Santa Marta to Puerto Valero

30 Dec, Colombia day 11: After 10 days in Santa Marta, we depart for Cartagena hoping to arrive for NYE celebrations. Total distance is 110nm so not possible to do in daylight only. But thankfully there is shelter to anchor at Puerto Valero, about half the distance.
It takes over an hour for the marina checkout and yet more paperwork. For Colombia we must report out of and into each and every port visited. Bit of a pain. But easy with agents.
We had hoped to fill up with diesel before leaving, but as we exited our berth it was clear there would be quite the waiting-games. Lots of boats hovering, waiting for the fuel dock to be free. I wanted to get going, so we set course west and soon had the sails out.

At first, close to Santa Marta, the wind is very light, but that belies what will soon happen. Same as when Ray and I arrived at Santa Marta there is a strong wind acceleration zone positioned just offshore. This is caused by the easterly trade winds having to squeeze around the 5500m Sierra Nevada Mountain range. By midafternoon this wind can peak with up to 50kt gusts! Therefore, I’m determined to get west of the zone as soon as possible. Especially that I now have a more delicate crew than Ray!
We start with full mainsail and genoa, and within 20 minutes we have them both reefed to their maximum as the wind quickly builds to 25kts. And another 30 minutes later the genoa gets fully furled away, to be replaced by the small cutter sail on the inner forestay. With the cutter poled out to starboard and about 1/3 of the mainsail out to port, we start our rolly downwind ride with winds soon gusting up to 35kts.

Sail plan in such conditions needs to be quite finely tuned. Cloudy is most stable going downwind in a big sea when she is fully powered up and thundering along, close to matching the speed of the waves. But I don’t want her overpowered in the gusts, or she can corkscrew on a wave and dip the boom. On the other hand, if we reef-down too conservatively, she will roll like a dog when under powered in the wind lulls. Hence I have to carefully chose the middle ground. And I say carefully, because in 30kts downwind it’s not possible to further reef the main because the pressure on the sail is too much for the hydraulic furler to roll it in. And there is no way I want to turn the boat around into the wind and waves just to reef more. So the strategy is to be conservative on the mainsail (deeply reefed) and use the foresail(s) reefing to adjust power.

Needless to say, in these conditions Oana takes her pills and holds tight fighting seasickness. But there is nothing I can do. I did offer a bus ride to Cartagena, but seeing how the buses drive here, I think Cloudy Bay may actually be a more palatable motion!
For the first 35nm we are crossing the bay that lies between Santa Marta and Barranquilla. As the mountains fade behind us, the high-rise buildings of Barranquilla appear over the horizon in front.

Once into open clean water I start to run the watermaker, but not for long. Barranquilla is on the mouth of a huge river that stretches way into Colombia’s interior, bringing with it all sorts of debris and mud. The chart even has a warning to watch out for floating trees! 15 minutes into making water we spot a drastic water colour change ahead. And we sail across the sharp line from the wonder clear blue water into caramel-brown just as I manage to stop the watermaker. Somehow, sailing in brown is visually unpleasant compared to the blue. But the sea state also become different. As we pass over the river delta shallows the sea become very chaotic and quite unpleasant. So I divert our course to be further offshore. 1 hour later, away from the river mouth, things get back to normal.

At 4:30pm we make our turn into Puerto Valero and motor into the 25kt breeze. After keeping salt off the decks all day, we are “treated” to salt spray all over the boat for the 3 miles to the anchorage 🙁 By sunset we are nicely anchored in the lee of the marina with a sunken catamaran (literally!) as our only neighbor.

Usually when cruising we are mostly on anchor when not sailing. But this is the first night on anchor this season. No air conditioning, but there is a breeze which pleasantly blows through the boat. Warm and humid, but still OK for sleeping.