17 December 2009 D Day

Departure day for Colombia. The 21st country on our travels but before we could leave at midnight we had jobs to do. First was to lower the wind generator from the mizzen mast , repair and refit and second was to clean the hull of the algae and barnacles we'd picked up in our 4 week stopover in Spanish Water.
To clean the hull David donned his dive gear and went underneath to scrape the keel, propeller and rudder with a wallpaper stripper. I was on waterline detail which ca be done on snorkel. We have an ingenious way adding a hand hold to the flat fibreglass surface, a glazier's suction handle. Clip that on and you can scrub away without pushing yourself away from the hull in the process. I had a scraper and a pan scrub pad tied on a lien around my waist and worked around flipping off tenacious barnacles and grippy fronds of algae. The worst part of the job isn't apparent until you step out of the water. In the process of dislodging the fauna and flora from the hull, the fauna in the form of larvae, or iddy biddies, find a new home in the seams, zips and velcro of your wetsuit and dive kit. More scrubbing and wash down to remove them, though we leave the kit to dry in the sun and they can be brushed off.
Our travel companions, Inspiration lady and Anthem came over for a planning and tactics and meeting before dinner and we opted to stay with the original plan of a midnight departure which ought to out us into Cartagena around midday on Monday, 3 ½ days sailing. We managed a couple of hours sleep and got up at 11pm to do the final prep and anchor up at 23.59. Mariners think it is unlucky to begin a passage on a Friday and while I'm not suspicious, anything that could help was good, and 23.59 was Thursday.