Aruba to Cartagena – Colombia
Monday 17th – Thursday 20th December 18
We watched the Suzie Too depart from the anchorage early afternoon, and the place now feel deserted. Back to the horrible pontoon to clear out and then back to the anchorage, waiting for the right time to leave. We have 380 miles to do and there are a few potentially hairy capes where the wind pipes up, around the Colombian Sierra Nevada, and a river to pass along the way. Best to clear these in, so we set off from Aruba late afternoon to make sure we do. The first leg to Cabo de la Vella takes over 24 and we do get there during the day, although it is not so bumpy as we expected. The conditions are fair for most of the way, wind behind us, around 30 knots, we are flying… until we get to Santa Marta. We caught our first glimpse of Colombia and it does look high, so high that we can’t see the summit shrouded in clouds. Apparently when the skies are clear you can see the snow on top of the Sierra, we are not so lucky.
We had a bit of a 2 hours bumpy ride with winds over 35 knots and fairly big waves, but it soon settled down to the normal conditions. Land keeps appearing and disappearing as we pass the capes and then the mountains vanished again but we knew we were close from land, all sort of insect started appearing , some of them big . We met a bit of traffic, much more that we have encountered for a long while. We got a bit befuddled with a tanker, at anchor in the middle of absolutely nowhere. The wind kept constant until 20 miles out of Cartagena, we had to have the engine on which was a bit of a shame.