Location: Providencia, Columbia
Position: W13 22.785 N081 22.398
Hello all. We had a good passage and are now anchored in Providencia, a Columbian island in the middle of the western Caribbean, actually nowhere near Columbia.
We set off from Guanaja, Honduras with light winds and motored with the main sail up for almost 100 miles. This was the trickiest part of the trip, getting around Cabo Gracias a Dios (Cape Thanks be to God) named by Christopher Columbus after it took him 30 days to get around it. The prevailing winds and current are on the nose from the East so you have to basically wait until there's a light wind and then make a beeline to get around before the wind picks back up again. Thank goodness for today's modern diesel auxiliary engines - we bet Columbus would have loved to have one <g>.
We were lucky enough to have a light north westerly breeze and were able to motor-sail to make the turn to SE by the Vivorillo Cays. Then the light wind turned north, further assisting us in getting around the Cape, another 100 mile leg.
We had glorious weather and decided to get out a brand new fishing lure as we hadn't had any luck with our old one for over a year. 20 minutes after we put it out Julie came up from down below and said 'What's that?" We looked back and thought something was caught on the line. As we pulled it in we realized what we were seeing was a huge open fishes mouth with our new lure wedged sideways inside it. Sheesh! Wish we'd taken a picture of that!
Immediately we were busy clearing out the cockpit, getting the big gloves, the gaff, and the 'fish vodka'. As we pulled it in close enough to identify, we had to scurry below to get the fish book, we couldn't tell if it was a king mackerel or a wahoo. Mark did his usual great job of gaffing and landing the monster, this time without smearing blood all over the side of the boat, much to Julie's joy. Turns out we had a 45" Wahoo - woohoo! Now for the hard part. We wrestled him into the cockpit where Julie spent some quality time filleting and skinning it. She stripped down to her underwear, not wanting all that extra stinky washing to do, and set about it. An hour and a half later we had 4 huge ziploc bags full of boneless, skinless fillets, a scrubbed and sparkly cockpit, and Julie back in her clothes now that the excitement was over. No more fishing for us this trip since we have no more room in the fridge.
The rest of this 2nd day and night was spent crossing the shallower banks. Some of the 5 other boats we were traveling with also caught fish so we were all happy. We had got too far apart to chat on the VHF radio so we set up an hourly schedule to check in on the SSB and make sure everyone was OK. Towards morning on that 2nd night we started seeing a lot of blips on our radar but no lights. We were starting to get close to the deep ocean water again and decided they must be fishing boats. As daylight came we could see 10 or so boats all within 6-8 miles. This must be a great spot for fishing. These boats probably come from Honduras and Nicaragua, both about 90 miles away, to fish these abundant waters.
After we got into the deep water again we headed SSE for a 3 day run down to Panama. The wind was almost dead behind us and it was a pretty rolly ride. We did our usual morning routine listening to the weather and checked into the Caribbean Nets on the SSB. We called into our weather guru, Chris Parker, to get an update on our weather for the trip down to the San Blas. The first 2 days were going to be great but the last day the wind was shifting to dead behind and there would be numerous squalls, 35 knot gusty winds and a lot of rain. We really wanted to get down to Panama for Christmas but we also really didn't fancy getting all that bad weather on our last day after being at sea for 4 long days. We tossed it around, anguished, pondered and made the decision to head to Providencia.
We'd heard wonderful things about this island and were planning to visit it on our way back north, whenever that may be. Well, if we're going to get stuck somewhere for Christmas this seems a good place. As a bonus, the other five boats we set off with were all planning on stopping here so.....
We had a problem, however. We were going to arrive after dark into an unknown anchorage, no sailor's choice. We chatted with a few people on the SSB net and got waypoints from some friends for getting in. Everyone we spoke with told us it's a nice, wide, easy entry. We were able to get accurate, up-to-date waypoints for getting in, the weather was benign, and the moon was full, so we decided to take the chance and go for it rather than dawdle around overnight and wait to go in during daylight. So that's what we did!! We had plenty of light and dropped the anchor in a spot, for which a friend had sent us the position, at about 10pm. Then we got the first good night's sleep we'd had in three days <yawn>.
This morning we awoke to a drizzle and pretty gusty wind so we were glad we were already in and safe. The harbour is surrounded by mountains and what looks like a quaint little town. We're looking forward to going ashore, checking in, and going exploring. That is, after we get the boat in order and eat a full English breakfast.
Then it's wahoo for lunch and wahoo for dinner for us and all our friends in the anchorage. We wish we could serve up some of Julie's famous "Traditional Olde English Christmas Grilled Wahoo" with all of you too!
Happy Holidays, best wishes, and lots of love from The Rachels,
