Islas Rosarios

Scott-Free’s blog
Steve & Chris
Sun 9 Dec 2012 21:57

10:10.878N 75:44.466W

Sunday 9th December 2012

Distance run: 21 nmiles

Anchor up at 0800 this morning. Only a short trip to Isla Grande in the
Rosario archipeligo just south of Cartagena, but we wanted to make ourselves
scarce in case we were spotted and expected to check in. The amusing thing
was, as we were sneaking towards the Boca Chica channel the radio burst into
life, " Scott-Free, Scott-Free, this is Cartagena Port Control". SHIT!!
How the hell did they know.....oh, yes....the AIS is switched on to
transmit! Der! Anyway, it was no big deal, they jut wanted to know who we
were and where we were going, thanked us for the information and wished us a
good journey. They didn't even call up Sheer Tenacity who do not transmit
AIS but could be seen just as easily as us from the control tower at the
entrance.

Anyway, excitement over, we joined a veritable armada of boats heading in
the same direction. It seems that the Rosarios are the weekend retreat of
the Cartageneros, and today loads of them were getting away from it all.
With this in mind and with little wind, we decided to anchor in the North
anchorage of Isla Grande. This appeared to be a challenging reef entry, but
once we were close in we could see the posts marking the channel and crept
in. Some local chaps in a little boat were 'helping' by pointing towards
the shallow patch as a good place to anchor! It was a very narrow
anchorage, and when the wind picked up and went round to the North later in
the afternoon, there was not much space between our stern and the shore. On
a lee shore like this we would normally leave, but it would be impossible to
see the reefs now, so we had to ride it out.

Rod did a quick weather GRIB and it looked like we had about 6 hours of
northerly wind before it would die away again. Not much sleep tonight then,
as we would have to take turns on anchor watch.