1/26/02 | Colombian islands

On Tuesday morning we finally got our exit papers, and that afternoon we disconnected our electrical umbilicus, coiled the water hose, untied the dock lines, and headed out of Cartagena. As soon as we passed between the two small forts which guard the southern entrance to the harbor, we felt the wind begin to stir. We gleefully spread the sails, turned off the motor, and had a wonderful sail down the Colombian coast.

Our chart wasn't very detailed, so we took the prudent course and circled completely around most of the Islas del Rosario before jibing back for the anchorage at Isla Grande. This leg was hard on the wind, but as we were protected by the islands by then, we skimmed over the flat water most pleasantly. We spotted the other cruising boats near a cut between two islands, with a few nav markers -- a green and a red pole -- a bit further out. We rolled in the sails, turned on the motor, and headed right for the rear of the fleet, over what looked like a deep reef, but as the bottom rose from 40 feet to 25 feet to 15, I got audibly nervous, and when the depth reading flashed 10 I hit reverse and informed Britt and Kevin we were going to go through the markers, dammit. And so we did. About half an hour later, a French boat came in, and did the exact same double-take at the reef that we did.

There was already a fleet of 6-8 cruisers at Isla Grande, all waiting for the weather to moderate before continuing on to the San Blas islands. We'd had 15-20 on the 25-mile run down to the Rosarios, but that was only because we were well protected by the nearby coastline; the offshore reports warned of 30 knot winds and 14 foot seas, and Namirda, who we had passed going in to Cartagena as we were leaving, told us on VHF that they'd seen 45 knots and 20 foot seas the previous night. (We bet that was at Cabo Aguja, where we saw similar conditions on our passage to Cartagena).

After nearly a month in the foul harbor at Cartagena, we were more than ready to jump into the relatively clear, relatively clean water. Poor Kevin!  He came for a visit expecting to put on a snorkel and hunt reef fish, but instead the first thing we made him do was put on a snorkel and hunt barnacles. They weren't too difficult to find, as there were vast quantities all over the bottom of our boat. (And they don't move very fast, either!) All three of us scraped and scrubbed, until the bottom was mostly clean.

Once we finished with the work, we swam around for fun. But we didn't see many fish worth chasing, probably because all the full-time residents of the Islas del Rosario are fishermen. (They make the rounds of the anchorage in the morning, selling fish and papayas.) Most of the residents here, though, are part-time; there are lots of summer homes and vacation cottages, lots of resorts catering to Cartageneros and other tourists. We went ashore one day looking for a restaurant, and wandered along dirt paths between rude tin shacks until some local youths directed us to a gate in a beat-looking fence. Behind the fence we just saw more of the same, dirt, huts, and chickens, but a man greeted us and nodded that yes, there was a restaurant here, and we followed him to what turned out to be the front of the resort that we'd entered through the "service door". Caribbean waves bashed against the offshore reef and lapped against the tiny sand beach; tourists lounged poolside, and two vendors sold necklaces of black coral, pearls, and shells. We sat by the bar and ate fried chicken, plantains and yuca, with big slices of pineapple for dessert.

One morning we visited the "Oceanarium", a sort of open-air aquarium which occupies most of one of the smaller islands. The fish are in pens carved out of a big bay, with wooden walkways around them. We arrived early and walked around by ourselves until the big ferries came over, disgorging huge crowds of tourists in "I [heart] Cartagena" T-shirts, signaling the guides to begin the show. The guides went around to each tank, feeding the fish and explaining (unfortunately for us, in rapid Spanish) about each species. There were tarpon, which circled tightly around the chum he tossed in, and jacks, which dove for the food in a real feeding frenzy. We saw a few unusual species, such as huge jewfish, hulking like Volkswagen Bugs in the shadows underneath the walkways, and sawfish, which look like a cross between a stingray and a chainsaw. There was a dolphin show, which was enlivened by the frigate birds which frequently swooped down to steal the fish from the trainer's hand just as he was about to give it to the dolphin. But probably the niftiest act the guide did was with the pen full of nurse sharks, which in Spanish are tiburones gatos, or "cat sharks". The guide knelt on a small platform in the water and thumped it, calling out to the sharks by name. And darned if they didn't all swim up to the platform, shimmying their heads up to the guide, letting him pet and stroke them and hand-feed them bits of fish like so many kittycats.

We listened to the SSB and ham nets and religiously downloaded weatherfaxes, but high wind and waves continued to pummel the southwestern Caribbean with no break in sight. After a few days in the Rosarios we were antsy to move on, so we decided to continue on to another group of islands, the Islas San Bernardos, another 25 miles further south along the coast. These islands are less known and less visited by yachts, but we found an encouraging description in our Reed's nautical atlas, and it turned out to be a pleasant destination. There are a few uninhabited islands, a few islands with what seemed to be resorts (some abandoned, some in use), and one tiny island completely covered with huts and shacks. In fact, the little village island was so packed with habitation that it even had a suburb -- a few small huts on stilts that sat off to one side in the shallow water just northeast of the island, as though the builders had run out of room on the land and had to expand to the water.

We turned in just past Isla Tintipan to anchor, and were the only yacht there. However, there were many local fishing boats, and watching them all was very discouraging to our hopes of foraging for our own fish dinner. They fished with nets. They fished with spears. They fished with dynamite, or at least some sort of charge that they set off to stun the fish; Kevin was in the water at the time and reported a very unpleasant sensation. But the following day, despite greenish water and considerable depths, the hunters brought back a medium-sized crab and a large Nassau grouper, and we dined well.

Besides fishing, we had another project to attend to at Isla Tintipan. The sail down from the Rosarios was straight downwind, so when we got underway we prepared to put out the whisker pole. But while getting the outboard end of the pole onto the jib sheet, Britt twisted the pole into the wrong position, and the plastic fitting which attaches to the mast on the inboard end broke. (Our guess is that it had been weakened by the beating the pole took when it broke on the way to Cartagena.) The pole slammed down off the mast and onto an open hatch on deck, amazingly not breaking or even denting it very much, and it took both Britt and Kevin to disassemble everything and put the pole away in a temporary fashion as I steered us downwind.

The repair job was a masterwork of jury-rigging. Needless to say, we didn't have a spare mast fitting on board -- the pole wasn't even designed to have the fitting replaced. So we rummaged through all the hardware and spare parts we had on board, tossed around ideas and rummaged some more. The jigsaw, drill, tap, and orbital sander all got used, as did a couple of bolts which we had just removed the previous week from another part of the boat, some aluminum stays that we had saved from a worn-out backpack, and a whole bunch of assorted screws and washers. It doesn't look like something you can buy from West Marine. But we have a functioning whisker pole again.