Boxing Day

Not everything is perfect about spending Christmas in Cartagena. Our first niggle is the number of speed boats which race through the anchorage. There may be a defined channel between us and the naval ships and the anchorage is marked with yellow buoys, but the shortest route is the best for these captains. And the closer they can get to us the better for them. Or so it seems. We get bottom slapped with the wash. Rolled with the wake and deafened by the sound systems.

Holidays mean more tourists, more boats, sunset tours and all night parties.

After our busy day yesterday we took a more relaxed approach today. Lunch at the marina and a picnic supper on board in the evening.

The second niggle is we know from experience the water is a soup of nastiness which leads to rapid growth of barnacles on the hull. It is the main reason why we are spending the miimum amount of time is Cartagena. Last visit our antifoul was not so new. We stayed almost three weeks and when we came to leave there was so much growth on the hull we couldn't go faster than three knots. Today with our antifoul only two months old we weren't going to stay and to have it compromised.

(On 2 January David dived under the boat and spent an hour and a half removing juvenile barnacles from prop and hull.)