Albuquerque Cays, Colombia

Saturday, April 2, 2016

012-11.340 N
081-51.840 W

Ahoy from the crew of the BlueJacket in the beautiful Albuquerque cays of Colombia!

I'm very happy to report that we made it out of Shelter Bay marina in Panama and are now located about 210 nm NW of the marina. It took about 2 weeks to get the boat ready and then we had to wait for a weather window to get here. This was also compounded by the Easter weekend holiday, which shuts everything down starting the Friday before, so getting clearance papers was problematic. Finally on Wednesday, March 30th, we escaped the marina and headed for the Albuquerque cays, which is about 211 miles aways.

We're buddy boating with sv Best Day Ever (BDE), captained by John Terry, who we've known for years. John is a very nice guy who single hands his boat, but was able to find a crew mate, Jackie, who's a very nice 27 year old Brit whose bouncing around the world on boats. We were really glad for John as when things go wrong, you often need a spare set of hands to help. We were also glad to have another boat along for in case something bad happens to the boat along the way and for basic safety and security issues.

The trip here was rather benign. BDE had a fuel leak early on which John was able to solve and then had a major water intrusion issue with his prop shaft seal, which he was also able to resolve. Our primary chart plotter (GPS) decided to start rebooting every few minutes, but our backup GPS worked just fine. The winds, which were in the 5-8 kt range, were too light to sail in, so we had to motor sail most of the trip. Finally towards the end we had 8-12 kts of wind and were finally able to shut off the motor and enjoy the silence.

We really wanted to arrive at the Albuquerque cays with lots of sunlight as these cays part of an atoll, which means that they are surrounded by a fringing reef system and you have to navigate several miles through the interior to reach your anchorage and the area in between is strewn with coral heads and patch reefs. Luckily our timing was perfect as we arrived at the entrance around noon time and had the anchor down by 1:30. Sue, as shown by the picture above, would stand on the bow guiding the boat around obstacles.

The anchorage was extremely beautiful...that is unless you don't like incredibly blue water and small islands with white sand beaches covered with palm trees. The atoll has 2 cays (islands): the north cay houses a military base and the south one is home to fishermen. What's interesting is that these islands are claimed by Colombia (even though we're off Nicaragua) and this base is here to protect their rights. I'm not quite sure how, as they don't appear to have a boat, but if you try to go ashore on the S cay, you'll be escorted off the island by armed guards.

The water here is absolutely beautiful as the white sand intensifies the blue of the water. As much as we enjoyed parts of the Central American Pacific coast, we missed the incredibly clear and beautiful Caribbean waters. Visibility here is easily in the 100' range, which makes judging depth difficult crossing over coral heads.

We dropped our anchor right on the edge of the light blue water shown above and dropped back into the deeper blue water. The fringing reef, which is probably less than a mile away, comes almost to the surface and does a good job of breaking the incoming waves/swell. Tthe swell does come through, especially at high tide, making it a bit rolly at times. We deployed our flopper-stopper, which kept us nice and stable.

As mentioned before, Cayo Norte is a military base, and it appears that people aren't allowed on it, as Jackie found out when she tried to go walking on the beach. She was quickly stopped and escorted off the island. However, the fishermen on the south island were much friendlier and there was no problem walking there. These guys come out to the island for weeks at a time and spend all of their time hunting for conch, lobster and fish. What was very nice was that most of them spoke passable English, so we were able to easily negotiate for fish and lobster. Sue & I purchased wonderful lobsters for $10 each (that's Jackie with one of them) and a delicious red snapper.

As you can probably imagine, the snorkeling here was quite nice. My favorite thing to do was to take the dinghy out to the fringing reef and swing through holes in the reef and get out into the deeper water. There were lots of fish at the reef cuts and you ended up with larger fish, and sharks, outside of the reef.

We spent a very enjoyable 3 days there but then had to move to San Andreas before the winds shifted to the N. Highly recommended!

-- Geoff & Sue

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For the cruiser:

We waited for the winds to switch to the E before departing from Colon. We had planned on moving to Portobelo to get another 4.5 degrees of wind angle, but the winds were forecast to be so light that we decided to skip bashing our way to Portobelo. That was a good decision as the angle wouldn't have mattered much as the winds were very northerly when we left and by the time that they clocked around, they had gotten so light that it didn't matter. We departed Shelter Bay at 06:15 and dropped anchor at about 13:30 the next day. Winds were in the 5-8 kt range until 10:00 the last day when they went to 10-12 kts out of the E. We had about 0.6 kts of current with us most of the way.

We utilized the following waypoints from Soggy Paws to come in:

12-08.00N/81-54.00W
12-09.97N/81-54.39W
12-11.26N/81-53.11W
12-11.34N/81-51.84W
12-10.01N/81-51.15W
12-09.76N/81-50.70W

Be sure to proceed through the interior in good light as there are patch reefs which you need to navigate around.

According to Soggy Paws, there is an anchorage spot in 30’ at 12-11.34N/81-51.84W that can be reached in the dark, which is just inside the northwest entrance.

There's a deep channel which runs between the 2 islands. We dropped our anchor in sand at 12-09.75N/81-50.45W in about 15' on the point of north bank (see photo above) and dropped back to over 30+'. Note that a good current can flow through this channel, so be aware of this when swimming of the boat. BDE anchored in the deeper water, but you need to be careful where you drop the anchor due to coral heads.

I also noted via the dinghy that you could easily drop the anchor on the edge of the bank on the W side of Cayo Norte and get excellent protection from incoming swell and winds. This could be very useful if it were blowing hard or if the seas were large. Be careful as there's a patch reef to the W of Cayo Norte.

There was very good snorkeling on the W end of the southern cay with a very nice coral lined slope going from near the surface down about 30'. Lots of rays and a large variety of fish. If you want to be very adventurous, take the dinghy out to the fringing reef in front of Cayo Norte where you see very little wave action. Follow the blue patches out there and anchor just before the reef. Swim, following the white sand channels, through the narrow cuts in the reef and be very cautious of where a heavy swell could place you. I found that the most interesting/abundant fish were just outside of the cuts.

Log ID: 2270