During the morning net I made my request for charts and was informed that the Club Nautica marina office had some. Hoping they might be around I dinghied over as soon as the net closed. Unfortunately, noone who could help me was present so I returned to Dignity and made another general request. This time, MariaXXXXX (fix later) responded. They very kindly loaned us their charts and also explained some of their notes on the charts and gave us a few options.
We were now able to up anchor and leave. It was very quickly apparent we weren’t motoring as fast as we normally do. Cartagena is notorious for bottom growth so I assumed it was that. We were making just over 5 knots and the wind was about 2 so we motored all the way. As soon as the waters turned a decent colour we turned on the water maker as we were getting pretty low. We had to turn it off again as we passed Boca Chica (the commercial entrance to Cartagena). In our second patch of clear water we were greeted by a pod of dolphins.
On the way down to the Rosarios we debated our choices and opted to head for Cienaga de Cholon, a sleepy lagoon, nearby. It’s a popular (amongst cruisers) lagoon away from Cartagena with little going on. The land around is privately owned by wealthy Colombians (which of course makes one wonder). There is a bar by the entrance where you can sit in the water and have drinks but we hear it is quite expensive. It looks cool though.
The grapevine had it that the entrance to this lagoon is hazardous and difficult and an effective local called Sonny would happily dinghy out and show us through the buoys. From my conversation earlier and from the charts I had I felt confident we could make it through the channel without such assistance. Another boat with tired crew, having crossed from the San Blas, was about a mile ahead of us. They were getting assistance from Sonny so I watched their course through the binoculars for extra information. Sonny did speak to us but I kindly declined his offer as I had good info. We made it through without any issue.
We soon learned their was a fleet of seven boats arriving from San Blas and Sonny was busy along with another cruiser helping them all navigate the reefs around the entrance. Furthermore, one boat had rescued a British couple whose boat had sank. They also had been coming over from the San Blas but I’m not sure if they were part of the same flotilla. My guess is they weren’t as it tends to be the Americans who like to travel in groups with the Commonwealth countries taking the opposite view.
Soon after arriving in this delightful anchorage I jumped into the water to examine the underside. My first surprise was the warmth of the water. It is 97 degrees fahrenheit, a shade less than body temperature. I soon found the cause of our loss of speed. The props and shafts were coated in small barnacles about 3mm deep. Not a section of metal was visible. Interestingly, most of the shells were empty, the creatures no doubt having been wrenched from their shells by the motion through the water.
I donned BCD, tank, mask and knife and went back below to scrape off all the shells. It took a good deal of time and in the body temp water I felt quite hot with the effort. Thinking ahead, this presents us with a dilemma. We will be back in Cartagena for a week or so soon and will attract more growth. The general weather conditions will require us to motor some to get to Panama so we want to have clean props. However, the last thing I want to do is go into the water in Cartagena. I may have to do that but an alternative would be to find a small bay to the north of Cartagena and stop there to clean them off before continuing to Panama.
We spent the afternoon reading and relaxing in the lovely cool breeze. It’s been a very pleasant evening away from the city. Our current thinking is we’ll head out to the south side of the Rosarios later this morning to a place where we were shown we could tie to a strong buoy for the evening and have a good dive.
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