11:21N 74:36W

 

After 10 wonderful days in Santa Marta, Colombia, we left this morning bound for the island of Providencia off the coast of Nicaragua.  It’s 400 odd miles so we’ll be at sea for three or four days.....so some emails would be nice!!   As we’ve said before, opening our emails is the highlight of our days at sea.

 

We loved Santa Marta and were reluctant to leave but need to get closer to our hurricane season bolthole up the Rio Dulce in Guatemala....and that’s still a long way away.  It was very sad waving goodbye to fellow Kiwis Mark and Amanda from Balvenie – our sailing buddies for the past six weeks from Grenada, through the Venezuelan Islands, the ABCs to Colombia.  We’ve seen some magical places together and shared a few idyllic anchorages.  They plan to head to the beautiful San Blas islands and Panama to enjoy some more exploring before also heading up to Guatemala.  We’ve never done the buddy boat thing for longer than a day or two as we’re usually pretty happy on our own, but it’s been great doing these southern Caribbean seas in company with another boat.  The skippers have certainly enjoyed the “racing”.....and no doubt there will be more of that to come when we meet up again!

 

Mark and Amanda have been great company and we’ve shared many coffees, beers, picnic lunches, dinners, rums, dodgy buses and taxis, wines as well as stunning anchorages.  I wasn’t going to mention card games but for the record yes we did play a few rounds in Santa Marta and the girls almost fell from grace, losing the first round (very graciously of course) before coming back to claim their rightful place in the lead in the second.  The huge worry is that Mark’s game has improved out of sight......and combined with killer hands, he was hard to peg back.

Sailing conditions today are pretty good – 20 knots of wind just aft of the beam and a 2m swell.  The only thing making life a little unpleasant is the wind is a little erratic at times – but as we head further out to sea hopefully it will steady.