Dear Everyone,
With no newsletter since April, you may well be wondering what has happened to us - if, that is, you haven’t forgotten about us altogether. As you can see, we are still on the Atlantic side of the Panama Canal, though we are planning to be on the other side by the end of the year.
We sent our last newsetter from Grand Cayman, an island we had no particular intention of visiting, but which happened to be a convenient stop on the way from Cuba to our next planned destination of Providencia Island. Several other cruising people had encouraged us to ignore the reports of unfriendly officials, an uncomfortable anchorage and sky-high prices, and we were very glad that we did. Our check-in with Immigration and Customs could not have been more welcoming, and the free moorings in Georgetown harbour gave us easy access to the town and the daily spectacle of up to 5 huge cruise ships ferrying their passengers ashore to raid the duty-free (though not inexpensive) shops. We did discover later on, when the wind started blowing from a more northerly direction, why the harbour has its ‘rolly’ reputation, and it was nice to be able to move round to anchor in Governor’s Harbour, off North Sound, where the only waves were those created by the marina-based sport fishing boats taking part in an annual fishing competition. North Sound also offers a unique attraction in the shape of ‘Stingray City’. Rather unfairly named, and in reality a quite remote and very shallow sandbar close to the outer reef, Stingray City is an area where the Cayman fishing boats used to anchor to clean their catch - and the unwanted bits of fish that went overboard attracted the local stingrays which came along for the free meal. The idea was soon born that this would be a good tourist attraction, and nowadays Stingray City is visited daily by many tour-boats. During their half-hour stop, the tourists jump into the waist-deep water and are supplied with handfuls of squid to feed the stingrays, dozens of which obligingly flock to the sandbar to hoover up all that is on offer. The very unpleasant sting which can be seen about a third of the way up the tail of a stingray is only brought into action if the fish is frightened , and because the Cayman stingrays have become so used to people, they are unafraid, and generally not dangerous (unless you inadvertantly step on one!). In fact, they appear to welcome human contact, and allow themselves to be touched and stroked and even picked up. We did the trip twice, first with a tour group and later when we anchored overnight a short distance from the sandbar. At 0700, before the tour-boats started to arrive, we had the whole place to ourselves, and as we dinghied across to the sandbar, we were accompanied by squadrons of stingrays ‘flying’ through the water like something out of Star Wars. Being in the water with 40 or 50 of them, some with wingspans of nearly 2 metres, was an experience which alone made the diversion to Grand Cayman worthwhile. And there were plenty of other things to make Grand Cayman a good stopover - we ended up spending nearly a month there.
Next stop was Providencia Island, a tiny Colombian-owned island about 150 miles off the coast of Nicaragua (though still 400 from the Colombian mainland). We tried to time our departure to coincide with a good weather forecast (ideally wind blowing from the east at around 15-20 knots), thought we had done so, but then found that we’d set off into an almost unprecedented three days of nearly total calm! This meant motoring the whole 380 miles - much better than bashing into big seas, but a little disappointing not to be able to sail at least some of the way. En route we were joined by four swallows looking for a place to spend the night. One of them found a perch on top of one of the lights in the cabin (after trying and rejecting both our heads in turn!). The other three settled in various corners in the cockpit where we had to take care neither to disturb nor sit on them during our night watches. Next morning two of them flew off to rejoin their migration path, but sadly the other two, exhausted after the previous day’s exertions, couldn’t summon the energy to fly away and died soon afterwards.
The approach to Providencia with its craggy, mountainous outline, is very dramatic - and the harbour provides a wonderfully calm, protected and very picturesque anchorage. The one road follows the coast, and a leisurely circuit of the island took us about two and a half hours on bicycles. Although there is plenty of offlying reef which provides excellent snorkelling, we were a bit disappointed with the beaches, which didn’t have the white sand and crystal clear water which had been such a feature of the islands off Cuba’s south coast. We also found the pace of life for the 5000 or so inhabitants so slow as to be almost stationary, and we were ready to move on after eight days. The trip to San Andres, another Colombian island 70 miles to the south, provided us with our first whale sighting - a huge grey shape, between 7 and 10 metres long, lazily making its way in the opposite direction. We both watched spellbound, wanting it to come a little closer, but at the same time glad that it wasn’t too close for comfort. San Andres turned out to be very friendly and lively, and we met a delightful Colombian couple who invited us to their home, took us snorkelling and then arranged windsurfing lessons for Barbara. Our image of crime-ridden, gun-toting, drug-running Colombia took a bit of a knock when they told us that they never lock their front door, nor take the keys out of their car! In fact, both Providencia and San Andres felt as safe as anywhere we have been. Both had the added advantage of being English-speaking - a result of past associations with pirates, slaves and missionaries!
We had a deadline to be back in the UK by the beginning of July, for son Peter’s graduation at Aberdeen University, and with some minor work to be done to the keel (a result of its encounter with a reef in Cuba), we wanted to leave Island Way on dry land while we were away. The only place in the southwest Caribbean where this could safely be achieved was Cartagena (in any case a city we very much wanted to visit, having had nothing but good recommendations from all who have been before). This time, the required weather window was much harder to find, since the June winds tend to blow quite strongly from the direction of the Colombian mainland straight towards San Andres. We had one false start, when we thought there was enough northerly component in the wind to be able to make reasonable progress in the required direction. The wind must have seen us coming - as soon as we had left the anchorage, it immediately shifted to ‘on the nose’ and strengthened, destroying any hope of heading straight for Cartagena. So back we went, for an extra (very enjoyable) week in San Andres. When we did finally set off, we almost had a repeat of our previous 380-mile passage - practically no wind, except on the second day, when we had an excellent sail. We did, however, have to keep a close eye on the radar, which helped us to dodge a series of massive thunderclouds heading from east to west - one particularly memorable weather system stretched for fifteen miles, a solid black curtain generating torrential rain and very big winds (judging from the size of the swell it was creating) while we motorsailed in the dry, three miles to the south of it in just 8 knots of wind.
We spent a busy few days in Cartagena, getting the boat ready to lift out and then, after the haul-out, sorting ourselves out for the trip home. Not much time for sightseeing, but we found a bit of time to wander round the old walled city and to eat in some of the excellent (and very cheap) restaurants, of which there are many. The flight home took us via Bogota, where we spent an exhausting day seeing as much as we could, including the very impressive Gold Museum with its wonderful displays of pre-Colombian treasures.
Our six weeks in the UK flashed past far too quickly, with visits to family and friends as well as work (mainly painting) which needed to be done to the house and garage at Port Solent. We returned to Cartagena on 1 August with stops on the way in Maine (four wonderfully relaxing days with friends) and Miami (two very hectic days of shopping and tracking down boat parts).
Since our return, we have been busy with a seemingly ever-increasing list of jobs to do on the boat - a lot of cleaning and varnishing, but some other improvements too, including adding more insulation and fitting a divider into the fridge, so that we now have a really cold freezer area and a much less cold chiller space and hopefully a more power-efficient unit than before. We have spent more time exploring Cartagena, which certainly lives up to its reputation - a beautiful old Spanish-style city with delightful narrow streets and overhanging balconies full of flowers. We have also discovered the secret of the low restaurant prices here - fillet steak in the shops sells for about £1.60 ($2.25) per lb, and other fresh local food is similarly inexpensive. As usual, we have been eating very well!! All in all we shall be sorry to leave. However, with the San Blas Islands of Panama beckoning, we have set Wednesday 5 September as our planned departure date. We hope to spend six to eight weeks in the San Blas Islands and will then head for Colon, at the entrance to the Panama Canal. At the moment, the plan is to stop at the little marina at Pedro Miguel, towards the southern end of the canal just before the descending flight of locks which leads into the Pacific. From there we hope to do some travelling in Panama and Costa Rica before completing the canal transit and heading north towards Mexico.
More news, hopefully, from Panama. Until then, love and best wishes from us both. Do write and tell us your news - we hope to be able to
pick up e-mails at the main settlements in the San Blas area.
John and Barbara