it.

The next morning we headed for the Aquarium on Isla St.Martin. We navigated through the various reefs being extremely careful to avoid them. As we approached the Island we saw a mooring ball positioned perfectly outside the dolphin enclosure. These enclosures are fences built around the island and allow ocean salt water to curculate through them. They're basically chainlink fenses built right on to the reef. The dolphins could easily scale any of these fences and escape but see no need to since they're being well fed and stimulated socially. We pulled up in the dinghy and visited the aquiarium. We had a great time but were looking for lunch since we hadn't eaten. Like so many other places this one was built for the tour groups that had already left the island. The only food that was still available was in the staff cafeteria. Two dolphin trainers later kayaked out to us and invited us to feed the dolphins and eat in thier cafeteria. We joined them in feeding the dolphins and talked about thier history at the aquirium. They were both long term veterans there and spent the majority of thier time on the island. They had children that lived there as well. It was such a cool way to live on this island. A little paradise outside of the big city.

We motor-sailed back to Cartagena a few days later and made great time. We checked into my parents great AirBnb in the heart of Getsemani and then planned to meet my mom at the airport with Bella the dog.

We picked up my mom with Bella and it was difficult to tell who was the most excited to see each other.

The following day I picked Ashley up at the airport as she was returning from her trip from Canada. Excited to be back in the warm climate and see my parents, we all met for lunch. We went to a place in the old city that was packed with locals so we knew the food and prices would be genuinely columbian. The lunch was a typical meal served with fish, coconut rice and plantain chips. My Dad and I decided to order the only meal on the menu in Spanish and it turned out to be a soup with a whole fish in it!

The streets and neighbourhoods of Cartagena are full of large balcony's littered with hanging vines and beautiful old stone buildings. The older areas have colourful walls full of creative graffiti that reminded all passerby's of the danger that once excited in these same streets.

My parents visiting us in Cartagena was fantastic! It was quite an experience for all four of us never really thinking we'd be hanging out in the Cartagena bay on our own sailboat one day. The AirBnb we stayed at with my parents had a pool and air conditioning! Sweet glorious air conditioning! This was a huge relief for all of us including Bella after touring the city in the extreme heat. I'm really appreciative that they came to visit us, and that they got an Airbnb big enough for all four of us. The timing worked perfectly and it'll be a vacation from our vacation that we'll never forget.