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…