Green Island, San Blas

Monday, February 18, 2002

009-28.800 N
078-41.280 W

Green Island and the surrounding islands are about 7 miles from Tigre, our previous location. This is a group of small islands once again surrounded and interlaced with reefs. It makes for a fantastic anchorage, but you have to be very careful with your navigation as the charts are offset and definitely incomplete as far as where all of the reefs are.

The biggest problem is that it's been heavily overcast, so the reefs tend to blend into the water. Many of them are dark coral so there's little contrast difference. Without direct sun you have to carefully watch for waves breaking, and since there are multiple layers of reef, you might only see something break every few minutes. This definitely teaches you to be vigilant. The large number of wrecks on the reefs provides a constant reminder too.

We (Stormy Petrel & BlueJacket) decided to pull into the "normal" northern anchorage as it provided wonderful protection and great views of the surrounding palm tree covered islands. You anchor in 45' with good holding. Green island itself is about 1/4 of a mile long and maybe 100 yards wide and is surrounded by a narrow white sand beach. A coconut caretaker and his family lives on the island. I have no idea what they do all day long. A major reef system runs for miles in front of the island providing great protection.

We took our dinghies out for a ride to explore the area and found lots of places to pull in to. These little islands are picture perfect...unfortunately my camera is dead...

The snorkeling is great, especially off the SW end of the reef. Tons of live coral and quite a few smaller fish. The reef drops off to 120 feet right there and you can see larger fish down below. We saw several nurse sharks and Lemon sharks. Oh, there are lots of spotted Manta Rays in the shallows and you can see them moving along the bottom. It's really imp
Log ID: 170