Joy of Shamrock Quay

Shortly before the mayhem of Carnival started we managed to explore the island further with Ted and Barbara from Rosa dos Ventos.  With so much rain over the last couple of weeks the island is now flourishing and previously bare trees are now covered in lush leaves.

This has to be the most ‘Magnificent’ Frigate Bird bus stop in the world!

As we had transport, we took the opportunity in the evening to go out to dinner at ‘Martin’s Place’ at Freshwater Bay.  The food was excellent, Jez had been yearning for a beef steak and wasn’t disappointed.  I had skewered rock fish cooked in curried butter which was divine.  We met a lovely local couple, Paul and Becky, on the table next to us who were out to dinner with their son Joshua to celebrate Paul’s Birthday.  Becky is from Providencia and Paul grew up in Bogota, Colombia and they have now settled back on the island.  They were an interesting couple, passionate about growing their own produce and cooking with traditional methods. Becky has a relative with a plot of land high in the hills where they grow produce including pineapples, avocado and yam.  It’s a 1.8km steep hike for them but they still manage to haul their tools and produce to and fro.

Carnival week on the small island of Providencia attracted a rally of Colombian sailboats arriving into the anchorage on a wet but calm morning.  Several boats decided not to use the buoyed entrance channel, and one hit the small patch of reef lurking behind us and got stuck on it, eventually managing to reverse off it after several attempts.  The dozen or so boats, loaded with crew, nestled among us cruisers and dropped anchor without making sure it had dug in.   It was inevitable therefore when the wind picked up in the afternoon that one by one, five started dragging. The most astonishing was the boat anchored ahead of us, the one remaining crew member left on board hadn’t noticed he was dragging because he was too busy watching another boat with his binoculars! No problem, we thought, as we could see the rest of the crew now pulling up to the stern in their dinghy, but they all clambered on board and sat down, also not realising that they were now 50 metres from where they had anchored, side on to the wind and travelling at 2 knots through the anchorage!  So we shouted to get their attention, but it still took a few moments for the penny to drop and the crew to jump into action.   It was nerve wracking entertainment for us live-aboards as the light started to fade and a windy night followed.

Music boomed out from enormous speakers set up on a stage at the dock most nights, vibrating the rigging more than the 20+ knot winds and drowning out the rumbling thunder. One afternoon the Carnival came out to us as the beauty queens were treated to a boat parade chaperoned by some very smart Colombian cadets.  Many local boats joined them for a whiz around the bay and a water throwing competition, we had wondered what they had been doing earlier filling up plastic bags with sea water.

Paul, Becky and Joshua joined the parade in ‘Moon Shadow’

Last day of Carnival coincided with Jez’s birthday, a group of us took our dinghies to South West beach, about 3 miles around the coast but inside the outer reef, to a beach party which included horse racing.  As we arrived there was a large pirogue fishing boat roaring around the bay close to the beach. The driver turned sharply showing off, hit his own wake and was catapulted like a rag doll out of the boat into the water. It was a few seconds before he appeared at the surface rather dazed and was hauled back in by his co-pilot. No doubt is was more than just his ego that was bruised, it looked as though he hit the centre console as he went overboard.  On the beach there were many vendors selling traditional foods, cooked in huge pots over wood fires, and a great atmosphere with lots of people and of course music. There were three horse races, with just two horses in each,  thundering along the beach in amongst the brave spectators.  Then came the coconut tree climb, two fearless contenders raced up the trees bare-footed, the winner reaching the top before the other had got half way. Someone had been practicing.   We waited a long time for the greasy pig race before giving up (where eager catchers run around trying to catch a pre-greased pig I think) as unfortunately shade was difficult to find with the volume of people there and Jez had not applied sun cream and was looking rather red. So Monsieur le Tomate and I decided to head back alongside Ted and Barbara.  As we had hauled the dinghies up on to the beach to avoid the horse race, we were helped back into the water by some rather over enthusiastic helpers and as we started to float, more and more wet kids pulled themselves up into the dinghy to dive off before climbing back in again for another go. Jez waded us into deeper water in the hope that it would make it more difficult for them to climb back in, at one point we must have had a dozen soggy cling-ons, and I pushed the last one off over the side.  Now we had a dinghy full of sand and sea, but as I glanced back at the shore I could see Ted and Barbara getting the same attention as they rowed out into deeper water.

Providencia’s champion jockey wins bareback against his saddled rival

Pre-climb warm-up

The winner, just visible, reaches the top and sends down a coconut!

Little helpers!

The last event of Carnival was being held at the stadium on the other side of the bay, but with a few hours of beauty queen admiring, judging and crowning before the concert we opted instead for a delicious pizza in town with Ted and Barbara and so ended the day content with full tums. Now the town has returned to peace and quiet and the anchorage is once  again calm.

We had an interesting discovery this week in one of our sea water strainers in the engine room, a tiny fairy basslet fish was tricky to remove without harm but our soup ladle came up trumps and he was safely returned to the sea.

Colin soon developed into a tropical storm as it left Mexico and accelerated towards Florida with 50mph winds causing widespread flooding.  There seems to be a general trend developing over the western Caribbean this month as tropical waves sweep across on their way to the pacific all the way from Africa, bringing rain and quite amazing lightning and thunder. Our two anchors have worked very well and have both buried themselves deep into the sand and Joy hasn’t moved at all.

We spent last Sunday morning hiking over the island of Santa Catalina with Ted and Barbara from ‘Rosa dos Ventos’. We first met them in Cienfuegos, Cuba and crossed paths again in Grand Cayman, so it was a lovely surprise when they sailed into Providencia a couple of weeks after us. They knew the location of a derelict property on the other side of the island that had belonged to the notorious Colombian drug lord, Pablo Escobar, having already hiked there the week before, and were happy to guide us there through a network of small tracks, some quite overgrown but passable.

Escobar was thought to be the richest criminal in history with a net worth of $30 billion by the early 1990’s, supplying an estimated 80% of the cocaine smuggled into the USA. His cartel reportedly had so much cash in storage, that they spent $1000 a week in rubber bands to wrap the cash and had to write off 10% per year because of ‘spoilage’ due to rat damage!  He eventually died in a shootout in 1993 whilst on the run, having escaped from prison in Colombia.

The main access to the house was by boat from a beach either side of the hill

A long network of steps wind their way up the hill to the house at the top.

The remains of the swimming pool make a great habitat for vocal frogs and beautiful pink dragonflies.

A dip in the pool…

Mango Trees are numerous on the trails

It was a beautiful walk through the woods, up and down hills and across beaches although we did get lost a few times as there are so many tracks leading off into the undergrowth. On the way back we collected a big bag of mangoes each before heading into town for lunch.

Today we caught a taxi with Ted and Barbara to South West Bay for a wonderful fish platter lunch on the beach and as luck would have it the weekly horse race went ahead. Not quite Ascot but enjoyable all the same, with just two horses and one race you could easily have blinked and missed it.

The jockey uses a twiggy branch as a whip!

The winner celebrates

And finally Bob.  We first met Bob hanging around outside the supermarket, it seems to be his patch.  Despite being rather weak legged and half blind due to a very bad case of green gunky conjunctivitis, he is a very placid and friendly old boy who responds so well to some attention.

I do my best to visit Bob daily to give him a bonio (or two) and his face lights up when he sees me which usually isn’t until I am quite close due to his eyesight.  Although he did spot me before I saw him when we were walking to Mr Bush’s office the other day (he’s the maritime agent who deals with clearance into the country, we have been here a month and handed over $180 but still not received our tourist visas) and although he isn’t usually too steady on his legs he ran down the road after me with a very waggy tail.  The trouble is, he wants affection too and likes to rub his head up against me and it is difficult to avoid getting covered in green gunk.  I think I am going to have to bathe his poor eyes!

And this afternoon I finally managed to finish making my new Royal Ensign.

Here on the small island of Providencia in the Western Caribbean we are just still in the ‘hurricane zone’, so a close watch as always is on the weather as the season started officially on 1st June and runs until 30th November.  Luckily we live in an age of ever improving technology and the tools for forecasting available to us on the internet are numerous.  Our daily routine of weather forecasting involves looking at satellite images, synoptic charts and the tropical discussion available on the National Hurricane Centre website. Dr. Jeff Masters from Weather Underground also publishes an excellent blog which provides a useful insight and opinion on weather systems in play.

This last week for us has been full of lightening and thunder, we have been on the edge of a huge wave of convection streaming up from Cartagena on the coast of Colombia heading West North West towards the Gulf of Mexico.  The quiet and shallow anchorage here has seen an influx of boats arriving, from being only one of two here we are now one of fourteen. We have had a few squalls which have made some boats drag, the sea bed is very soft sand with weed over grey mud and some anchors have struggled to get a good bite.  Two days ago a similar but much less dramatic thing happened to us, after three weeks of being pretty well embedded into the soft sand our anchor dragged just a couple of metres when the wind gusted all morning from 8 to 30 knots from different directions.  Combined with a low tide giving us just 20 centimetres under the keel we decided to search for slightly deeper water and after surveying the anchorage with a lead-line and snorkel (as our depth sounder decided to stop working when we first arrived from Grand Cayman) we found an extra foot or so of water between us and the reef behind. We did however find that when we went to move, the anchor had worked its way through the sand into the mud and was solidly dug in but decided to move anyway for peace of mind. After re-setting our CQR anchor Jez connected the kedge anchor to it in tandem so we now have two anchors set, one in front of the other. It’s a technique we haven’t tried before so a good opportunity to see how it performs in the variable gusty winds.

The heavy rain with thunder and lightening moves up from the Colombian coast to Mexico. We are located at the blue dot on the edge of the weather system.

Today the storm passed into an area of low pressure off the Yucatan peninsular and our weather improves.

The National Hurricane Centre give the storm a 90% chance of forming into a Tropical Cyclone (to be called Colin) over the next two days as it heads across the Gulf of Mexico to Florida.

With a brighter sky over Providencia it allowed a walk ashore to stretch our legs, most cruisers here haven’t strayed too far from their boats for a few days because of the poor holding. The island of Santa Catalina has some great trails, we walked to Morgans Head which is a huge rock protruding from the sea close to the shore on the west of the island. It is named after the infamous pirate Henry Morgan who was said to have used the island to launch attacks on Spanish boats laden with treasure in the mid 1600’s. It was a beautiful walk through the shading trees along the edge of the coast with stunning views and a variety of small birds and lizards, no other treasures found unfortunately.

Like many other trees here, this coconut palm has an orchid growing on its trunk.

I think this tiny bird is a Yellow-Rumped Warbler, he flitted from tree to tree in full chorus.

Morgans Head overlooking the buoyed channel to Providencia

The local pooch population are very friendly and often meet us at the dinghy dock before accompanying us on our walks.

The rainy days were still productive ones though as I repaired the main sail cover which had ripped and made a rain cover for our saloon hatch so that we can still have airflow through the boat when its raining. But now I can continue refreshing the varnish with a couple of new coats and the rope lockers are having a fresh coat of paint too.

We left Grand Cayman with a great forecast for our 3 day sail to the small island of Providencia, although 120 miles off the coast of Nicaragua it actually belongs to Colombia. As the forecast was good for the following 5 days we decided to add a few miles to the passage and passed to the east of the ‘Nicaraguan Rise’ a group of shoals stretching 200 miles off the Nicaraguan coast. Lots of commercial vessels use the same passage and so we had company most of the way, although mainly out of sight our AIS system can detect and identify them from 25+ miles away.  As darkness fell on day three we knew we were going to arrive in the early hours, but had read that there is a buoyed channel in to the bay which should be lit.  The navionics charts are reported to be 200 metres out in this area so we were apprehensive approaching the reef strewn island in the dark.  The Colombian government have issued a very good guide for cruisers which includes some charts, so after studying their chart we decided to attempt it.  The channel was indeed lit, although the light sequences were different to the chart, but we made it in and wearily anchored just inside the last channel marker and went to bed at 4.30am after a refreshing beer.

The island is quite mountainous in the centre, with most of the 5,000 residents living around the coast at the base of the hills.  To the north of the island is another small island called Santa Catalina, joined to Providencia by just a foot-bridge.  Santa Catalina has no roads or cars, just a paved walkway dotted with a few houses along its southern coast and a trail around the remainder.

The small but busy town of Santa Isabel is the main hub of Providencia with several small supermarkets and an equal amount of hardware stores and the cost of living is low in comparison to many other Caribbean islands.  We get about 4,400 Colombian pesos to the British pound, making a case of beer just £11 in comparison to £38 in Grand Cayman!

A quiet Sunday afternoon in town, this street is usually packed with motorcycles

The main mode of transport on the island is two-wheels, motorbikes and mopeds zoom around often with the whole family aboard. It seems strange to see small babies and toddlers perched on the fuel tank or sandwiched between two pillion passengers along with shopping.  We chose to hire a Kawasaki mule, a four-wheeled vehicle with no doors or windscreen, mainly because we had dive tanks and fuel to refill for the outboard and neither are within walking distance.  It takes only about half an hour to circumnavigate the island so we had plenty of time to explore in just one day.

Handsome fella and his follower

This is one of the many artistic bus stops on the Island

The beach at South West Bay is beautiful and quiet with a few horses grazing in the undergrowth and three or four restaurants where you can dine with your toes in the sand.  We chose Divino Nino as this place had been recommended by Mr Bush the maritime agent on the island.  After refilling tanks and fuel we had got low on cash, and asked the owner of the restaurant if they accept cards.  Unfortunately they don’t, but he said we could eat and come back another time to pay!  What amazing trust and generosity from these wonderful Providencian people.  We stayed and had the seafood platter for two, a huge dish presented with two whole fish, half a lobster, conch, squid and shrimp with rice and fried plantain.  It was all absolutely delicious and far more than we could eat between us, all for 54,000 pesos which is just over £12!  Needless to say we went straight to Santa Isabel to get some more cash and returned within the hour to pay our bill.

Artistic flower baskets made from old car tyres