Amendment to last post

It has been pointed out to me that my comments on the man who was asleep in the launch were un-compassionate. I'm am righting now to apologize to the less fortunate people of the world and everyone I may have offended with what I wrote. I didn't mean to be cold and uncaring. I'm sorry.

Dominos

                                                                                       Jan 19 2014

Greetings,

          I can now call myself a cruiser. Today I had my first Mexican train dominos experience. As we have been cruising, we have heard people talking on the VHF cruiser nets about getting together for Mexican train dominos. It’s a popular social activity in the cruising world. But, before today, we had not participated. Well, now we’ve been properly integrated into the social world of cruisers. I won’t go into the details of how the game is played here, but it was lots of fun and I’m sure we will join again at some point.

          When we left the game we had another first. A bum was sleeping in Hook when we got back to the dock to head back out to Second Star. We head actually seen him the night before. When we’d gone to the store he had told us he would watch the boat while we were gone and then held his hand out for money. Johne said when we got back. If he’d been there when we got back Johne was going to give him a little something but he wasn’t. So, after we woke him up and told him it was time to get off, he got his stuff together (a backpack and the cardboard boxes he’d been sleeping under), climb off the boat and held his hand out for money. Johne told him he was lucky we didn’t call the police. I thought it was pretty ballsy to try to charge us for sleeping in the launch. I thought maybe we should have asked him for rent.

          In other news, it does look like we’re going to be departing Cartagena this week. The weather is calming enough that we’re going to go for it. It’s not going to be as calm as I’d prefer, but to wait for that we’d probably be here until April. Right now the plan is to head out Tuesday evening. There is a big river that flows out by Santa Marta and, we’ve heard, you want to cross it in good light to avoid all the debris that flows down river. We’ll time it to get there in the morning on Wednesday. There are some bays on the north side of Colombia that we can stop in if it gets too rough or we want to rest, but we’ll head for Curacao as quickly as we can safely go. I’m looking forward to getting there. It looks like a really neat place. 

Waiting for a weather window

                                                                             Jan 12 2014

Greetings,

          Cruisers spend much of their time waiting for a “weather window”. This is what we are doing right now. For the past several weeks the trade winds have been blowing and the Caribbean Sea has been stirred up. With winds to 35 knots, the waves off shore have been running 8-15 feet. And, we want to head east, which is the way they are coming from. Which boils down to; we’re stuck in Cartagena, waiting. It makes me a bit antsy. We have company coming to see us in St Thomas in March. Even though that’s still two months away, it’s out there.

I know I don’t want to be out in the current conditions. It’s hard on the boat, it’s hard on the cat and it’s hard on us. But it’s also hard to sit here and check the weather, day after day, with no real change. It’s not that we don’t have stuff to do. There are always projects on a boat. And there are some fun people here to socialize with. We have enjoyed many things about Cartagena, but it’s time to be done here and move on. The tricky part at this point is not to let the “antsy” get the better of me. We’ll just have to wait until the weather decides to cooperate and stay put until then.

One thing we’re not enjoying here is the traffic in the harbor. Since a week or so before Christmas, the boat traffic has increased substantially. The high speed, twin and triple engine, boats come flying though the anchorage at warp speed. They go every-which-direction which turns the harbor into a washing machine with big wakes coming from everywhere. Sometimes it makes us feel like, even though it’s rough off shore, it’s uncomfortable in here too, so maybe we should just go. We know better. Even when it’s bad in here, it’s way worse out there.

So, here we sit. I’ll let you know when it looks like that will change. And in the meantime I’ll try to embrace being here…

Another long update

                                                                                                                                                                                                                             Jan 3 2014

Greetings,

          Well, once again I’ve put off writing for too long so I will do this update in sections. First the time in the yard; second our trip to Bogota; and then the Holidays.

The yard:

We didn’t get everything we’d hoped done while we were hauled out. But the most important jobs (The bottom sanded and painted, the prop shaft seals replaced, thru hulls cleaned out and ball valves serviced, anchor chain remarked every 25 feet…) got done. We launched on the 16^th and headed back to the anchorage. With the bottom and running gear clean and barnacle free we slid through the water with ease. Going into the yard we were going 5.6 knots @ 800 rpm, burning about 4 gph. Coming out we were doing 8 knots @ 800 rpm, burning about 2.5 gph. So much better.  And our dripless shaft seals are dripless again. Yea!

An amusing anecdote from our yard time is; the first evening we were there the guard came by and told me something in Spanish. I knew it was something about a dog but I wasn’t getting it. I told him in Spanish I was sorry but I didn’t understand. He kept trying. Whatever he was saying was obviously important. So I kept trying to get it. They were looking for a dog? Had I seen the dog? No, that wasn’t it. Then I started to catch on. I was aware that there were guard dogs in the yard at night (the first night we were tied to the wall, before we were lifted one of them had been barking at a fishing boat for half the night). What he was telling me was not to come down off the boat after 9:00 at night until 5:00AM because they let the dogs loose in the yard and it was dangerous. I was so proud of myself when I figured it out and the guard seemed very relieved. My Spanish still sucks, but I’m making progress.

Bogota:

          We left the boat for five days while it was out of the water to go up to Bogota, visit Kevin and see the sights. Bogota is in the mountains at 8500 feet. It sits in a basin surrounded by higher mountains. Being so close to the equator, the temperature there stays between about 50 and 70 degrees all the time. We have been in the tropics for long enough now that, for us, that’s cold. We’d brought jackets and jeans but we were still chilly most of the time we were there.

          Bogota is a beautiful city. It’s the capital of Colombia and houses many government buildings, the presidential palace, many universities, museums, historical churches, etc. We stayed with Kevin and he was a wonderful host. We arrived on a Saturday afternoon. On Sunday we drove up to a quant village on a lake. It was a historical village that had been moved and restored when they built the dam and flooded its location creating the lake. We had dinner on the way back down at a restaurant on the side of the mountain with a great view of the city below. Monday we went into downtown. We were planning to go to the Museo Del Oro (gold museum) first but it was closed on Mondays. So we walked around exploring. We went by the presidential palace, which had guards in fancy uniforms like Buckingham Palace, on the way to the Botero art museum. Botero is a famous Colombian artist and they had a lot of his work but they also had Monet, Picasso, Degas, Renoir, Toulouse- Lautrec, Pissarro, Manet…it was an amazing collection. We were going to go back to the gold museum another day but the Mayor of the city was fired that day and for the next several days there were protests in that area and the streets were closed.

          Kevin took us to an older part of town where we had dinner and a lovely stroll in a plaza that was all decorated and had entertainment for the holidays. We also took the cable car ride up to Monseratte, the church on the mountain overlooking the city. The view from there was spectacular. We got there late in the afternoon and enjoyed the sunset with a good cup of coffee (or hot chocolate for Johne) then had dinner looking over the lights of the city (extra lit for Christmas). It was a very good trip and I’m really glad we got to go.

The Holidays:

          We celebrated the solstice in our usual style with a cocktail party aboard Second Star. We had a fun group of cruisers come and one “repeat”. It was for our solstice party last year that we first met Sharon, so it was also the first anniversary of a great friendship.

          Daryl and Marcy arrived back on Christmas Eve to spend another week aboard. We did the potluck with the other cruisers for dinner that night. For Christmas dinner Sharon joined us here. We did a non-traditional steak and lobster with garlic/herb mashed potatoes and salad. The food was awesome and the company even better.

          Over the weekend we all went to the Fort for the tour and to the beach on the other side of Boca Grande. Daryl and Marcy had to leave on Monday, so for New Year’s Eve Sharon came and we had dinner and managed to stay up long enough to watch the great fireworks displays going off around half of the harbor.

          Now we are in prep-to-move-on mode. When we get a good weather window, we’ll be headed along the north side of Colombia and over to Curacao. I don’t do New Year’s resolutions, but if I did, mine would be to write as things happen and update the blog much more often. We’ll see if I manage to do it.

          Happy New Year!