Yesterday we started out at dawn from the tiny island “Monjes del Sur” and managed the 85 sea miles around the northern cape of Colombia in only 12 hours. Either the cape is better than its reputation or our timing was perfect–we had a wonderful sailing day with 20 to 25 knots of wind and moderate waves (depending on the ground between dark blue and light pastel turquoise). We stayed close to the Colombian coast and were surprised how dry the landscape is. Dark grey mountains behind light brown cliffs, no trace of plants.
As we were approaching Cabo de Vela and the anchoring site right behind it in the evening, there was a sudden jerk on the trolling lure (our third try). What we thought was a “little fish” turned out to be a 40 cm yellow fin tuna–we couldn’t have picked a more perfect catch on the fish market… Leeloo had been sleeping under deck but a 6th sense told her that something interesting was going on and she turned up in the cockpit as soon as we had the fish on deck. Loudly meowing she claimed and got the first piece right then and a huge portion later on 
After rounding Cabo de Vela we dropped the anchor in the wide bay and I started cutting out fillets and we had sushi as a starter 
. Interesting was the sudden change in air temperature when rounding this cape. While the wind was chilly all the way from the Monjes, it suddenly felt like coming from an oven. After this strenuous day we fell into the berth and slept for 12 hours.
During breakfast Pitufa suddenly started pitching violently in the waves–the wind had shifted from East to Southeast, freshened to 30 knots and over the several miles wide bay immediately a high fetch built up. 10 minutes later the situation was already so threatening that we decided to move to another spot further in. I jumped to the wheel, Christian ran to the anchor, started the windlass–nothing. The winch made no move, but there was no time to find the reason for the failure. Christian winched up the anchor manually–not funny in these conditions and also dangerous for the fingers… Now we anchor one and a half miles closer to shore and Christian has just found the problem of our windlass and fixed it. We are watching the kite surfers close to the beach who clearly enjoy the strong blow more than we do and are waiting for the next weather window to sail down to Cartagena.
